kidTECH London — It Was Great!
We arrived early to check on the room configuration, setup the check-in station, and make sure all the little details were sorted. Standing in the St. James room, before our guests began to arrive, we waited with anticipation–perhaps a little nervousness–wondering how all the planning would play out. Putting on an event like kidTECH is never a simple task, it takes dozens of people to help with the marketing, the facilities, the presenting, and the funding. We had an incredible group of people helping us at every step of the way, and I believe the end result was a truly special event. To those who attended, thank you so much for coming and contributing to the conversation. To our presenters, sponsors, and partners, you were remarkable and made significant contributions to the industry on May 31.
Over the next several days, we’ve asked a few of our partners and sponsors to contribute to this blog and share their thoughts on the event and what stood out to them. After all, kidTECH is intended to be a conversation starter. Our hope is that kidTECH continues to act as a collection of ideas, ideators, and experts who will make a large mark on the kid-tech space.
As we did in Tel Aviv and San Francisco, our aim was to ensure there was a regional focus for the London event. Many of our presenters and attendees were local to London, but we also had people from all over the UK, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the US, Canada, and more! We had CEOs, product managers, and community leaders from social platforms to learning apps.
One of the most talked about sessions was right up at the top of the day. Joshua, a game developer on ROBLOX; and Jenk, the CEO of iCoolKid, helped remind us of who we’re actually serving in kid-tech. Because, sometimes it’s difficult to remember who our products will actually impact. As much as we adults like to think we’re still in-touch with our inner child, we can really only do this by continually spending time listening to the ideology and wisdom of youth. Sometimes, we also need to spend some time with more childlike things, which is why our afternoon snack was cupcakes and popcorn.
At lunch, we hosted casual roundtable discussions facilitated by industry veterans around various topics like building community, monetizing children’s products, and considering children’s mental health when considering how much time a child can, or should, spend using technology.
Perhaps these roundtables, more than anything else, really captured the value of a micro-conference. While we had over 200 people come through kidTECH, there were never much more than 100 people in the room at a time. The sessions felt well attended, but not so much that asking a question was intimidating. If you really wanted to talk to a presenter after the session, you weren’t trying to get through several hundred people and there wasn’t a 20 minute line up to speak with them. We intended for the conference to feel personable and intimate.
But, we’re still early in our journey of what kidTECH events will look like. We’ve already had requests to consider running the show in Eastern Europe, Asia, and in other European or North American locations. We have got some great ideas about how we can improve on the micro-conference model, and how we might find some other ways to bring smaller groups of people to talk about this incredibly exciting and important space, kid-tech.
In the meantime, please help us keep the conversation going. Share your own thoughts (the wondrous advantage of social platforms such as Medium). We’d love to hear your feedback and ideas! Send us a message at kidTECH@kidSAFESeal.com or comment on this post. We’re going to continue using #kidTECH on Twitter and LinkedIn, and we encourage you to do the same.
If you’re interested in checking out any of the sessions, feel free to access our Dropbox and download the sessions for private viewing.
