Twitter hosts young coders for #EUCodeWeek

On 15th October, Twitter organised a unique coding event for @CodeWeekEU with the support of the Irish Coder Dojo Foundation (@CoderDojo). We opened the doors of our EMEA headquarters in Dublin to some of Ireland’s most talented young coders and their parents.

EU Codeweek was developed by the Young Advisors Group of the European Commission. Each year, community groups, schools, companies and nonprofits celebrate the importance of coding by running their own unique events throughout Europe. We wanted to be part of that amazing week and promote coding and careers in engineering.

Our event began with a safety talk from our head of Global Safety Outreach, Patricia Cartes. She spoke about how to stay safe on Twitter, and how to use our reporting mechanisms to make reports. Young coders then heard from a member of our reliability engineering team, Mick Canning, who spoke about what’s required to keep the Twitter platform up and running each day.

The main event for these young coders was a “Scratch Competition”. Contestants had one hour to develop a Twitter-themed game. Each creation was then ranked by a panel of judges who awarded the top prize for best concept and design and second prize to the most ingenious creation.

Tweets from @TwitterDublin and @CoderDojo gave an insight to the different teams presenting their Twitter-themed games:

Attendees had the opportunity to take part in a Q&A session with some of our software engineers who were also on hand throughout the event to support the young coders in the Scratch competition. The team shared insights on the work they do at Twitter each day, what motivated them to pursue a career in their field and what they did to achieve this.

When speaking about the event, @CoderDojo CEO Mary Moloney (@marydunph) talked about the importance of coding. “Coding knowledge is a unique skill for any young person to have and the foundation is delighted to have Twitter on board as part of EU Code Week, which attracts young coders from all over Europe” she said. “EU Code Week offers the opportunity to promote coding and make it more visible. Twitter sees on a daily basis how important it is to have talented software engineers and we are delighted that they have taken part in EU Code Week.”

Some of the young coders expressed their delight and excitement at attending this event at @TwitterDublin:

We were excited to get on board with the @CoderDojo to continue to support a new generation of coders, who we hope in time may go on to become software engineers at Twitter.