Incremental Group was proud to take part in Nine Twenty’s Insp-Hire event at the weekend. Insp-Hire is an event held in conjunction with SmartSTEMS aimed at encouraging children aged 4-14 to consider careers in technology.
BI Consultants Nikki Kelly and Paul McGraw attended on the day, to deliver Incremental’s Emoji Challenge to around 500 children and their parents and guardians. Built on Microsoft Azure and Microsoft Power Platform, it demonstrates how AI, cognitive processing and machine learning work in practice. As part of the Incremental Emoji Challenge, children were asked to pick a card with an emoji on it, representing an emotion. They then had to use our PowerApp to take a photo of them expressing that emotion. Microsoft Azure’s cognitive services machine learning then graded the photo based on which emotions it detected, and displayed their matching score and photo on a Power BI report.
The Emoji Challenge once again proved very popular, with even the youngest attendees gaining an understanding of how computers could be taught to recognise shapes and faces. The PowerApp Incremental had built fit nicely into the day at Insp-Hire, as children could experiment with it and then attend a workshop to build their own app. Children were also shown a variety of Power BI dashboards Incremental consultants had built, including NASA spacewalks and Pokemon.
Nikki Kelly, BI Consultant at Incremental, said,
“Getting involved with Insp-Hire was a great opportunity to show kids all the different ways you can use Microsoft technology. As well as having fun with the younger attendees, I got some great questions from the older children about how to get started with a career in technology, and it felt really good to know that attending that event might be the thing that sparks a lifelong love of tech in a young person.”
Insp-Hire is just one of the initiatives that Incremental Group supports to encourage children and young people into careers in science and technology. Our Incrementalists have the opportunity to access training to become STEM ambassadors, and can then undertake a variety of volunteering activities.