The founders of YouTube, Skype, Lastminute and even the world wide web face their toughest grilling yet in this humourous video from Code Club, a new UK initiative to try to get more kids learning to code. See why it’s our video viral of the week below.
Code Club, the free after school activity that teaches children to code, is looking for some new volunteers. A crack team of young interviewers is on the case, but despite the incredibly high calibre of applicants (including Sir Tim Berners-Lee, Chad Hurley and even HRH The Duke of York), they seem rather difficult to please.
The video turns the idea of a startup pitch parade on its head, giving the reigns to a panel of kids, and the job of pitching to some of the biggest successes in technology today.
The ad promotes the idea that developing coding skills could help save them from technology ignorance either as future leaders themselves (doing the screening); or as would-be entrepreneurs (pitching for their lives).
The video was produced by digital agency Albion, along with Unruly and Hotspur & Argylem, and was filmed during the tech leadership confab theFounders Forum, which was held last week in the UK (which might account for the all-star line up).
Code Club is being trialled in 25 schools right now, with the aim to extend that to one quarter of all UK schools by 2014.
Full list of candidates:
Niklas ZennStröm (Founder — Atomico)
Joanna Shields (VP & Managing Director of EMEA — Facebook)
Chad Hurley (Co-Founder & Chief Executive — AVOS Systems)
Dame Tessa Jowell (Shadow Minister for the Olympics)
Martha Lane Fox (UK Digital Champion — Race Online 2012)
Brent Hoberman (Co-Founder — mydeco.com, made.com & PROfounders Capital)
Sir Tim Berners-Lee (Director/Professor — WC3/MIT)
HRH The Duke of York
www.codeclub.org.uk