Open Youth Academy Croatia 2016

Over the August Bank Holiday weekend we sent James Cattell to meet our colleagues in Croatia and participate as a judge at Open Youth Academy Croatia. This is his guest blog post.

The open youth academy  is an annual event in Croatia. It aims to foster greater understanding and use of open data. Its also a chance for teams from across Europe to work together. 2016 is the 2nd year it has been run. The United Kingdom government has provided attendees for both events.

The 2016 event saw 24 attendees from 7 countries descend on Pula  on the North West coast of Croatia.

On Monday (day 1) we had presentations on the United Nation’s strategic development goals  (SDGs). These would form the focal point of our efforts throughout the entire week. There are 18 SDGs in total ranging from removing poverty to climate change.

After lunch we split into our teams and started brainstorming what we’d work on. The team that Tamara and I mentored was called Tinja, which is Croatian for smoulder. The 6 team members ranged in age from 18 to 29. We quickly came up with 10 different ideas.

By lunchtime of day 2 we’d whittled them down to 2 ideas; sustainable energy production and job listing. Because of the even number of team members, voting was split down the middle as to which idea we should focus on. So we decided to combine the 2 ideas.

The team worked on this throughout the afternoon. Tamara organised conference calls with policy experts. By the end of the day 2 the team was a bit overwhelmed and declared they had lost focus. This was the point that natural leaders began to emerge and I could start to step back a little. I drew the Gartner hype cycle and got them to plot where they felt they were.

Unsurprisingly most were in the trough of disillusionment. They decided on a plan for day 3 and headed off for dinner.

Day 3 they really started to come into their own and my input was minimal. A working prototype began to emerge as did a pitch for the presentations. At 6:30pm Tin arrived and the team ran thru the pitch whilst we sat and listened. Team member Kaja led the presentation and Peter talked thru the prototype. Tamara, Tin & I then pretended to be the judges and asked questions. The team worked late rehearsing the presentation and celebrated with pizza.

Day 4 we headed off to the main university lecture hall to give our presentations. Tamara introduced the format for the day. Then we had a quick talk from each of the judges and sponsors, then went straight into the presentations.

Team Tinja went last and were the only team to show a working prototype. Kaja and Peter led with other members answering questions from the judges. I was proud of the way the team handled themselves and felt confident as we went into the voting.

After a spot of lunch the teams had chance to speak with the experts, who gave feedback on the projects and answered questions. I was in the public sector room and facilitated the occasionally heated discussion between the experts and teams.

At the end of the day we headed back for dinner and a chance to prepare for the final day. This would entail repeating the presentation in Croatian at Pula town hall.

Day 5 was quite a slog. There were a lot of presentations and discussions by local politicians, all of which were in Croatian. Some of these had nothing to do with the youth academy or open data. They just turned out to be a chance of local people to have a go about local issues. Eventually we got to the repeated presentations which were hampered by a wifi failure.

All the teams presented well and we eventually arrived at the big moment: who had won the popular vote on day 4. I was proud to hear that the team I mentored had won. The prize was funds to attend the Open Government Partnership global summit  later in the year.

All in all I was glad to attend and look forward to helping out again next year.