Inspired by TED Talks and driven by a love of technology the MV Tech club at Monta Vista High School approached Cupertino Library to hold the library’s first technology symposium, which will take place on Nov. 9.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise that teenagers in Cupertino want to talk tech, learn as much as they can about tech and get others excited about tech, because after all plenty in the area are the children of technological and brilliant minds.
“Technology is my passion,” says Karan Gugle, a sophomore at Monta Vista, and president of the MV Tech club at the school.
Both his parents are software engineers and he says members of the club come from similar family backgrounds so they’ve grown up hearing about tech, talking about tech and playing with tech their whole lives.
At club meetings they might talk about the news that’s happening in the tech industry, review video game history, or open up computers.
“We look at them by dissecting them, disassembling them and looking at their parts,” Karan says.
It is this kind of interest, curiosity and thirst for more tech talk that drove Karan and his club mates to approach Matthew Lorenzo, the Teen Librarian at Cupertino Library, to collaborate on a tech symposium.
“The idea was brought to us by the MV Tech Club. They did their research, figured out what they needed, decided on the topics to be covered and brought a proposal to us,” Lorenzo says. “There was no way we could say ‘no’ to that.”
It’s been a goal of the library to foster experiences such as this and they are actively seeking more collaborative events with middle and high schools, he says.
“We knew the library was interested in fostering that youth spirit. We decided to make a partnership,” Karan says.
And holding the symposium at the library adds a public outreach the club seeks.
Karan and his teammates got together and selected some speakers they would like to have at their symposium and contacted them through email—he says with no help from their parents, and the speakers agreed to appear.
The line up of speakers is an impressive one. It includes:
- Shishir Mehrotra, vice president of product, YouTube/Video at Google
- Rahim Fazal, co-founder of Involver
- John Hsu, chief scientist at Open Source Robotics Foundation
- Steve Cousins, CEO of Willow Garage
And a special guest appearance by Willow Garage’s PR2 Robot.
The symposium is open to the general public—adults are welcome—and geared toward teens interested in learning more about tech.
The free event is Friday, Nov. 9 from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. at Community Hall, next to the library.
Editor's note: An earlier version of this article misstated the start time of this event. The event starts at 5 p.m. We apologize for any confusion.
