By Khalida Sarwari
Dozens of people gathered last weekend for the first “Silicon Valley Youth Tech Day,” an event hosted by the youth of Saratoga for other young people.
The Tech Day, held Sept. 12 at Saratoga’s Joan Pisani Community Center, was an opportunity for young people who are serious coders to showcase an app and share an idea or useful tip for iOS programming. Among them was 9-year-old whiz kid Samaira Mehta from Santa Clara, who demonstrated a board game she’d created to explain the principles of programming.
When the kids weren’t busy presenting, they were stationed at a booth, demo’ing their ideas to attendees. The event drew about 60 people.
Aside from the youth presentations, there were three panel sessions with tech industry leaders, elected officials and female tech executives.
During the elected officials panel, Assemblyman Kansen Chu, Santa Clara County Supervisor Dave Cortese, Milpitas Mayor Jose Esteves and San Jose City Councilman Ash Kalra discussed policies that foster innovation in Silicon Valley.
During the executive panel, CEOs and managers of companies such as Intel andCoupons.com talked about factors that have contributed to Silicon Valley’s success.
In the third panel, influential women executives such as Symantec’s Ana Pinczuk tackled the hot-button topic of girls and technology.
The organizer behind the event was Saratoga High School student Shivaum Kumar, the 14-year-old son of Saratoga City Councilman Rishi Kumar. His idea for the Tech Day event sprouted out of the Silicon Valley Young Coders Club that he founded in June to give kids his age an opportunity to come together and share ideas, as well as learn outside of school.
Chalking up the inaugural event as a success, the high school sophomore is already planning next year’s event, which he’s hoping to hold in mid-June. For the second Tech Day, he plans to incorporate a competition and invite members of the venture capital community.
Link: Saratoga’s Tech Day is a special event for youth hosted by youth
