What we were up to in 2017!

We've taken a trip down memory lane, and what an incredible year it was! We still can’t believe how much we packed into good ol’ 2017.

Detective Dot sprang to life

Thanks to the lovely people from across 30 countries, we secured a Kickstarter fund for Agent Asha’s predecessor, Detective Dot! 10 months after the Kickstarter, and 160 rewrites and a gazillion user-tests later, Detective Dot and the Children’s Intelligence Agency (now the CSA) came to life.

Hot off the back of this, Detective Dots’ (literary, not biological!) mum, Sophie Deen won the FDM Barclay’s Everywoman Startup Founder of the Year – an award celebrating the achievements of women working in tech and STEM! We were super-chuffed to win this award alongside some amazing female leaders who have been doing some incredible work in this field.

 

And guess what else!

We won the EDF Pulse Award too!

The EDF Pulse Award is given for inspiring young people into Tech! And that gave us the amazing opportunity to partner with EDF in their STEM initiative. This kept the team at Bright Little Labs busy as we took our spy agency to 22,000 schools across the UK. 

Bright Little Labs founder Sophie Deen introducing Detective Dot to the CEO of EDF (photo from Wired)

From investigating the ways we could  ‘harness power from poo’, to finding out if ‘cow farts are the cause of global warming’, we had a lot of interesting conversations with the little agents on sustainability and sustainable sources of energy.

 

We hopped to the Imperial Science Festival

With one of our favourite scientists, Dr Jess Wade, we headed to a packed venue at the Imperial Science Festival in London. We met some CIA agents who were super-excited to carry out detective work. There were plenty of productive discussions to be had around homework crimes, and, importantly - the lack of diversity in top-selling kids books.

 

We headed to The Book Club in London

We got the chance to speak to a lovely bunch of innovators at the Blue Lab Away Day, courtesy of our friends at EDF Energy. Blue Labs is EDF’s platform to encourage innovation, and it was hosted at the London Book Club - just about the perfect venue for us!

 

And a TedX Talk to boot 👢

TedX is all about questioning ‘social norm’ behaviour and proposing an alternate view. Bright Little Labs and the CIA (now known as the Children’s Spy Agency), are all about asking questions and thinking differently - so how could we resist!

Yep, we TED-Ex’d!

 

Putting aside our love of fart jokes and all things goofy, we decided to be really grown-up and use the opportunity of the Ted stage to talk about how to prepare kids for the Robot Revolution.

So, what was the TedTalk all about?

1. Digital Literacy for kids

In an increasingly digital world, digital literacy has become a fundamental literacy – just like reading and writing. 

2. The Robot Takeover

40% of jobs that we know today will be automated by 2050. With an artificial intelligence revolution on the way, our kids are entering into a brave new world, and will be doing a whole host of jobs that we can’t even fathom yet! Are they prepared for their future?

3. How to survive in The Digital Age

Children will need to create, control and change new technology, not just to consume it. The kids that will thrive in the digital age will be those who are emotionally resilient, creative, communicative, and most importantly, they will need to speak the language of computers – which is code.

4. Kids at Risk from Robots

ALL kids should have access to the future, regardless of their background, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic position or race. But that won’t happen unless something changes now. Only 20% of the tech industry is female. We need a way for all kids to have access to STEM subjects, and we believe the way to do it is through a media revolution.

You can check out Sophie’s Ted Talk over here, or head over to Agent Asha’s page to see what she’s been up to!