Iprova helps young inventors on shadow-your-parents day

JOM  – Journée oser tous les métiers / The day to dare try any career

Yesterday Iprova participated in the JOM initiative, which began in Canton Vaud in 2003. The idea is for each child from the 7th to the 9th grade, to have the opportunity to shadow their parents or their parents’ friends at their workplace. In particular, the initiative aims at breaking the gender stereotype of the workplace, hence JOM, short for Journée oser tous les métiers; the day to dare and try any career.

We welcomed two children from a Lausanne school for the day. We proposed a programme exploring what an invention is, what AI and NLP can do, and why we use these techniques. In a fun and interactive way, the children also learnt about some of the latest technological advances, through short videos, presentations and discussions. Armed with these ideas, or ‘’Invention triggers’’ as we call them in Iprova, the children got busy, and started to make their own inventions. This was the most enjoyable part of the day, as they flexed their creative muscles and got busy writing, drawing and colouring their ideas on paper in preparation for their invention presentation to Dr. Bernadette Elliot-Bowman, our senior invention engineer. “The kids came up with some really impressive ideas and I would definitely hire them into the team,’’ Dr. Elliott-Bowman commented afterwards.

Before the final wrap up of the day, the children also got to see the software platform in action. This brought to life the real time capability of the system to detect latest technological advances, which will no doubt bring more surprising, novel inventions to the next generation of products and services as we know it today.