Today I’ll stand up in front of teenagers from 30 schools at the Madejski Stadium in Reading and introduce them to some of the coolest people working in Science, Engineering and Technology. With fabulous support from world class technology companies, TeenTech gives them the  chance to handle the very latest gadgets, carry out experiments and see the reality of the 21st century workplace.
Four years ago, I stood up to deliver a conference keynote and realised I was fed up with talking about the need to help teenagers see opportunities in Science and Technology , the time had come to do something myself.
I went into schools, chatted to thirteen year olds and realised that although they enjoyed going to places like the Science Museum, what they really wanted was to meet real engineers and scientists to see first hand what they did and what they were like as people. When the Open University ran their “Draw a Scientist” as part of their “Invisible Witness” project in 2008, age old stereotypes were very much alive. Although teenagers love using technology, not many understand they could be designing and creating that technology themselves. I wanted to change that.
The result was TeenTech, a unique collaboration between companies, organisations like the IoD, IET, Education Business Partnerships and myself.
So TeenTech sets out to give young teenagers a chance to meet the brilliant people I feel I was so lucky to meet on on Tomorrow’s World. Inspiring, creative and often working on wild and impossible ideas I never believed would ever see the light of day. They’ll meet engineers from BBC R&D responsible for  HDTV and 3D and now working on surround video and projects like Piero, which will enhance our enjoyment of the Olympic Games. They can find out what it’s like to work at Google, how to come up with ideas for home technology with Sky, JVC or Sony ,what it means to be a BT apprentice or develop new products for Proctor & Gamble.
This will be the third TeenTech we’ve done at Reading and we’re now going to run the event elsewhere. In July and September there will be TeenTechs in Humberside and Kent. So if you’d like your company to be involved with helping young people understand what they need to do if they want to engineers their own future, do get in touch.
Meanwhile , we are indebted to the time and energy the companies put into the event, thinking carefully about how to bring their science and technology to life. So a huge thanks to the following for their superb support. They’ll all need to lie in a darkened room for a week afterwards but they’ll know they’ve made a difference
3M, AWE, Berkshire College of Agriculture, BT, BBC, British Computer Society, CADline, Foster Wheeler, Google, IET, Intel, Imago, JVC, Oracle, PepsiCo, Proctor&Gamble, RAF,Research in Motion, Scottish& Southern,Sky, Sony, Specsavers, Syngenta, The Smallpiece Trust, University of Reading, UK Timber Foundation