On Tuesday 13th November, Bolland & Co teamed up with Clock to take part in BIMA Digital Day 2018.
We were paired with WGBS (Watford Grammar Boys School) where Ollie Bolland, Bolland & Co’s CTO spent his adolescence. We were immediately greeted by warm smiles and familiar faces.
What is Digital Day?
Digital Day is a free initiative for both schools and agencies. It sees digital professionals head back to school for a day to inspire secondary students (13-16 years), give them insight into the depth and breadth of careers available, offer practical advice on how to get into digital, and get hands-on experience tackling challenges.
The day is split into two halves and designed flexibly, to work around a normal school day.
In the morning, digital professionals introduce their world of work to the students, sharing their own career experiences whilst providing insight into the range of careers available in digital.
In the afternoon, it’s time for the BIMA nationwide competition. Competing for fantastic prizes, students work in teams to complete one of the sponsored challenges with guidance from the digital professionals. The winning solutions are then submitted back to BIMA for our judging panel to decide which groups will be crowned the Digital Day Champions 2018.
Digital Day starts
Neil Adcock, Head of ICT was helping us lead the day and had set the 55, Year 10 students into nine groups.
Ollie took to the stage to introduce us, share the agenda for the day and begin the presentation. In the first part, Ollie gave an insight into Bolland & Co. Syd (Nadim) joined him and provided an insight into Clock. They both detailed key information about the digital industry and defined what it is.
There were various videos that BIMA supplied throughout the morning; all preparing the groups for the challenges they would be working on in the afternoon. Ollie explained about ‘The Four Ds of Digital’ and then read through each challenge, answering any questions along the way.
The Four Ds of Digital
- Discover – Getting the brief, understanding the challenge, research what else is out there and starting to brainstorm
- Decide – Now you have your ideas you need to refine them and move forward with the best solution
- Design – Craft the idea into a final product
- Deliver – Complete your challenge sheet and get ready to pitch
The students got into their groups and were given the choice of the three challenges. They would have to use these four stages when completing them.
The challenges
Vodafone
The high street has long been the heart of town and city life in the UK. There’s a huge opportunity to broaden its appeal to attract even more customers in the digital age.
The Challenge
Design a tool using either AR (augmented reality) or VR (virtual reality) technology that…
- Will change the way we shop for food, fashion and homeware on the high street. Think about how you could attract more people into the shops with a new experience, more information or a fun spin on a boring task!
- Brings the high street shopping experience to remote, busy and/or disabled customers.
The Football Association (FA)
The England Women’s Football Team (The Lionesses) are competing in next year’s FIFA World Cup in France in July 2019.
The Challenge
Given the increasing popularity of Women’s Football how would you use digital to:
(a) Increase the number of people following (e.g. watching live matches, following on social, etc.) the team during the World Cup?
(b) Increase the number of girls aged 8-16 to give playing football a try with their local club?
BBC
BBC’s upcoming digital-only program Earthlings will focus on children and young adults around the world, comparing the daily lives of people across 7 continents over 14 episodes.
The Challenge
Develop a marketing idea to promote the new series – think about creating a big impact, inspiring the audience and getting people to tune in every week. Let your imagination run free, using new or traditional forms of media, or even experiences.
The students were given paper, pens, sticky notes, scissors, glue and access to the printer to make their ideas come to life on their challenge worksheets. The Digital teams walked around, helped guide the students and were on hand for any questions. The ideas we could hear were amazing and it was so interesting to see the different thought processes and structure the each group came up with.
Presentation time
After lunch, each group had ten minutes to practise their presentations which would be judged Dragon’s Den style. The students had been given various online tools to help with their worksheet presentations and each group used at least one of them. We had presentations on PowerPoint to full on websites created (which pleased us greatly.) The quality of work that they all produced was fantastic and it was great to see how they all focused and worked together as teams! Two winners were chosen (although not announced at the time) and we have been informed that the students were over the moon.
Our Final Thoughts
When we first arrived in the morning the students were asked if they knew what digital was. There were no more than 3 hands raised. When the same question was asked at the end of the day, all hands were up and they stayed up when asked if anyone would now consider a career in digital.
We were all so impressed by the students and how much they already knew without even realising it. A massive thank you to Neil and WGBS for being very hospitable and making us feel so welcome. Also a huge thank you to Clock for helping us run the day. We’re already looking forward to next year 🙂