Youth Challenge 2008
13th October 2007
The hunt has begun to find the best young innovators in the Highlands and Islands.
The ICT Youth Challenge 2008 is looking for young people with bright ideas.
The annual challenge, launched this week, is supported by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), BT Scotland and Microsoft, and invites teams of young people to submit their ideas for information and communications technology and of the future.
The most promising ideas are then selected and teams invited to pitch their ideas to a panel of experts. After a number of rounds, the competition culminates with six teams being chosen to go forward to the Hothouse, an intensive week of team work and exert advice focusing on turning ideas into a reality and producing working prototypes of the ICT gadgets of the future.
Youth challenge operations director Rob Murray said: "The challenge is encouraging young people to think out of the box and come up with revolutionary innovative products or services. Young people work together to develop their team working skills, business skills, technical appreciation and are provided with support and technical advice from
experts that allow them to advance their brainwaves.
Taking part in the challenge can really make a difference. Several of the young people who we have worked with have decided as a result to take a completely different career path than they'd originally planned whilst others have advanced their ideas to patent status."
Last year's challenge saw The Microsoft prize category carried off by a Charleston Academy team consisting of Andrew Fraser, Alan Hercher and Tom Gallacher, who won a trip to visit Microsoft's world famous Redmond Campus in Seattle, USA.
Andrew said: "This is the icing on the cake after a great year. Taking part in the ICT Youth Challenge is a great opportunity for young people and we'd absolutely encourage others to get involved this year. Our visit to Seattle and Microsoft's campus was the trip of a lifetime."
John MacKenzie, development manager at Highlands and Islands Enterprise said, "The challenge is now in its fifth year and we are ramping up activity and adding new sponsors. Participant benefits are considerable and the prizes are simply breathtaking."
Teams interested in taking part in the challenge can find out more and submit their ideas on the website www.youth-challenge.co.uk
Related Businesses
Related Articles
Businesses in the Highlands and Islands are invited to apply to the 2025/26 Scottish Rural Leadership Programme. The initiative is designed to empower rural business owners and senior leaders across Scotland with the skills, confidence and strategic insight needed to drive innovation and growth in their communities.
The Scottish Government has begun recruitment to appoint a new Chair for the Board of development agency Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE). Applications are currently being invited through the government's public appointments website with a closing date of 7 July 2025.
Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, has officially opened Aurora's pioneering Renewable Energy Training Centre in Inverness - the only facility of its kind serving the Highlands. The £1.2m training centre has already demonstrated its importance to Scotland's net-zero ambitions, training to more than 1,000 people in its first year and gearing up to train more than 2,000 workers annually who will be central to the country's renewable energy future.
A multi-million pound investment is being made in one of Scotland's most strategically important ports. Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) will invest up to £24 million at Kishorn Port in the west Highlands to enhance its capacity and capabilities, with an expanded dry dock and land reclamation enabling the manufacture of floating offshore wind foundations.
A commercial diver training company in Argyll is exploring the potential to expand the business to include closed bell diver training. Dunoon based Professional Diving Academy (PDA) has secured £5,000 from Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) to help cover associated market assessment consultancy costs.
The new, state-of-the-art Technology and Innovation Centre at UHI North, West and Hebrides' Stornoway campus officially opened following a £2.3m investment. It is the first capital project to be delivered under the Islands Growth Deal, a ten-year package that seeks to drive economic growth and the creation of sustainable jobs across Shetland, Orkney and the Outer Hebrides.
Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) is looking to contract a specialist operating company to run a new multi-million-pound innovation centre under development in Moray to support manufacturing. The three-year contract will involve developing and managing the service offering of the new Manufacturing Innovation Centre Moray (MICM), as well as stakeholder engagement, marketing and promotion of the facility.
An innovation project by a major carrot grower in Moray is forecast to strengthen the company's position and create more jobs. Family-run firm, AA Carrots Ltd grows carrots on 400 acres of land around Moray and Aberdeenshire, of which around half is organic.
More than 30 of the region's businesses are took centre stage at the UK's biggest renewable energy exhibition and conference at Glasgow’s SEC 14-15 May. Global experts, academics and innovators gathered at the annual All-Energy exhibition and conference to advance Scotland’s goal of net zero and achieving a sustainable future.
The scale of transformational opportunity facing the Highlands and Islands economy has been quantified for the first time in a new report. The study reports 251 planned development projects in the economic pipeline of what it refers to as regional transformational opportunities (RTOs).
