Translator: Elia Gasparolo Reviewer: Gisela Giardino
I love programming since I was a little boy,
and I always wanted to learn a lot.
At school I was learning a little,
but I wanted to learn more things and faster.
Almost by chance, I had an experience
that sped up my whole learning process incredibly.
Let me tell you a story.
My father is a firefighter.
At home, we talk about solidarity and how to help other people.
One day, my father came home a little shocked by the subject,
and told me he heard that in Argentina
every day, one person goes missing.
"How come one person goes missing each day?"
"Yes, one person goes missing, and can't be found by their family,
and they are desperate and anxious."
There I thought that maybe, I could do something with my passion, programming,
to help solve this problem.
And then, I came up with an idea for a smartphone application
because almost all of us have one,
and thus I could create a network of people
connected through this application
that helps find missing people.
So, when someone is missing, we warn the whole network about it,
and we have a lot of people looking for them everywhere.
And it's a lot easier and faster to find them this way.
To accomplish that I programmed for many months.
It's not that easy because there are a lot of problems to take care of,
and I didn't know how to do some things at first.
I went to a workshop after school, as well,
that helped me a lot with programming at the beginning.
And, some months ago, I started talking to a NGO that deals with this.
In fact, it's called "Missing Persons."
And I showed them this application I created, and they loved it!
Together, we saw what it was needed to be improved and changed.
In fact, I have the pleasure to announce that since last week,
it's online as the official application to search for missing people in Argentina.
The application I could develop in my free time.
(Applause)
During the last months, I learned a lot about programming.
Maybe the same I could have learned during my many years at school.
And not only that: I also learned about missing persons,
about how to work with a NGO, and how to ask for help.
And I realized that I learned all this because I had the idea in my head
that I wanted to solve this problem.
But to dare to do it was not that easy.
At first, I stumbled upon a lot of prejudices
such as I was very young, it was very difficult,
or that I would waste my time.
In brief, that I couldn't do it.
So, what did I need to start?
First, I needed a problem to be really motivated.
For example, before this, I was creating an application
to organize football games between friends.
But the truth is organizing football games is not something
that motivates me that much.
Then, I heard about the problem of the missing persons.
And in this case it wouldn't be the same for me if I could solve it or not
it was something I needed to solve.
So, without much thought, I started to get involved
into the world of learning by doing.
Where you don't know how to do what you want to do.
You have never learned or been taught about it, but you want to do it.
So, you use all the tools you have to try to do it.
And if it still doesn't work, you keep on trying
because you want to do it.
This led me to the second thing I needed, which was access to information.
And today this is available: you just need access to the Internet.
I watched tutorials for hours and hours
to learn what I needed to know.
And I also visited thousand websites on programming
to answer my questions.
And finally, it seems that when you talk about learning this way
you learn by yourself, but it's not like that.
In fact, in this process there were many people who helped me a lot.
Each time I had a question or didn't know how to do something,
they helped me solve it.
They also helped me get in contact with people,
get organized and learn that mistakes are part of the learning process.
This happened for a year.
At the beginning, I knew almost nothing,
and had to do very complicated things for this project.
And now, after going through this experience
of trying to do something without knowing how,
I can see that all I know on this subject I learned it this way.
And I did it out of school requirements.
I wonder if it has to be this way.
I'm interested in programming since I was young, well, younger,
and in my family, helping others is always present and concerns us.
For me, creating this application in my free time came naturally,
but there are a lot of kids who perhaps
are interested in other things.
What would happen if we created a space for them in our schools
so each of them could try to solve a problem
that matters and interests him a lot.
And almost without realizing it, to learn a lot in the process.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)