Teens Exploring Code: a first of its kind free coding event organized for and by teens
Over 60 teens attended the first annual Teens Exploring Code (TEC) on Sunday, August 2nd at Mitchell Park Community Center in Palo Alto. This free event, which was organized by Palo Alto High School students Alice Zhang and Kelsey Wang, offered coding workshops and speaker sessions with local entrepreneurs. Alice and Kelsey were excited by the quick interest that TEC garnered from local teens.
“Prior to the event, we opened a google form for sign-ups for the workshops and limited space to 20 people so that the leaders could be more hands-on…We received a lot of great response and all three workshops were all full within a few weeks,” they said.
Workshops for teens to explore Python and more
So what exactly went on within the workshops? Matthew Li, a recent Palo Alto High School graduate who served as an instructor in one of the workshops explained, “For the workshop on Python, we did it as an introduction to computer science to get the teens exposed to code, so we included concepts such as variables, if statements, and more.”
Guest speakers from Palantir and other tech companies inspire teens to aim high
The first guest speaker was Spencer Rivette, a Product Quality Engineer at Palantir Technologies, who discussed how learning code is comparable to learning a new language. “What matters is the ability to 
express yourself and understand how other people are expressing themselves using a diction and syntax you’ve never seen before,” he explained. “Learning to write code allows you to interact with other people at key technical levels, to interact with computers and make them solve problems for you. It’s an entirely different way of expressing yourself that is incredibly powerful and useful.”
Elena Silenok, founder and CEO of the iPad app Clothia, discussed how she has used code to impact the fashion business. Silenok highlighted the abundance of computer science jobs and strove to motivate teens to set big goals, saying, “If you aren’t getting rejected on a daily basis, your goals aren’t ambitious enough.”
The third guest speaker was Pete Cockerell, a Senior Software Engineer at Amazon, who focused a large chunk of his presentation on a computer science technique called abstraction. “Abstracting is essentially hiding the details,” said Cockerell. He compared abstraction to the famous Vincent van Gogh painting, Starry Night, because in the painting there are trees, houses, and a church, but they are not detailed.
Up next was Deyan Vitanov, co-founder and CEO at Chobolabs, a company focused on bringing competitive gaming to mobile devices. Vitanov stressed the importance of perseverance, explaining that he embarked on seven unsuccessful business ventures before finding one that worked. “The only thing that matters are the successes,” he said.
“Knowing how to program will allow you to choose your own path…”
WikiHow software engineer Aaron Gutierrez told the teens how learning had opened many doors in his career. “Knowing how to program will allow you to choose your own path instead of having it chosen for you.”
Anthony Luckett of Piazza Technologies Inc. closed out the speaker sessions by explaining how computer science is helping him develop an education platform that allows students to ask questions in an online chatroom with other classmates and their teachers.
More teen leadership planned for next year’s TEC
Overall, TEC was a fun and helpful opportunity for teens to learn about code, and next year’s event promises to be even better.
“For 2016, we hope to expand TEC and improve it by getting more teens involved in planning, and by publicizing it through social media, news articles, etc.,” said Alice and Kelsey.
