 Ruth, Amos, and five things we can all learn from Flaming Pianos. Thank you. Good afternoon. Yeah, so my name's Ruth, and I'm an inventor, and I haven't brought with me our Flaming Piano, but I do have lots of videos of some of the crazy things that we build. So yeah, so I'm an inventor and engineer, an occasional YouTuber, and I fell into being an inventor. When I was younger, don't hold this against me, I actually wanted to be a lawyer until I went to school, and my teacher set me the challenge to design something to help his father go up and down his stairs. And overnight I became an accidental inventor. I won an engineering award and got thrown into this whole world of engineering. And it was a little bit overwhelming, but I found that there was amazing things in engineering that I loved to do. And I kind of made it my mission. I met lots of other, particularly women, who would have been or wanted to be amazing engineers, but actually didn't see themselves as being one. I kind of made it my mission to do something about that. So this is the product that I designed for my GCSE resistant materials project. If you're on Facebook, it's had a little viral thing recently. About 60 million people have seen it across different sites on Facebook recently, which is slightly bizarre. But yeah, this was my first accidental invention, and it started off very simply with a toy, which you can see. I'm sat next to you. It's a metal stick, and it has on the top of it a woodpecker or a cuckoo, and you flick it and it goes down the stick. By the way, this isn't the exciting flaming piano bit. I'm just giving you a little bit of background of how I ended up doing that. But yeah, and so from that toy, that was kind of my light bulb moment. And with that and a drawing, and a few of the stages in between, I ended up with a product which we now sell across the UK, and we license in to America and Canada. And to me, it was a really big moment to see something that I'd drawn become a proper product. Now that was actually made in a factory, but still seeing that process was totally eye-opening for me, and it made me look at the world in a completely different way. To see something that I had drawn on a sheet of paper become something real and tangible was a really big moment. And I spent a lot of time, I very, very nearly didn't become an engineer, and I spent a lot of time thinking about why that was, because I love engineering, I love making things, I love problem-solving, and I never really saw myself in any of the engineers that I met until I was about 17 or 18. And I felt that was really sad, because actually, if I'd have known earlier on, I've seen some amazing projects that some of the young people here have been doing, and I'm just like, that could have been me. If I'd have known that I wanted to be an engineer, and there are lots of other women and lots of other people who come from diverse backgrounds who don't see themselves as engineers, and it's really, really sad. And so I spent a lot of time going through very, I don't want to use the word boring, but slightly more normal channels, so being an ambassador, you know, consulting, helping the government put their projects together, and I am realising this is being streamed, so I'm being quite careful. But essentially, I realised that some of them were great from these projects, and some of them just didn't show off how amazing making stuff really is. And so I thought, we need to do more, we need to be showing young people how exciting making things really is. And me and my friends Sean got thinking about this, and Sean had also designed something when he was doing his A-levels, and he'd won an award, and for him that had also been a big moment, designing something and seeing it come to life. And so we thought, how can we do this for more young people? How can we show people that you can design and invent things that are actually tangible things? Because as soon as I'd seen my product being made, I looked around the world in a completely different way. I was seeing how things were made, how things were put together. I was thinking, oh, well, I could do that, I could design that. And we thought, how can we do that for other young people? And so Sean and I had a very simple idea. We wanted to take 5 to 11-year-olds pictures and videos and kind of set them a challenge, get them to send in their pictures and videos, each month to choose one of their drawings or their videos and bring their invention to life. It was a very simple concept, which actually needed a little bit of backing. You all make things, you know it's expensive. And so I had to pitch this idea, I was like, right. I've got this idea for a YouTube channel where we build kids' invention ideas, we film it all, we put it online, and the idea is to encourage lots of different kids who have never come across STEM to be makers and engineers. Now my first hurdle was the word YouTube because a lot of the people that have any sort of money for this are older men in suits who maybe haven't got a clue about a lot of the things that are out there on the internet. And so you could see them think, YouTube, what is that? Who even goes on that? Okay, so if you're a young person and I'm counting young for like, well I'm under 30, is there anyone under 30? Who's on YouTube? Who watches YouTube content? Sorry, not a creator, who watches YouTube? Anyone over 30 who watches YouTube? Funnily enough, lots of people watch YouTube. And I was trying to convince these lovely men in suits who by the way were fantastic but took a little bit of convincing that A, this was an idea we could do and B, that actually people would watch it. And me and Shaun realised that a lot of the time would say, I don't think you can do this. And so Shaun and I decided we needed to convince them that we could do. And so we put together a pilot which essentially is just having to go. We just put some stuff together and said, right, let's do this properly. Let's have a go at filming some episodes. So we asked all our friends and family and people that we knew on Twitter and Facebook for their kids' descending ideas and we asked for superhero invention ideas and we got some amazing pictures and we got some epic videos. And I thought we were just going to get some videos of a young person saying, this is my idea and I think you should build this, this and this. But people dressed up, they loved it. There was such enthusiasm and we got all these amazing videos of young people coming up with incredible ideas and really getting into it. And we thought, ooh, this might work. And a friend of ours Lucy sent in an invention idea and as soon as we saw it, we were like, ooh, this would be a fun one because I knew that we were filming this pilot and we'd have to go back to the men that kept saying no and show them this is an example of our project. And Lucy's invention idea was a custard-firing superhero suit and I just felt that was ridiculous enough that even if they said no, I would be highly entertained watching these very serious men in suits watch that video. And so Sean and I set about, Sean's based in Cornwall, I'm based in Sheffield, I went down to Cornwall for a weekend. We took Lucy's invention idea and we made it. We filmed the whole process, we got very stressed, things went wrong, and we filmed it all and then we edited it together and we took it to show these potential funders. And I mean the entertainment content in that alone. I mean Custard Girl, I don't know if anyone's seen it but it's beautifully fetching. She's kind of like in blue and yellow, blue and yellow lycra. And yeah, it was a beautiful moment and just seeing people's faces of like, what is this? And I had a wonderful moment where a guy just sat there and went, I still don't get it. And I was like, that's fine, it's not really for you. But I said go away, show it to you. I was like, do you have kids, do you have grandchildren? Show it to them because I mean our content, I like to think it's vaguely entertaining but there is an audience in mind. And so a few days later I got an email saying, yeah, my grandkids loved it. And I was like, yes, and that was our first victory. And so we got a little bit of money to start doing this. So for the past 18 months, Sean and I, every single month, have been setting a different invention challenge to children all across the world but predominantly in the UK. And they've been sending in their amazing and incredible invention ideas as pictures or as videos. So one of the things that, we've done a few projects, the Flaming Piano, which I think I've got a gip of later, is one that really started to put the project on the map. We had a lot of kind of very well established YouTubers kind of see it and go, Flaming Piano, yeah, that's pretty cool. But this was another invention idea that was, so this video has had over a million views on YouTube and Facebook. It was picked up by Car Throttle. Let's just say the comments on that were interesting. And the idea was to liven up boring car journeys. Now one of the hardest things for Sean and I is actually to work out the challenges. So we've done stuff from crazy musical instruments to getting across water. And this was about livening up long car journeys. And I think so often as adults, we look at things far too sensibly. So a prime example of this is that we did a challenge which was going to be crazy boats. So how to get across water? The first iteration of that that we kind of tested with a few young people was boats. And we were really surprised. The inventions we got back were maybe not as exciting. They weren't as engaged. And one little girl to me said, why? Why do I have to design a boat? And I was like, it's kind of the challenge. And the aim is to get across water. And she was like, yeah, but if I was getting across water, I wouldn't design a boat. I'd invent a catapult. And I thought I would much rather build a catapult. And so we changed the actual challenge to be to get from one side of the river to the other. And we got sent in backpacks. We had one girl that wanted to turn the whole lake to jelly. In the end, we made these amazing floating shoes in this big inflatable, ridiculous suit. And so sometimes I think as adults, we constrain ourselves around the question. But yeah, so this was Connor's invention idea, Connor's nine. And the idea was to liven up long car journeys. And as soon as I saw this invention idea, I could see what Connor was going for. Because let's face it, driving can be really boring. And actually it would be so much cooler to drive three metres in the air than it would be in a car. So this is what happened when we built Connor's invention idea. Are we nearly there yet? Sure. I'm bored. But it's okay, because we built Connor's invention idea. Kids, invent stuff. I think you like burst out the top of the car. Very regal. You get the idea. We love about YouTube as being really responsive. So we quite often will. We've literally closed our challenge for last month, about three days ago. And within the next week, we will have built and tested that invention idea and filmed it all. And I don't know any makers out there that are a little bit of perfectionists. This is a great way to solve it. Give yourself a very strict deadline. And so Sean and I quite often spend ridiculously long hours building stuff. This was another challenge. This actually was probably one of the challenges that went horribly wrong. Because as makers, we all know things don't work out for this time, right? And the pressure of actually building and bringing to life someone's invention idea is quite scary. So this was actually the first time we built two invention ideas. And Sean and I around Christmas bought each other really ugly jackets. Like really ugly jackets. One of them was like orange and fluffy. And the other one was like a silver denim jacket. And the challenge was to make them a bit more cooler and a little bit more exciting. And so we were sent two invention ideas. This is Ellie's idea for a Lego jacket, which this is probably one of the simplest things we've ever made. So if you want to make one, get yourself some epoxy and some Lego tape. Once you see Sean rocking this, you're going to want one of these. And the other one was from Two Boys in America, which was a illuminator jacket. It's like a disco jacket. And we had this great idea. Who here loves Peroni? Yeah, I love Peroni too. And we bought these amazing, sewable LEDs of them, which are epic, by the way. But they're not designed to work on fluffy coats. And so we spent about five hours sewing in these LEDs. And then we tested it and nothing happened. And in the end, we ended up getting a soldering iron and literally like burning holes in this jacket and wiring it up the inside of this jacket. I keep wanting to bring it to events, but it won't get through security because there are wires and batteries everywhere. But, you know, it looks great on camera. Once, you know, you'll see, once you, yeah, once you can have a look, you'll see that actually, sometimes the things that don't work out actually can be a success. To make sure you're never lost in the crowd using super bright LED technology, the illuminator jackets integrated color changing LEDs ensure that everyone notices you all of the time. Built into the collar are two powerful 60 watt speakers, which when connected to your audio device, turn your jacket into the ultimate wearable sound system. And if that wasn't enough, the illuminators on board microphones allow its LEDs to light up in time to music or even in time to yours or someone else's voice. We regularly make absolute fools of ourselves. And I think by this point, we've been up for about 45 hours. And I got to the point where we just didn't care. Because the kids invent stuff Lego jacket might just be the jacket you need with a Lego compatible surface. This crazy color jacket allows you to proudly wear your Lego creations. So if you're the kind of person who likes wearing dinosaurs and wookies, then this is definitely the jacket for you. People love playing with Lego. So why not make them love your style too? By letting them cover your outfit with Lego. It's great for parties, particularly if you like standing around while other people attach things to you. So choose your crazy jacket today and never look like a boring person again. The previous advertisement describes garments that don't actually exist as commercial products and therefore can't be purchased anywhere in the world. So yeah, each month we've done very, very different challenges. And each of them come with their own beautiful issues and wonderful celebrations. And sometimes I think, as adults, we look at the world in a really boring way and children come up with the best. They just look at something and go, yeah, but that would be so much better if. And I tend to agree. I have never seen a bad invention idea. I've never gone into a school and not have a child draw me a drawing. Every single child in the class can draw something. And for us, it's not just about, you know, often they'll say, well, it's not the best drawing. I don't think that's matters. It's about the idea. And I think so often within education, it's about how neat something is or like, it's essentially can you take the box. And for us, we think that, actually, it's about celebrating creativity. And yeah, for us, I think that happens at any age. So this was Zander's invention idea. And Zander was six. And we wanted inventions. This is the thing. Sometimes we get a curveball. So we wanted inventions that made boring tasks more exciting. And Zander's invention idea was because he hates shopping. Anyone here hates shopping of the food variety or the clothes variety? Yes. See, this is it. So often children see the issues within our world. And one of them is shopping. And so Zander came up with the idea of a robot trolley. And so Sean and I thought we had to build that. And as part of that, so quite often we do some interesting things where we maybe don't ask for permission. So we built a robot that cooks you dinner and we took it around Asda and didn't ask them. We also put our flaming piano on the edge of a cliff. That was owned by the National Trust and apparently had some moss that was highly protected and caused a lot of havoc. But you know what? The guy who rents that land from the National Trust will always remember that day. So sometimes I feel, you know, this is why I love this place. When I was talking to John T. I was like, yes, yes. We did ask permission for this, mainly because we realized we would have to do a lot of work. We wanted to film within a supermarket and we needed quite a few shots for that. I've realized it doesn't really matter because we went through. We asked permission. The staff that were working had no idea. And you know what? As long as you know the manager's name and just say, yeah, they said we could. It's usually fine. So yeah, so this is... Visiting the grocery store was once a tedious endeavor. But thanks to genius kid inventor Zander, those days are over. Boom. Kids. Invent stuff. Presenting the Trolleytron 2000. What you see on your screens may appear to be a standard shopping cart, but you'd be gravely mistaken. The Trolleytron provides the ultimate automated retail experience. This vehicular innovation uses the latest in electronical wizardry to drive around completely unaided. Your shopping will never be the same again. Oh my. What makes this fella so special is its onboard grocery grabber. Just look at it, girls. This can-collecting contraption automatically gathers your groceries directly from the shelves, leaving you free to do other important things like this or even this. The Trolleytron carefully selects the items you require. With incredible precision. Wait, there's more. This mechanized mover of melons can even pay for your groceries. Welcome to the future. So why not order your Trolleytron 2000 today so you can be as happy as these random people? But that's all for now, so it's goodbye. I will stop sharing videos at some point, don't worry. I feel if you haven't seen the channel, you need to get an idea of some of the ridiculous things that we tried to do. I think sometimes I've got five things that I've learnt from this project, which I'm going to do at the end. But before we do that, we're just going to look, watch Annabelle's incredible. Now, this I feel is a moment of genius. Now Annabelle goes to a maker club. I know that because the only thing I'm allowed to know about is her name. They're very, very strict on, you know, quite even no rage or anything. Annabelle came up with the idea of a sneeze-activated flamethrower helmet. So we'd done our superheroes right at the beginning where we came up, you know, we asked friends and family to send in their ideas and we decided that actually that wasn't very fair. We had, you know, young people now who were sending in invention ideas every month and we had lots of fun making Custed Girl. And so we thought we would set the challenge out again and we weren't mistaken. There were some beautiful ideas. And as soon as we saw this, we thought, yes, yes. You know what? Some superheroes have amazing weapons, superpowers, but you know what? If only you could sneeze fire, right? But with the help of a genius kid inventor, one man changes his fortunes forever and becomes like no hero you've ever seen before. Not all heroes fight crime or save the world. Some simply patrol their neighborhoods looking for people in need. Rose have their weaknesses. And all heroes have their battles and their team-ups. So this summer, stay tuned for a superhero movie like no other. Sneeze you its way to a cinema near you. Thank you to Annabelle. You can ask me, like, how do, you know, as an inventor, people expect you to have had that moment where you come up with something that's, like, perfect from the beginning and it isn't. Quite often when you're trying to solve a problem, particularly I think the older that I've got and I try and look at, you know, when I'm designing things, it just gets very complicated. You know, you hear all the stuff you were taught at school or the things you're supposed to do, what you're not supposed to do. And I think sometimes when we go back to basics, this is one of my favorite invention ideas, and I actually saw this being drawn at a science fair. And it started off very simply. So this is a car, if you can't tell. And it started off with just a giraffe at the front of it. And then the little girl that was drawing it saw that her friend next to her had put a fairy. And so hers had to be pushed by a leprechaun. And then suddenly they were talking about edible, edible roofs, edible windows, and we've got candy floss roofs. And for me this just sums up, you look at that and you go, where on earth do you start with that? And having seen that being drawn bit by bit, you just come together. And I think so often when we see kids come with invention ideas, they just don't stop. They don't think, well, this is it. This looks great. They carry on. And I think we can learn so much from that because we're so often constrained by our own rules and kids don't have that. The next thing is that things, I mean anyone that makes stuff will know things do not work well. For us, something always goes wrong. It's the joy of building in a very tight timeframe with a very tight budget. This was our underwater dolphin, which for most of it didn't go underwater and in the end we had to cut a little hole in it and drown it. Don't worry, no dolphins were harmed in this. But yeah, it was way too buoyant. And for us, something goes wrong every single build. But actually that's something we should celebrate. If we stop when something goes wrong, we'll never complete something. And when I talk to young people about making stuff, they know that. They've seen things go wrong and they carry on. And I think as adults, we give up a little bit too easily. And actually, I've learned more from everything that's gone horribly wrong than the things that have gone right. Just because it currently doesn't exist, doesn't mean that it shouldn't. This is a jam-firing rocket. This is great to liven up any breakfasts. So yeah, this fires a lot of jam. It is currently the Institute of Imagination, or else I'd really like to fire some Nutella through it. I'm just intrigued how that would work. I think so often we look at things and think, well, actually if it was a good idea, someone else would have done it. Wrong, wrong, actually. If you've got an idea, do you know what? You'll do it differently. So often I see on Twitter someone will go, oh, well, I started doing this and then I found that someone else was doing something similar. So? Everyone goes at things a completely different way. And I think so often that we think, well, if it was a good idea, someone else would have invented it. And that was something that I thought about a lot when I came up with the stair studies, that people said, you know, when I got my patent through, I realized that there were people that had tried to solve this problem in very different ways, and no one else had quite managed it. And I think sometimes we think, well, you know, someone that's cleverer than me or knows more than me would have invented it if it should exist. Flaming piano, there we go. Don't be put off by lack of knowledge. Sean and I have no idea. We are not particularly talented engineers. I've never been to university. Sean has two degrees because he's greedy, but one of them is in arts. And essentially, we Google a lot. We watch a lot of YouTube videos. And we make things up. And I think sometimes we think, well, I'm not an expert in that. How would I know? It doesn't matter. You can learn. You can have a go at things. We'd never made anything, anything that was a flaming anything. Never mind a fire and water shooting piano. We did a lot of Googling, and we asked a lot of questions. And in the end, it worked. I mean, it is reasonably safe. We did have it checked by someone that knows a little bit more than us. But actually, sometimes, just because you don't know how you're going to get there, doesn't mean you shouldn't start. So yeah, this is the hill with the endangered moss that we didn't set out on fire. It was fine. And sometimes the best ideas come from collaboration. So this, we did a gravity race challenge. When I was watching the hockey races earlier, I didn't laugh because, yeah, I feel your pain. So this was a gravity race, a real gravity race that we entered. And we set the invention challenge. And this was Grace's drawing in the corner. And Grace wanted to build a gravity racer shaped like a cake. And a friend of ours, who is an engineer, said, yes, but why make it out of wood? Why make it look like a cake? Why not make it out of cake? And so sometimes having conversations with people create the best invention ideas. 110 kilograms of vegan cake that I raced down a hill with very bad brakes. And yes, there's a spectacular finish at the end of that. But yes, sometimes the best ideas come from those conversations and telling people about your ideas and collaborating. And we did have some people eat it. And they weren't ill, which is always a bonus. So one of the things I've learned from this project, I came into it from probably a very corporatey background. And actually, for me, what's been really exciting is about embracing my inner child and just having a play. And I think if we all do that more, the world would be a much better place. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much, Ruth. I think we'll take a minute or two for questions, if you don't mind. Yeah, go for it. Because I want to try out this tool. It's so awesome. Does anyone has a question? Yes, the young gentleman at the front. Can you catch? Yeah, you can catch. Hey, just talk into it. Where is the microphone? Oh! So how do you send the videos in? Is there like a particular email you have to use? So we have a website called kidsinventstuff.com and there's a form on there where you can upload a picture or a video. And we set a different challenge each month. We set a different challenge each month. I was just looking as I could see. Yeah, sorry. And there's a new one that comes out today, actually, at six o'clock. It's just a little plug, you know? Another question. Anyone else? Yeah, yes. Can you pass it on? My kids absolutely love your channel. I absolutely love your channel as well, watching it with them. I think one of the things that is the secret to the success, you kind of outlined loads of things in your talk. One thing you didn't mention, I think just comes across in spades, is the immense sense of fun in your presentation. And that, I think, is the kind of magic formula you've got. You've got the ideas from the creativity of the minds of children. You've got the kind of engineering kind of know-how between you two. We have no know-how. To kind of turn that idea into something that actually functions. And you just presented with such an immense sense of fun. And I think all three of those things are key to making this work and I think it works brilliantly. Thank you. I think, yeah, I've worked on lots of projects where it hasn't been fun and I think it's really important to find things that are fun. And for us as well, it's always about challenging ourselves. So within this project, I've done things that I never even thought I would do from cutting the roof off a car to learning how to use a chainsaw. And I think actually when we challenge ourselves, then we can have a lot of fun. So yeah, thank you. We have this young gentleman in the back. My invention is to make an Xbox controller control a dirt bike. Nice. I like it. Hopefully this is what happens as someone sees something and goes, I have an invention. I'm sure here there are people that could help you make that happen. Anyone here, like, ever made an Xbox controller? I've seen a few around. But yes, this is what we're trying to do, is we're trying to encourage that. And hopefully, I'm sure someone afterwards can come and find you and show you exactly how you make that. Thank you. One last question. They are all awesome. I would love to do another half an hour of Q&A. But last question, please. Young lady. Talk into the cube. Oh, okay. So we started off this. I mean, I don't want to think of it as a competition, but funnily enough, it has become one. So when we started, Sean and I were very naive because we thought we'd just get these invention ideas in. We'd have a look at all of them. We'd choose to build one, and that would be it. But actually, it has been viewed as a competition. But we don't see it like that. So we look at all the invention ideas, and then we have to think, there are a few things. We have a little bit of limited budget. So can we afford to make it? Has it been made before? So quite often we'll have invention ideas, and there are things that are partway towards that or people that have made that. And so occasionally we have sent emails back to kids, so this is a fab idea. Have you seen this? So-and-so has done this. And then other times is we like to choose invention ideas that adults would never think of. So when we did the floating shoes, you kind of mention it to a few adults and they look at you like you're mental. And so for us, it's about celebrating things like, of course you want a pair of shoes that walk on water. Of course you want a gem-firing rocket. So yeah, we have that little inner adult in our heads going, if you're an adult, you'd never build this. And that's what we want to build. Well, are you around at a village or somewhere? Yeah, I'm around outside for a bit. Because we have to sum up. So if you have further questions or ideas, come up to Ruth and bother her. And if you bring Lego, maybe she will help you turn on a new coat. Yeah, definitely. So please give another very warm round of applause for Ruth. Thank you very much.