I went with the rest of the DFEY clan (about 10 of us in total) down to London for the "2morrow festival" for young people aged 16-24. Check their website 2morro.org and have a look at their entirely vague explaination of what the event was supposed to be; next, imagine yourself being at an event which was not only just as vague as the description entails but even more boring than you'd think and full to the brim of nothing but people who seem to be over 20 (and in many cases over 30!) who are involved in what seem to be Government-supported initiatives; next, factor in the overwhelming use of Apple branded technology (apart from the LTSP cluster running in the Plings room of course!) and the heavy presence of Channel 4 cameras and invasive surveys and you have the "2morro festival".The room which was supposed to be showing off cool technologies from Apple, Facebook and the Guardian was infact as excuse for them to crack out about 10 Macbook Airs and a couple of chunkier macs and invite people to get creative making apps with nothing more than the default OS X toolset; that's right - Python, Ruby (with none of the bindings you'd want!), HTML and Javascript!
I went to what I assumed would be a bit of a debate on education - "YOUR EDUCATION MANIFESTO FOR EDUCATION, Have your say about the education system with ESSA and even get heard by Channel 4". Riiiiight, what actually happened was a bit different; we had a bit of a skit of a scenario in which a student wanted to do something outside the curriculum but the teacher didn't have time; next we talked about the best moments of our education and then we left, an hour after we had started. Would've been fantastic if I had been looking for a drama workshop but not what I expected at all. Would've been nice too if I wan't the only person <19.
After that boring hour long session, I found stemount and had lunch with him. Brocolli salad? Come on guys, think who you just invited! Then we decided it was too boring to stay there for much longer and so sodded off to a park just next to Parliament by the river side for a couple of hours.After being joined by tdobson, we returned and 10 minutes later I caught the train home; and I was glad to be gone. I heard some people won iPod nanos for 2 minutes of talking about an idea they had.... okay.
Was it worth it? Well, I got free train tickets so it was nice to have a little gander around central London yesterday; but if you're thinking of paying to go to it next year, I'd say think twice! Make sure it'll be reasonable next year guys!
