I realise the whole world isn’t inspired by the same things I am, and that’s fair enough. However, on Wednesday, I had the privilege of being invited to share some of my inspiration with a bunch of teenagers at the Liverpool John Moores University career day.

I was asked to talk to year-10 students (14-15 years old) for half an hour covering “careers in computing,” and nearly balked at the enormity of that kind of request. They said it’s OK to narrow it down a bit, so I decided to think more about CompSci and the web. I also took a webby approach to writing this talk (I cheated), and posted this question on Quora:

“If I were to speak to 50 teenagers about why a career in computer science is awesome, what would be a travesty to leave out?”

I grant you, Computer Science isn’t necessarily the best match to a career in computing (indeed, I pointed out to the kids that they can learn to code and contribute to the world’s largest public resource right now). However, a particular answer I received from Ian Dickinson inspired me to trash my “history of computing in Britain” approach  –  Babbage, Lovelace, TimBL etc  –  and rework the talk completely. I’ll share a few of those slides below, and continue to enjoy the glory of geeks sharing their curiosity.