USA | YTC

Young TECH Challenge will be organized on 20 November 2016 in Chicago bringing together imagination, play and tech for this new event. This is an opportunity for creators aged 8-22 to present your original playful tech idea to top play industry experts and have a chance to win amazing prizes and get inside tips from the pros.

There is no fee to participate in the Young Tech Challenge. Participants and their immediate families are invited to be our guests with complimentary admission to ChiTAG for the whole weekend!

Submissions can be built on any platform available; mobile, console, and PC will surely be popular, but entrants can also build with Lego, robotics, or any techy fun you can find. Use your imagination, a creative and technically challenging product will gain more votes than one that has been done before and is not so difficult to make. Your project does not necessarily need to be complete, but it needs to demonstrate your idea as fully as possible.

Judges will vote a winner for each of the four age groups:

• 8-10 years
• 11-13 years
• 14-18 years
• 19-22 years

Criteria for judging is based on:

• Originality
• Technical difficulty
• Presentation
• Creativity

Young Tech Challenge workshops are ideal for a classroom activity, school-wide competition, after-school program, summer challenge, scout merit badge-earning activity, even for library programming.

Follow these 3 steps and you’re on your way to being part of one of our signature events! Read the Rules & Requirements so you’ll know what is expected of you and how to prepare. Save and/or print our Inventor Workbook (PDF). In it you’ll find easy-to-understand, step-by-step instructions on how to take part in the Challenge, plus guidelines on how to brainstorm and record your ideas, design and develop your prototype, and how to put your presentation together for display at the Chicago Toy & Game Fair.

The winners will be selected by play industry professionals. Besides great prizes to be won, and fun give-aways, top toy and game industry representatives will be on hand to provide advice, recognition and encouragement to all young inventors to dream big and discover the possibilities of play! And, some of our toy and game companies have found non-winning entries of great interest and our young inventors have been interviewed about their inventions by media outlets across the USA such as The Steve Harvey Show, Conan O’Brien, ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS and more.