At the recent YOW! Night in Melbourne (as well and Sydney and Brisbane), Daryl Wilding-McBride (the CTO of DiUS) presented “What I Learned while Teaching Kids at Flying Robot School”. It was an interesting story on the importance of social good for those of us in the technical space.

• Waking hours capacity – families, hobbies, paid work, unpaid work
• Not all work has equal social impact – pays the bills > interesting > impactful > worthwhile
• Worthwhile work creates a legacy and passes the BBQ test (something you are proud to convey and recognised as value by the other person)
• 80000hours.org – the average hours you have from university to retirement, help you decide how to spend that time and be effective
• William MacAskill “Doing Good Better” – how do you know your social impact is not being wasted – doing good, lean
• Dimensions for measuring social impact – scale, neglectedness, tractability, personal fit
• A lot of untapped potential in rural areas
• Interest in science and maths drops considerably between year 6 and year 9
• Number of girls continuing with maths after year 10 – 21% drop out, and for boys and girls the percentage has tripled over the last 10 years
• Flying Robot School – started 2014, overcome barriers for rural schools, free program to lower barrier of entry, blend of technologists and teachers
• Drones are not only fun but are a self contained package that cuts across science, maths and technology
• Had lofty goals on topics to teach, but had to prioritise to mix theory and practice
• Other social outlets – Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK), Code Club, FIRST Robotics, NodeBots, Robogals
• We have an obligation as technologists to make things better