Kainos’s session will focus on the importance of fostering future generations of IT talent. Tom Gray will draw on the company’s extensive experience in running innovative schemes to identify and develop talent among young people, including 'A' Level and university students.

The session, Back to School - Bringing Coding Back to Schools, will examine why students appear to be losing interest in computer science and software engineering degrees at university. "We believe that this is not related to ability," Tom comments. "Rather it is a consequence of the removal of programming content from schools in favour of a very high level 'ICT' syllabus that emphasises use of ICT as opposed to software development."

Kainos decided to address this problem in Northern Ireland through the development of a "Digital Academy". As part of this, the company has created a series of exciting initiatives to bring coding education to young people. These have included "hackathons", summer camps, innovative work placements, and competitions for young people, as well as inspirational talks for parents, teachers, and the government.

Drawing on the successful outcomes of these programmes, Tom Gray will use the international platform of the SXSWedu 2014 event to explore how the next generation of programming talent might be inspired and nurtured. SXSWedu is short for 'South by Southwest Education'. The annual event takes the form of a conference and festival. This will run over four days, from 03-06 March in Austin, Texas.

The SXSWedu itinerary is largely determined by the greater education community. Session submissions are proposed online, and then voted for by potential attendees. Input from the SXSWedu Advisory Board also helps guide the decisions about which speakers to include. The 2014 event selection process attracted more than 700 session proposals and over 30,000 public votes.

"We are delighted to have been given this opportunity to share our experiences, successes and concerns around the nurturing of future digital skills," said Tom Gray of Kainos’s acceptance as a speaker. "This is an important and high-profile global event that’s attended by education’s most energetic and innovative leaders from all backgrounds of the learning landscape. It is a chance for everyone involved to connect, collaborate, create, and change how we teach and learn, and we are excited to have a chance to play a part in this."

Kainos has won a series of awards for its efforts in inspiring and fostering emerging IT talent and for being a digital leader. Most recently the company was named third, behind Google and Mozilla, in the Digital Leaders 50 list voted for by UK public-sector organisations. Kainos has also been repeatedly recognised as a sought-after employer.