Students in the Mena School District participated in a unique challenge last year. During the NoCode Hackathon, Students used the AI driven platform, NYX NoCode, to create promotional materials for the town's new mountain bike trail system, Trails at Mena, without typing any code. Karen Kilroy is a software engineer and founder of NYX NoCode. She recently spoke to Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis to follow up on how the hackathon went and what's in store for her and NYX NoCode. She says the program was an all around success. We had 100 creations turned in.

Karen Kilroy: And Out of those, we've picked several winners. We're going to head down to Mena Next weekend To present them with the prizes, which include $5 For every participant, From Walmart, And then also a grand prize of bicycles, From Pedal It Forward. And then also, We have mountain bike training from Beeline MTB for the winners. For the winners.

Jack Travis: In your opinion, what do you think the kids using NYX NoCode and participating in the NoCode Hackathon, what do you think they got out of it? I think that they learned that they can take

Kilroy: Their ideas And be able to express them very quickly in a way that they have not done before, In a way that they have not done before, And that's through prompting. And, prompting is a skill that they're going to need over and over no matter what, career that they choose. And we've also got a sister district, Clayton County, Georgia, that started doing hackathons along with Mena, and we've come up with a new name. It's called Hacktonia. And so now we've got two sister districts, that are learning AI together with the teachers right in the middle of the process.

Travis: So I'd like to talk a little bit more about that in just a second, But I'm also interested what you learned facilitating this program.

Kilroy: Well, I learned that it's really important to transfer your knowledge to the people who are younger than you, and they're going to get a lot out of it, but they're also going to apply it in ways that you had not thought of before. Could you provide an example? Sure. One example might be using NYX NoCode to create a way to map trails. This is something that someone had thought of, a way to assign points to whichever trails you decided to take. And so you could go out on the trails, and you could run a certain score, and then you could compete with your friend and compare the scores. And that's something I would have never thought to do.

Travis: Yeah. Kids are pretty creative. That's one of the beauties of working with children is that they always just come up with something completely unexpected. So what's next for you, NYX NoCode and the Hacktonia Endeavor?

Kilroy: Well, we're planning on expanding Hacktonia And continuing to provide experiences To high school and middle schoolers. And we've got a one-day demo program That schools can get at a really affordable entry rate. And then, they can expand that into the one-month program And then go into other, longer programs and use the NYX NoCode AI platform To teach other subjects as well.

Travis: And where can our listeners go to learn more about that?

Kilroy: They can go to NYX.baby. Just don't hesitate to let me know if you're interested in getting the teachers in your district trained, Or getting your own children trained. Just make sure that you let the administration Know to get ahold of me, and we can do a Hacktonia in your school.

Travis: Alright. And is there a good email that you wanna provide or just through the NYX.baby?

Kilroy: Karen@NYX.baby, K a r e n.

That was Karen Kilroy, founder of NYX NoCode, speaking with Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis. You can visit ozarksatLarge.com For a link. Jack produces his stories in the Bruce and Ann Applegate News Studio One.

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