Digital Day – BIMA’s initiative which takes agency professionals into classrooms nationwide, in order to educate secondary school and college students about the digital industry, and the breadth of job opportunities available to them.
2014’s event saw agencies such as VML, Pancentric Digital and Redweb show off the work of digital, with the aim to bridge the digital skills gap. On the day, a nationwide competition is launched for Digital Day participants to tackle 3 digital challenges covering briefs across Mobile Apps, Connected Devices and Social Media.
Over 4000 students took part, and following a day of judging we were left with our 3 challenge winners.
Digital Day winners 2014
Grand Prix Winner | Loreto Grammar
Mobile Apps Winner | Loreto Grammar, Night Light
Connected Devices Category Winner | Wren Academy, Smart Desk
Social Media Category Winner | Stockley Academy, #IAmUnity
Early this week the Digital Day 2014 winning teams headed to Microsoft Mobile HQ, London, ready to pitch their winning entries for the 2014 BIMA Digital Day competition to the professionals.
Microsoft hosted the afternoon and provided us with a panel of experts for our winning schools to pitch their ideas to. Their job: to critique and offer up advice on how to further develop their winning ideas.
Meet our panel of experts:
Alex Oberberg
Global Head of Programs & Partnerships, Social Media & Digital at Microsoft
@AlexOberberg
Ricc Webb
Mischief Maker at Microsoft Mobile Oy at Microsoft
@RiccWebb
Keith Varty
Global Director, Applications and Solutions, Consumer Marketing at Microsoft
@Keithv
Prepped and ready to go, Loreto Grammar kicked the afternoon’s pitches off with their Mobile Apps winning entry, Night Light. Night Light is a street safety app, designed to interconnect with police databases and alert them should the user of the app run into trouble when walking home at night. The Loreto Grammar team introduced us to the concept, touched on data privacy and elaborated on how their concept could be bought to life.
The students from Wren Academy, winners of the Connected Devices challenge, pitched next and introduced us to their Smart Desk: the future of classroom learning, aimed to banish the book laden backpack and encourage shared learning within the classroom.
Rounding off the afternoon was Stockley Academy, winners of our Social Media challenge with the #IAmUnity campaign. A social campaign for good, to educate and celebrate diversity among the breadth of different communities and races across the globe.
Following some great feedback and coaching from Oberberg, Webb and Varty the afternoon ended with a prize giving of a highly prized BIMA Award and Microsoft goodies!
See what people were saying about last years Digital Day over on The Drum >>
Fancy getting involved in Digital Day 2015? It’s totally free, and we would love your support to make 2015 bigger and better than ever!
Agencies | Sign up here >>
Schools | Sign up here >>
Want to know more about the 2014 challenges? You can view and download all of the challenge resources here >>