Full transcript: Clare Sutcliffe on London Real
0:43 To the people of the London technology startup scene. I am Brian Rose. I also host London Real. It’s the same studio same mics, same chairs, but we have some crazy people in here. Like we had Tim Ferriss, we had Neil deGrasse Tyson, we’ve had Max Keiser from Russia Today talking about Bitcoin, sorts of good stuff.
1:01 We’ve just hit episode like 150. So go check that out at londonreal.tv. You can actually search by like martial arts or by like fitness and all that stuff, so check that out. But today we’re here to talk tech. My co-host is none other than Colin Pyle, entrepreneur running coffee companies.
1:16 What’s going on? Super super busy. We’re at Grand Designs Live this past week. What is that? Grand Designs Live, it’s at the ExCeL Center, which I’d never been to before.
1:27 Massive, huge, huge. It’s enormous. London City Airport. Yeah, so it’s like really far if you live west. But yeah, you can really buy anything buy kitchens, buy you know, backyard patio sets.
1:38 It’s for you know people looking to decorate their home, and nice stuff so kind of our market. So we got a little coffee stand, and yeah, it’s good, man. It’s you meeting customers and meeting people, lots of customer service Fe. It’s amazing how terrified people are outside of the tech scene of people screwing them over. Oh, really?
1:56 You know what I mean? We’re taking, like, this nice friendly approach, subscription, cancel anytime you want and everyone is just so afraid of the word subscription. They’re going to, you’re just going to. They got use them in E’s them in, but once you get them hooked, then they’re subbed forever, right? Yeah, it’s good, but again our target audience too, a lot of our audience is, you know, older than 50.
2:15 So they’ve been screwed over by a gym or a phone, or and so they just, they don’t get that, like the new way of doing business is, yeah, it’s always old people. When I talk to my parents, they’re like, I don’t give my credit card out to, well, you talk to like a younger person, they’re like, I give it to everybody. Exactly. And actually, if you look at MasterCard and Visa like you’re protected in a huge way, like from any like major losses. I’ve had my card number printed like online before, and like nothing ever happen.
2:37 So anyways, all right, keep us posted on that. On with the show, our guest today is Clare Sutcliffe, who is the co-founder and CEO at Code Club, a nationwide network of, as I count, 2,276 after school coding clubs for children age 9 to 11. You guys launched in April 2012, I think. You want children to learn to program, but you also want them to learn about computational thinking, problem solving, planning, designing and collaboration. Clare, welcome to Silicon Real.
3:05 Thank you. You just did my job for me, like that, right? You bad. I like to get people out there so people know who they’re talking to, you know, as opposed to make it too mysterious. But we met you almost a year ago.
3:17 We were at, like, our first or second Silicon Drinks about. We had just asked Benjamin Southworth to be on our show, and he was like, yes, and he was at, you know, Tech City at the time, and then we just started talking to you, and we’re like, wow, this girl super cool. She’s doing this cool thing and we were both struck by how friendly and welcoming the tech scene is here in London. You know, we just had Andy Mlin, the co-founder of Huddle, on last week, and he just tweeted out an article about a company that moved from San Francisco to London, because like everyone’s trying to help each other out, and you know, it was just cool to meet all these cool viy people that I don’t know, were just so positive.
3:51 So, it’s been 45 episodes later, but it was a great, you know, way to introduce the scene, meeting people like you. So thanks for the warm energy. You’re welcome. You kind of made this happen, you know. No, it’s, you know, it’s a year ago, and we remember, we remember meeting you.
4:05 That’s how you were there, we go. Hope it was good. Yeah, I think the scene was a little bit like, who are these guys? But I think now, by, I think I was having like a hay fever attack. I remember thought you were weird.
4:14 I think it was by Hawton station, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah. It was outside. It was at some gallery, wasn’t it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
4:21 It was over there. For the people that don’t know much about Code Club, I was wondering if you could tell us kind of how it started, you know, a bit of the background. I was watching that crazy YouTube video you did two years ago with Tim Berners-Lee and Chad Hurley and Prince Andrew. Did you watch that thing? It’s like all these people are in, like, are they’re being interviewed by like three kind of Code Club kids to see if they’re worthy of the Code Club, and they’re just grilling them, and the guy, Chad Hurley’s like, “I invented YouTube!”
4:46 And one of the kids is like, “Oh, you mean the video where the guy did that?” And he’s like, “No, no, I invented YouTube.” And they’re just cutting him off. Was that video your idea? And then can you tell us about Code Club?
4:56 That video wasn’t my idea. The idea actually came from going to Founders Forum? Do you know Founders Forum? I’ve heard of it, but I haven’t been. Okay.
5:07 It’s a conference for tech entrepreneurs that happens in Watford every June, and at the time that I started Code Club with Linda. Linda is my co-founder. I was working at Albion advertising agency, right? Which is where Bryce works. Bryce does Alan Drive, which is the PR version of, yeah, right.
5:25 So I left just before Bryce arrived. Okay. We had Jason Goodman on here, so yeah, so Jason was my boss. Okay. And I told them that I’d done Code Club, that I’d launched Code Club, and they were like, oh my God, that’s cool.
5:39 How can we help? They’ve been incredibly supportive, and I was there for quite a while when I first started. Like, stayed at Albion for quite a while. And they said, well, we’ve got this amazing opportunity. Would you like to go to Founders Forum and make a film, because they make a film every year, but they want to make a film for someone that’s kind of, like, a cause that’s worthy, and we’ll take, you know, a set of creative writers and a production team, and we’ll take kids and props, and then we’ll ask the delegates to think of the idea for the film themselves.
6:12 So I briefed all the delegates of the conference, like what you know, what we need. And what we needed was a video that would ideally be viral, and that would explain the idea of Code Club, ideally in a funny way. And we explained we have kids and props, and, you know, you’ve got 45 minutes. And then we had them pitch their ideas back to us afterwards, and they were grown men jumping on tables, trying to get their idea across to us. It was amazing.
6:36 I can’t remember who won in the end. I think it might have been Fred Destin’s team, but they, it was their idea, and then we had our writers, like, write the jokes for all the different people that you see in the film, and then we spent all day tapping them on the shoulder and then getting them to come in and film it. It was brilliant. So you shot it that day of the Founders Forum? We shot it at the, we shot it at Founders Forum, and we edit it during the day, and then we showed them the like what was meant to be the final cut, like just before they had dinner.
7:04 And then we recut it in the morning and then sent out again the next day, and then like 600,000 people watched it. So it was really cool. It’s huge, and yeah, it’s really good. And they were all game for it. They were all like, okay, yeah, we actually filmed 14 people, but we could only fit like those ones, and they were the funniest.
7:21 Some of the jokes were really funny when you, when they were written down, and then, okay, when they film didn’t quite work. So I’m not going to tell you who didn’t make, they’re not comedians, but like Prince Andrew was there, and like at the very end, they’re like, “And what do you bring to the table?” And he was like, “My mom,” and they were like, “Yeah, he wrote that himself, was nice. The founder, that’s Brent Hoberman. He, yeah, okay, yeah.
7:41 I placed it, good. I wasn’t sure what that was, and then we went back again last year and launched Code Club World. So nice, they’re big friends Code Club is 2 years old, or a little more than 2 years old. Code Club is 2 years and 1 month old. And how did it start, and how did you get to where you are now?
7:58 It started when I met Linda Sivic, who’s my co-founder. We met at a web design conference in Nottingham. We went to the pub, which is where all good ideas start in England. Is where everything, yeah, pretty much. Crusades, relationships, everything, education programs yeah.
8:18 And we had the idea for Code Club, and we thought that’s like a fairly simple idea. We know lots of programmers between us. I was user experience designer, and she still is a programmer, works for freelance clients, and we thought we know lots of people that know how to program. We could ask them to go to schools and we started, like, thinking what are the barriers that stop people going to do that already? And it came, became very apparent that creating materials, creating projects for the children to work on, would be really time-consuming for one person to do, and then that obviously that would be then magnified by every club that you wanted to set up.
8:55 So really we’d have to create all the materials and all the guidance, so that it would be easily replicable by anybody with enough programming knowledge to run the projects for the children. So we got a team together, where we put our first website out. It was just like a one-page website, and we tweeted that an exciting thing was happening and we were launching this thing, and it went pretty crazy, and then the next day I was doing, like, interviews on the BBC and stuff about it, and we’re onwi and the next day.
9:28 Yeah, the actual next day. So I was walking around in the corridor outside Albion, doing interviews on the BBC, which was fun but unexpected. How did they find out about you so fast? Twitter. You just tweeting, only tweeted, that’s it.
9:43 No, we didn’t do, we just tweeted once, and then it just went around fast. Yeah, it was a bit. It’s interesting though, cuz if you go to the Code Club site, it’s like you go, maybe there to find a Code Club for your kid, but it from the very beginning it almost pitches you to start your Code Club. So, like, there’s a kind of weird viral design, which I don’t know if you intended to do, but obviously it worked, to where it just kind of, you made it scale itself, right?
10:08 Yeah, and it kind of, the idea of Code Club is that it kind of, it works both ways, well at least the site does, right? So we want venues to find volunteers by reaching out to their community, but we also want volunteers to reach out to venues within their local community, so that there would be more matches. Is the idea. That’s pretty smart. So was that from the beginning?
10:29 You thought this is the way we can do this, so this is the first site, didn’t have any of that stuff. All it had was a MailChimp list, which got out of hand pretty quickly. We had 2,000 people sign up in two months to say that they wanted to volunteer. which was actually fairly terrifying when that happened, cuz you got to vet all these people too, presumably, if they’re we don’t actually, we don’t vet them for their knowledge. We CRB check them in, yeah.
10:56 We don’t do that, but they have to have one to start Code Club, so check that they have that. But there are other agencies that do that, yeah. And why was it 9 to 11 year olds, and why kids? Why kids in the beginning? why did that appeal to you?
11:12 Why kids in the beginning? I think, the earlier you start, the better. You can pique a child’s interest without making it boring, then I think you’re onto a winner. 9 to 11 was because we thought we had to start with a particular age group, because children are so different as they move through the ages, they’re capable of more or less depending on, like, how old they are, and they’ve already learned certain things. So if we weren’t any younger than nine, we’d have problems with literacy and with math.
11:40 So we based our projects on a standard level in the UK, and if you go any older than 11, they’re at secondary school, so you would actually have to have two separate clubs. And we thought, like, as a starting point, we need to pick an age group, so we went for 9 to 11. And you’ve been happy just to keep it in that group? Yes, we have been, but we are opening up fairly soon. We’d like to take the 9 to 11 label off, and make it more about levels of experience rather than particular ages, and then kind of use notes to guide what ages might be applicable, might be most appropriate for the different sets of projects.
12:21 But we would like to do projects that are more appropriate for younger, or even like younger and unexperienced kids as well as older as well and more advanced work as well. Okay, all in good time. Yeah, it’s very. I think it’s very important to have a very specific target in the beginning for any startup, you know, and not go too crazy, like 9 to 18. I mean, Jesus.
12:43 So can you talk about, like, the first year and then the second year, you talked about Code Club Plus or Code Club something else that happened within a year. I know with Google you have like Code Club Pro or something that they sponsored. Can you walk us through, like, what happened? Yeah, so So Code Club grew very quick in its first year, and in the UK does continue to do so and we had a lot of emails from people saying, when are you going to come and start Code Club in my country, and I was like, clearly not, I’m very busy.
13:12 So, but we also had emails from people saying when can I start Code Club in my country, and that’s a lot more interesting. So I thought, as a team, we thought how can we enable those people to run a Code Club organization in their own country, supporting their own local volunteers, hosting their own meetups, manage in their own website, like registering volunteers, and do the same as we do here in the UK, but like you know, in a more culturally sensitive way, because obviously we don’t know how other countries work, and it’s better if it’s done by people who live there, right? With their own interests at heart.
13:46 And so we set up Code Club World, which was to do exactly that, which was to build a framework that would allow other people to start Code Club organizations where they live, and that was in June last year, and we kind of let that fly, and then let it just let it be, to see what would happen, and also cuz we’re still really really busy on Code Club UK. But what happened was two different things. First of all, clubs just are organically popped up around the world, and there are about 250 clubs approximately outside of the UK.
14:20 Code clubs, code clubs. Yeah, wow But then the other thing that we wanted to happen, cuz we wanted both of these things to happen, just individual clubs and wanted to people start building communities. So in Brazil there’s a group of three or four guys who are you know, proactively going out recruiting volunteers and supporting them, and that’s why Brazil has about 35 clubs now. So in the states there’s 50 clubs, but there’s no one coordinating them, obviously, kind of a lot more people.
14:47 And are they really associated with you at that stage? Like, are they in touch with you, getting new material and stuff like that? So they’re in touch with us. They’ve translated our materials. All of our materials are on GitHub, all the translations are there as well, and they’re all, so they don’t just take the name and then run with it.
15:03 No, they use our name. I have like Skype calls with them every month, like, and the same for there’s a community in Ukraine, and they have quite a few clubs. I can’t remember now, about 20, 25 clubs. And pilots have just started in Australia and New Zealand. There’s a community in Catalonia, one in Norway, and there’s lots of interest from countries all around the world, in set up communities, and they’re at various levels of progress at the moment.
15:33 Why do you think you’ve been so successful with this, like sprouting up all over the world, but like you said different cultures and different languages. I mean, why, why you guys? I don’t know why us guys, but I think that people like the idea because it’s nice and simple, and they can see that it’s easily scalable, because we’ve already proved that, at least to a certain extent anyway. But it’s also really easily replicable, because the idea of someone with knowledge going to teach a group of people with less knowledge is a really, really simple idea, and that’s what it boils down to, right?
16:04 So a programmer going to a school that has computers and children and delivering a Code Club, as long as those ingredients exist, that can happen anywhere. And there are variations on that theme. So I met a lady from Calgary in Canada, and she said that the idea of having after school clubs in the school, and not like after the kids have gone home, had dinner, then gone to a, then they go to their club. Is would be weird But the library network is where a lot of clubs happen, so instead of having it in schools, she wants to do Code Club Canada but using the library network.
16:41 And so there are variations, but cuz, who us libr, well right, they need a new purpose ex, and that’s a really good new way of using of using them And we have, we have Code Clubs running in the UK in libraries as well. And how was your growth in the UK? I mean, did that happen really fast? Did you need to leave your job soon, and like what were some of your milestones, you know, in the UK, like, you know, for the first year, the second well we did a pilot with 25 clubs.
17:11 But then we started our first sort of official kind of academic year in September of 2012 with 120. And it grew really steadily by 100 new clubs a month, until until three months ago, when it was noted that it was at 200 new clubs a month. And it’s just dropped a bit because we just put all our projects online, and I think that people were registering a bit just to get hold of the materials and stuff, which was unnecessary, so we were like, well, you can just have them.
17:50 You don’t have to register to start a club. Like, here go. But if you’re running a club, you still have to register and have your DBS and all that kind of safety stuff. And at this rate you’re going to be in 25% of the school by like 2015. That’s our target.
18:04 Yeah, yeah, that’s a lot. Is it just me? That’s a lot of schools, and that’s really fast growth. It is, it is a lot. 25% of any market, let alone the whole UK, that’s amazing.
18:15 Yeah. It’ll be interesting to see, because we’ve only been going like such a short amount of time, like how long the clubs continue for, and what the churn rate is, and we’re only just starting to be able to investigate that. Right. But it’ll be interesting to see how long people carry on. Right?
18:28 Do you get a lot of flakiness? Like, people are like, oh, this is a great idea, and you know, I’m going to do it, and then they do it once and just drop the ball? I don’t think so. No, all the anecdotal evidence I have tells me that people stay for at least a term, and we do ask that people stay for at least. Is that the instructors or the students?
18:47 The, the volunteers? Yeah. So the children, and I have to generalize whenever I talk about this, because it’s different at every school, but the children tend to stay mainly because they have been chosen from a long list of kids who wanted to join in the first place, and they’ll have been asked to make a commitment to stay, and they have to really be like, actually, I’m just really not interested. And that’s fine, obviously. It’s not for everybody, but the clubs tend to be so oversubscribed that the teacher has to choose somehow a list of kids to, and the kids pay or it’s completely free?
19:21 No, it’s all completely free. Schools don’t pay either, so the kids don’t pay. The volunteers volunteer their time, and you guys do this through donations and sponsorship? Yeah. Okay, yeah, that’s amazing.
19:33 And what’s been the biggest challenge for you, say, in the last 12 months, for Code Club? Yeah, um, was just so easy. It’s not it’s not usually when things look easy. It’s just not what I, yeah. What’s been the biggest challenge getting the ball rolling on funding, would really difficult, mainly because I’d never done any fundraising before, ever.
20:03 But now that’s going okay. I’ve learned to write grant proposals, and how to manage corporate sponsors effectively, and that’s going really well. What is your breakdown, like, corporate grants, and is there other money? Is there cons? Is there Kickstarter money, or people like consumers, philanthropic checks, maybe?
20:24 Are there any, like, you know, big big tech guys, you know, to help, to help fund something? This is an incredible opportunity, for, they’ve all been like either corporations or grants. Though, like, one of our most recent grants was funded by the Cabinet Office, so I guess that’s government funding, right? But the others are all like different funds from kind of like from Nominet and Nesta, who are, I don’t know, if you know who they are? They, the kind of people that fund People Like Us, not-profits and social enterprises for various different things depending on what the fund is.
21:00 And the others are corporate sponsors, like Arm and Samsung. Arm were the first people to come to us and say how can we help you? And I was like, oh my God, Mass public that works, yeah. That was a really good email to get, and they have continued to support us since then and they also support Code Club World as well. And Code Club Pro, what, cuz Google gave us some money, for Code Club Pro a couple months ago.
21:30 You were in the news. What is Code Club? Code Club Pro. C button on my computer runs out. I have to replace it.
21:39 Pro, and why did they get involved at this point? Why did Google get involved? So Code Club Pro is where we use our volunteers. We pay them this time, to go into primary schools and teach teachers, just enough for them to be able to deliver the new Computing curriculum, which comes into effect in September this year. Okay.
21:58 This is a nationwide curriculum that they have to be ready for. Yeah, ideally they would be ready. If they’re not ready, they have to prepare to get ready, like even after it started, like they have to do something about it, unless they’re experts already, in which case that’s cool. So there’s thousands of teachers out there that really need. Yeah, hundreds of thousands of teachers, a bit extra help.
22:19 Yeah. So at primary school, you teach, you tend to teach every subject. Each teacher teaches every subject, but throughout the year, and you’ll have a coordinator who might disseminate information and stuff, but generally most teachers need a good foundation of knowledge on every subject. So if you imagine how many schools there are, and let’s say it’s about 20,000 primary schools, and then you’ll have a faculty of, like, a sort of a minimum of six teachers, and that’s like in the tiniest schools, up to kind of 30 teachers.
22:54 That’s a lot of people. To train teachers, must be scared of having to teach code I’m guessing, yes, they are scared, and they feel very put upon as well, because they’ve been asked to teach something that they have no, generally, have no experience of, and that’s, you have to be really sympathetic to that point of view. they’re already overworked as it is, and now they’ve been asked to teach something that they don’t have an experience of. so we’re trying to offer our help as cheaply and as flexibly as possible, and give, and give them enough confidence, to, so that they feel like, actually, I can teach this, and I know where to go and look to find more information, and now I have, you know, a whole alumni of people that have been through Code Club Pro training as well, and I can talk to them about how are they finding teaching Computing, the various different key stages as well.
23:46 Who pushed through this new curriculum that’s coming out in September of this year? Is this something that’s been building? It was a Tech City pushing this, so I guess it wasn’t, or was this something that the UK is long due for, in your opinion? It’s, I think there has been lobbying for change for a while. I don’t know the details on that.
24:04 Code Club’s always sat quite firmly outside of the curriculum. We sort of aware of what was in it, but not, we weren’t pushing for any change, because we, we like our Code Clubs to be after school and creative and not part of, you know, a normal school thing, and we still want that to happen. But when we saw that it had changed, and how teachers were really worried, and we thought, well, we have the resource to be able to help with this. As in, we have the idea, and we have access to people who we already know want to pass on their knowledge, and so we needed a bit of a funding kickstart.
24:40 And we told Google about our idea, and they thought, yeah, we want to help you do that. That must feel good. That was cool good to have corporates writing checks, you know, with that, you know, Benjamin South was here a couple weeks ago, and he had just, he commented on something, cuz I know Joanna Lowenstein had said, okay, people shouldn’t learn French, they should learn code, and then Ben was like, no, no, they shouldn’t replace a language with code.
25:02 And I was just wondering, I think tech people, when they hear Code Club, they’re like, yeah, yeah, I want my kids doing this, but I’m wondering what would you tell a non-tech parent as to a reason why their child should learn to code? I would, I would probably want to find out like what their kid is into, because if I’m going to convince that one parent, then I want to know what their kids into? Do you think all, should kids should learn how to code? Do you think it should be like, like a language, you know, or something they learn, like, as a natural thing?
25:28 Yeah, I think they should all be given the opportunity, and then take it as far as they want. So it’s different for different kids, right? So some kids will learn to code, and it will affect their other studies positively. So we have a lot of anecdotes from teachers saying how kids that start going to Code Club look at problem solving differently, and able to see failure as a part of learning, rather than just, I have failed, therefore I’ll, will stop, right?
25:53 Cuz when your code doesn’t work it’s easy once that happens a bunch of times. You don’t take it as personally, do you? No, the, you have to keep going until you fixed it, right? And that’s a really interesting development to see, and, but that’s not, that’s something that will stand that child in good stead, whether they go on to be a programmer or not, right? So creative problem solving is a useful skill in any job, I could wager, and so are lots of other skills that you learn whilst you learn to program.
26:20 So even if a child doesn’t go on to become a programmer, then I think they’ve learned lots of other skills in the meantime that are invaluable. So that’s what I would tell a non- techie parent. And are the parents pushing their kids into this, or the kids, like, lining up being like, Mom, I want to, I want to, I want to go and do this. We, we try and tell the kids first, so that we have, like, genuine kid enthusiasm, not a parent who wants child care, because that’s not what we’re here for.
26:51 But we do have a lot of parents saying, oh, I think my son would love this, or I would really like it if my son liked this. But I mean, I think if you push, push people into it, it’s less fun, isn’t it? So it has to be kind of self-chosen, but what we try and do is make it as accessible as possible, and make it like not seem intimidating. We don’t talk about gender, so we don’t say, and it’s for girls too, because then the girls are like, of course it is, why would it not be?
27:14 And then they start thinking, oh yeah, maybe I shouldn’t be there. So we have a good, a really good, gender split, so we have like 40% girls in the clubs at the moment, aiming for 50. You, you say you’re oversubscribed, so in, in choosing who goes are you very much sort of trying to, to have an even balance there? So we don’t choose which kids go in the clubs. That’s very much up to the school.
27:40 Okay. But we, obviously they’re trying to choose a good mix, but they also want to choose the children who’ll get the most out of it, and that doesn’t necessarily mean the brightest kids. But we really let the schools choose who goes in the club. When I, when I say we’re oversubscribed, it comes from like time and time and time, having heard the story that a volunteer will go into a school and deliver an assembly about Code Club, and they’ll be really nervous as well, right, which, she’s quite cute, they’re like, oh my God, children actually, they’re quite frightening, children are anyway, like, all your [expletive] children, do I talk schools?
28:15 Yeah. it’s really scary, but they’re cute, so we forgive them. And then they explain, like, what programming is, and who knows how like apps got on the iPhone, and do you want to make games, and stuff, and they’re like, yeah, of course we do. And then they say, right, well, this is what we’re going to do in Code Club. Who wants to come?
28:33 And then every single hand goes up, or, you know, the majority, and you’ve only got 15 spaces, then that’s a lot of disappointed children, and so some schools end up running like a club and then they run the same term over again for another set of kids, and then again, and then the next year they run term two, so they don’t get any further than term two, but at least they’re giving more children, like, a taster of the club and that kind of thing, and some schools just run the same group all the way through. So, but it’s, we try and keep it flexible, cuz you can’t control how skills work anyway. Yeah.
29:03 I have a 10-year-old girl, and, uh, I she would obviously love to do this. I remember I checked right away when I heard about you guys, and it was like, but it was great, cuz it was like, why don’t you teach the class? That’s what the Code Club website says, like, all right, there’s not one in your school, but there’s one here, you could start one here, kind of thing. But I’m curious what would she be learning, like, the first day, and then, like, the fifth week?
29:22 Like if she walks in at 10:00, like what kind of thing would things would they be doing? Would it be stuff that’s like kind of browser related, like web, or would it be separate code, just to give people an idea? Yeah. So on her first day she would probably do a project that introduced her to a program called Scratch, and Scratch is a software that was developed by MIT, specifically to teach kids the basics of coding without them having to write any syntax.
29:48 So that you know when you don’t get syntax errors, you’re just dragging and dropping blocks together that create actions. So you can make games and animation and stuff, and you get, like, this immediate visual feedback, which the kids absolutely love. It’s an amazing program, it’s really powerful. So we’d be, like, walking her through the interface of that, and then she would be making a mouse, a cat follow a mouse, and stuff, just to get used to it. Within eight weeks she’d be designing and building her own game in Scratch, having learn a lot.
30:23 It moves quite quickly. And then say another 10 weeks later she’d have done more Scratch, but then she’d be moving on to HTML and CSS, and she’d probably be building her first static web page by then. Then another eight weeks later she’d be starting to learn Python. Okay, yeah, which is much more of a logic-based, yeah so then, so the logic behind it was that, with HTML, CSS, they could be like writing syntax without it being too hard, and then they would get into Python, and obviously that’s a, that’s a bit more, a bit more H.
31:00 That’s pretty cool when they can actually design a website. I mean, like, there’s a real world, like, application. I feel really old, cuz when I was 10, computers just weren’t really a thing. Don’t get me started. When I was 10, when I was thinking about this show today, I was, when I was 10, I got an Apple 2 Plus computer.
31:15 Okay. I’m turned 43 this year, and uh, it was like BASIC, and, and remember it had some really low-res graphics, and funny enough, one of the first things I programmed was putting these, like, blocks of graphics on the screen, and then I moved on in school, to where I learned Fortran, and then I learned Pascal, and then later I went and took assembly language at, like, UCSD, and I really got into that whole thing, but it was harder then, because it was just a bunch of kind of nerds with computers, whoever the computer, but you know, it was really, it was hard, cuz it was no apps or browsers. It was really hard for kids to kind of get a grasp of it.
31:48 Loads of amazing tools now. It’s like, I think I see kids now, like, it’s cool. I think to be able to, like, say that you can do a web page and all that sort of stuff, whereas when I, you only, like, nerd, they just had a bad reputation. You know, it’s weird, that’s so good though, cuz it’s changing the perception, and the perception of it is so, it’s such a difficult thing to rail against. And it’s actually, adults that cause that problem.
32:13 So, as you say, it’s not the kids that don’t think it’s cool. Kids, 9 to 11-year-old kids, think it’s cool. but it’s the adults being like, oh, it’s for nerds and geeks, get outside and play football and stuff, and actually that’s really unhelpful. If you’ve got a child who’s genuinely into it, being put off by a parent, and hopefully not a teacher, but I’ve heard in some cases that that’s true. You were just in Silicon Valley, and you went down to Austin, and I was wondering, are the Yanks way ahead of us in this, or do they have a different relationship with kids and coding?
32:44 I also know, I, I think you mentioned you had some South Koreans over checking out what you’re doing. What, how does the UK stand to the rest of the world when it comes to this kind of education? The, when I, when I was in San Francisco, there were other programs that were similar to Code Club, but the majority of them were commercially based. So Code Club is free to the end user, and free to the schools, and we have a very strict no-charging-for-Code-Club policy, so, my explanation of Code Club in the states went fine until I explained that it was free, and then they were like, what, why are you, yeah, so why the room?
33:24 Yeah, they were like, oh, goodbye. No, they, we, we had to like think of a mechanic by which you could find the most enthusiastic children and still have them attend for free without it being, like, a paid-for child care thing again. So that was interesting, and actually I’ve been told it’s the same issue in Asia as well. So Code Club Hong Kong will be, I think it’s about to start its pilot fairly soon, and we’ve had the same discussion again, about, well, the parents want to pay me, giving me money, what do I do with it?
34:00 And I’m like, well, they can give you money, but that doesn’t guarantee their child a place at Code Club. It needs to be based on the enthusiasm of the kid, right, because that’s really important. And we have this premise that no one should have to pay for Code Club, and that we want to give all children the chance to learn code if they want to, and their economic background shouldn’t have a bearing on that, which some people disagree with when you’re, when you know, when you’re waiting for corporates to call you back and you’re trying to apply to grants, to part of you, ever think, you know, because, got to be a business model here, especially you’re surrounded in an area where it’s all about the business model.
34:40 I mean, it was it hard not to be like, all right, 2 pounds a person or something just to get this fun, or a donation? Do you have like a donation button on your website? Yeah, we have a donation button. It gets used. Yeah, that’s good.
34:53 I mean, there’s a, there’s a really obvious business model, but Linda and I feel really strongly about it, so we would just won’t change it. It’s been suggested to me so many times, but we just don’t believe in it. Like, we don’t need to, right? we already have, like, corporate sponsors and grants. And yes, that was hard, but I don’t think that we would have as many volunteers running clubs if we were charging for them, and therefore we wouldn’t be having the effect that we do have.
35:23 So I think it’s the right decision. It wouldn’t have grown as fast if it was a no. I don’t think profit-based entity. I, I’m just assuming. I don’t think the goodwill would be there in the same way.
35:33 Okay, so Silicon Valley, back to that. Did you feel a different vibe there when it came to what you’re trying to do, or, you know, what was it like when you visit places like that? No, I got a really good vibe, but I should state that I was at the RISE Awards recipient summit, so the people who won the Google RISE award, which we did in partnership with Technology Will Save Us, so we were there, and we were surrounded by by, I think, 30 other organizations who all do a really similar thing.
36:03 So I got really good vibes from that. And obviously Google are, like, incredibly helpful. So that was really cool. And I met with lots of other people whilst I was out there as well, and I mean I got, like, a lot of support, so I felt like there was a lot of support, but also I don’t really know that area particularly well, and it was my first visit, but it was good to start getting to know people, and trying to see what the lay of the land was like. It was good to find out that volunteering is alive and well.
36:33 In some countries it isn’t, so that was, I thought that that might be a blocker. I thought that there might be so many programs like this already that there wouldn’t be any need, but apparently there is, because most of them are commercial. The commercial ones have real, like, the same curriculum, or is it completely different? Are they much quicker, slower, different? I couldn’t investigate to that extent.
37:00 Okay. They all tend to have their own, yeah, that’s as far as I know. What’s it like being in an industry where it’s all about the Benjamins, to put it a different way, you know? And especially Silicon Valley and here, and it’s all about the IPO talk, and where’s the PayPal effect, and all this stuff, and yet a lot of your time is done where you’re trying to get people to donate their free time, and you’re trying to, you know, grow a different kind of organization.
37:26 Is that strange? Yeah, it is kind of weird, although the whole, like Silicon Roundabout community, I think, is probably one of the smallest groups of our volunteers. So our volunteers tend to be well, this is kind of hard to generalize, actually, because they’re all so different, but obviously they’re from all around the country, and you know, the majority of them will work for somebody else, and also we work so we work with a lot of corporates, like Morgan Stanley, for example.
38:02 We have a lot of volunteers from Morgan Stanley. Okay. So they volunteer, like, kind of as a company volunteer. Like, they’ll send you 20 people from Morgan Stanley. Yeah, more like 60.
38:12 Okay, yeah. They’re not so evil after all, eh? Pretty good. Yeah, no, they’re amazing. So I don’t know it doesn’t feel like that to me.
38:24 It doesn’t feel like it’s all about, it doesn’t feel like we’re trying to convince people who are all about money. I know they’re work at Morgan Stanley, but that’s not right, not like that. Yeah. But I guess you kind of swim in the same circles where people are building business models or apps to sell things, and you’re kind of not, but I guess you’re getting lots of support, cuz people kind of love everything that you’re doing. So yeah, we get a lot of support, and you know, we’ve started Code Club Pro, which required a business model, you know, and a plan of sorts.
38:53 So yeah, we’re getting there. I don’t know. It’s fine. It’s, it’s good, it’s good having a lot of support. And what’s next for you guys?
39:01 Like, where, I mean, there’s only so much saturation you can get, you know. So what’s, like, a year or 5 years from now, or are you going to do something else at that point, or do you just see, like, Code Clubs everywhere in the world in 5 years? Yeah, that’s pretty much. Yeah. It sounds a bit Pinky and the Brain, world domination, doesn’t it?
39:19 But what are we going to do tonight? Yeah, take over the world. So we have this 25% goal by the end of 2015. Obviously 2015 is pretty close. Next year, next year, the end of 2015, really clear about that.
39:37 That’s a whole year’s difference and we will definitely be, like, extending that goal, so I can’t say exactly what to yet, because we’re still making a plan, but you know, 50%, 100% would be amazing, probably unachievable, but we definitely want to aim higher. We’re not done. We’re not done yet. And then Code Club World. So I have a goal to have, like, Code Club communities running in 50% of the world’s countries by the end of 2018, and that’s 100 fully functioning Code Club communities, and that’s a lot of people, so that should keep me busy and out of trouble.
40:16 How many, how many staff do you need to do something like that? A lot, lots. I have to look yeah, so we’ll have to look after all of those people, and I’m trying to build, like, an organizational structure that can support 100 other communities. That’s probably going to be quite significant. And then we want to continue to grow Code Club Pro, of course.
40:40 The teacher churn is massive, so there’ll always be teachers to train. And then that’s what we’re, that’s what we’re concentrating on at the moment. I don’t think we’ll be launching another thing within the next year, but I’m not going to promise that. Okay, because the team are amazing, they have lots of really exciting ideas, and I want to do them all. So, and is this going to be a solo venture for you?
41:03 Where you ever partner with a corporate, or another, you know, organization like yourself in the world? Or is this something that’s going to be kind of the Code Club mantra from here on out? Oh, I don’t know. I don’t see why not. If the right person or company came along, then I don’t see why not.
41:21 But at the moment we haven’t not to not for delivery, although we have partners that, that provide a lot of volunteers for us, so in that respect, they help us with delivery. Corporate, like Morgan Stanley, that kind of thing. Yeah, yeah. So I can’t really talk about that too much, because there’s kind of some exciting things happening, but I love it. I don’t want any more details.
41:43 You know, we always ask everyone that comes here a few questions at the end. I’m going to hit you with them. Clare, if you can make a phone call to the 20-year-old Clare Sutcliffe and give that young lady a bit of advice. What would you tell her to do? Get a haircut?
41:57 Did you did you have long hair then? Yeah, stupid. I, stupid hair, I have stupid hair now, but it was worse. What would I tell my 20-year-old self? And how long ago was that?
42:08 Not that long ago, 10, 11 years ago. Wow. Yeah, now you’re asking hard questions. Sorry, sorry. Learn to wear high heels, probably would be a good one, cuz otherwise people would still think you’re 20.
42:21 Were you coding at 20? No, you were designing. Yeah, learned to code, right? That was a leading question. Yeah, it was, right?
42:31 Would that really be your advice? I really wish I had. It’s one of the reasons why I started Code Club. So I, when I was at uni, they were, they taught us ActionScript, and it made me cry, so yeah, I was like massively put off. But I love Des code, right?
42:48 It’s just horrible, but I love designing, and I love the interactivity of it, which is probably why I ended up becoming experience designer in the end, and I love all of that. I don’t think I would change any of it. I don’t know. Okay, that’s good. On that same note, advice you would give to the 20-year-old that’s listening, kind of around the world, that wants to get involved either in the tech scene, you know, or in something like Code Club, what would you tell them to do?
43:12 I would tell them to work for something they believe in, otherwise they won’t it, life’s just not really worth living, is it, if you don’t, if you’re not doing something that you love. I know that’s really easy to say, and some people don’t have those opportunities, but if you do have the opportunity to do something to work on something that you love and care about, and that you think can change the world, then you should do it, and don’t be scared, like I almost was. Yeah, but you did it.
43:37 So it’s, like, you know, it’s easy, not easy for you to say, but you really did it. I mean, you just started that when you were working somewhere else. You started this venture, right? Yeah, but I almost didn’t. Okay, the last bit of that is, what is the best advice you’ve ever received, either personal or business?
43:58 Keep going. That’s good. It’s always the one that stumps people. Simplest one. Yeah, keep going.
44:03 Is that business or personal? advice, business. Okay, that’s good. Last bit is, you know, we’re in this Silicon Roundabout community here, and you’ve been here for many years. It’s obviously changing every year.
44:16 I mean, Jesus, Old Street station’s changing every week now, it’s all the different colors and all this stuff. What’s your read on the changes that have happened to London in the last couple years, and where do you see it kind of going? Yeah, just in general, what do you think of the scene? I feel like there’s a lot of building sites around here, Jesus, which is really annoying. It is annoying.
44:38 Yeah, well, it’s annoying for us, cuz there’s one right outside our window, outside of Tech Hub’s window at the back. There’s a big building site. I don’t know, I kind of feel like it’s going to be all really shiny, and I think that would be a shame, and I can kind of see people just like moving out of the way, like, either to D or out to Whitechapel, and stuff, and I think that it will kind of dissipate the energy, which a lot of people thrive off, and has certainly been useful to Code Club, especially in the early days, when, like, I would hang out at Silicon and drink about every Friday, drinking far too much with those beards.
45:15 But, and I kind of feel like when it gets all shiny and full of skyscrapers, we might lose that bit, which I think would be sad, cuz it kind of does feel a bit like a village, doesn’t it? Yeah, even with a scrappy roundabout in the middle, that was cute. Yeah, but it’s slowly, like, kind of changing, as you said, I think so I feel like that, that’s the case. I don’t know that for sure. And will you stay here in London, or will you move potentially to another city?
45:40 Code Club. Yeah, I think Code Club will probably base itself in London, purely because the majority of our partnerships have their headquarters here, and going to see people is easier when you’re in the same city. But we are starting to recruit regional coordinators, so that we can have people based in regions all around the UK, so that we can spread out our efforts a bit more, because you know, when you live somewhere, it’s just kind of easier to do that work, and you can’t accidentally focus your effort around that area, and we want to make sure that we, that we can, like, get offer Code Club equally all around the country wherever there’s interest.
46:20 So, but I think Code Club will probably stay in London. Sounds like I need to step up, and volunteer some of my time. I feel left out that I don’t code really. I need to, I need to learn how to code. I think it’s time to step up.
46:31 I mean, I’m going to step up. You are, yeah I think I’m going to do it, cuz we hear this, we ask this question like every week, and I’m sure 50% of the people say learn to code. That’s their advice. I mean, 50%. Jesus, 50% of people can’t be wrong, can they?
46:44 Probably not, probably not. So, you know, half right. And I guess you ultimately need to really get involved yourself, cuz I’m like, oh, who’s going to teach my 10-year-old to code? Well, what, maybe I should just step up and like go in there and do some volunteering. So you should volunteer for code.
46:56 I should. You love it. What volunteers say is, like, the most rewarding part their week. Qualified, does a volunteer need to be? Yeah, that’s a good question.
47:04 How qualified do you currently feel encoding zero. Okay. Then more than that, it’s mainly about the confidence, right? So what I would suggest is never, I know nothing about Code Zero, then the enthusiasm is great. And maybe teamed with someone who can code, like your good friend here.
47:24 You make a dream team, because you learn at the same time. There we go. Okay, all right, watch the space, we might be doing this. Yeah, don’t film it as well. The kids are really funny.
47:34 Un film, yeah, yeah, they are. If other people want to get involved and either volunteer a Code Club or get their children in their local ones, what’s the easiest way to do it? The best way to do it is to go and have a look at the Code Club website, which is codeclub.org, and check out the information for parents, for venues, and for volunteers, depending on which one you are, and have a good read if you want to volunteer, about like what would be expected of you, and what a club is like, and go and have a look at the projects, and see if you like them, and that kind of thing.
48:05 If you’re a school, go and have a look at the venues page again, what’s expected of you, what a club is like, and if you’re a parent, how to, like, get your school involved, and how to help them find a volunteer, and volunteers and venues can find each other via the website as well. Fantastic website, does a lot of hard work. Yeah. Clare, you’re extremely humble for the organization you put together, and these numbers are crazy. So, uh, thanks so much for coming on, and tell us about it it’s really impressive.
48:36 You seem like you’re going to be doing this, like, seriously, for the next few years. You seem to have a serious determination in you. Yes, so I wouldn’t want to get in her way. So, uh, all the best with more corporate sponsors and all that stuff, and, um, Colin and I are going to step up and look to get involved. Right.
48:52 Absolutely. Yes. All right, promises, fantastic. If you’re listening to us on iTunes, you can look at our, our lovely faces on our channel on YouTube. You can follow us on Twitter at Silicon Real.
49:02 You can send us emails at hello silicon.com. We just had two awesome interns contact you today. Great. Who? Yeah, you know, few interns contact me maybe a week ago, week and a half ago, and yeah, you know, they’re going to step up and start helping.
49:16 So you know, really, we’re doing, you know, everyone loves what we’re doing. We’re just, uh, we need to get it out there more. So we need some help. So come drop us an email, and we’ll make it happen. Fantastic way to get involved, and you can have firsthand knowledge with awesome people like Clare, you know, or Andy, or you know, Dan from Songkick, all those cool people.
49:33 Just come help us out. It’s a lot of fun, and you know, we say it’s about the people here at Silicon Real. We love the stories behind the, you know, the website. So Clare, all the best, and thanks for coming on. Thank you.
49:44 All right, guys, take care. Apple was a real mess The first year was, they, there they lost a billion dollars. No one thought they were going to last more than 2 or 3 years before they were done. And it was chaotic. They were like, they were selling like 26 lines of computers.
50:04 Nobody could tell you what they all were and why they were different, and Steve came back and very quickly became the CEO, and within a matter of a few months he turned that company around. In fact, the first year after he came back, they made like $800 million. He basically took that company and like shook it and refused to let it die. He was a really difficult man on a personal level. He’s one of the most unpleasant human beings I’ve ever met.
50:28 He was a genius. I mean, he was, his intuition for what made great products, I’ve never seen anyone operating at that level.
