I spent lots of last week in the company of younger people. They were inspiring and wonderful and we must do all we can as a group to help them to shine. Not really that they need much help in that. I was proud and privileged to be a mentor for Young Rewired State. 

When all around are seeing “youth” and young people in a slightly negative and derogatory way, as a result of the rioting, I’d like to put a totally different spin on it. They’re energising, wise beyond their years, kind, funny, hardworking and hellishly bright, or at least the ones I met are and I’d like to think personally, being an optimist, that in many ways they’re more the norm. 

What I felt overwhelmingly from being among them was about how differently they think. Not due totally to the generation and environment they’ve grown up in. They have the enthusiasm and proactivity of youth. Everything is a possibility, and with their talent and skills, all I feel my generation can do is to break down the barriers that we and they see so that they can cast a better society in their image. 

I’ve long been frustrated by the tendency of the Open Data movement towards transparency data. It’s important, but let’s make stuff that matters. Things which will change society, better tools for people, better ways for users to engage with the state and with its services. Not one of the groups I was mentoring was really that interested in transparency, it was about using technology to make life easier for people. 

The things they ones I helped and mentored made were amazing phone apps which told you about the neighbourhood you were in, a rethinking of how a council website should be and a way of interacting personally with the NHS. None of these things are either small in intent or scope, or trivial, or frivolous. It was incredibly moving to watch the show and tell, brilliant ideas one after another, well executed and well presented. Just like last year I questioned what I’d be doing in life when these young people are in the job marketplace. They’re good, scarily good.

So this, after a good bit of thinking, is what I think people like me of my generation need to do. We need to spend the rest of our careers pushing barriers out of the way, removing ridiculous bits of 20th century broadcast era thinking and when we’ve done that and if we become the barrier, we need to be proactive at getting out of the way and letting this incredible group of people at it. They’ve grown up digital and social and their thinking is so advanced about service design compared to the systems integrators and the gatekeepers. The words me and my to my generation are about selfishness. To them they’re about access to your own things and about bending the world of services around you. Better, brighter, more inclusive.

All I hope is they’ll let me mentor them where I can and that they’ll be kind enough to teach me. They’re wonderful. They’re not young people, they’re not kids, they’re just younger, please don’t patronise them or demonise them. They’re our future and we’ll live in their world in our twilight years and from what I saw last week, I quite like that idea.