It’s easy to patronise teenagers when it comes to technology, even with the best intentions.

Nick D’Aloisio must know this: after launching his Summly startup in 2011 at the age of 15, he was more likely to be asked when on stage at conferences about girlfriends and GCSEs than about the workings and implications of his news aggregation app – both topics he was eloquent and interesting about.

That held true for the recent Future 8 awards, organised by SuperAwesome in partnership with the Guardian to identify and celebrate talented programmers, animators, filmmakers, makers and musicians between the ages of seven and 17.

On the night of the awards, the winners all talked engagingly about what they do, why they do it, and what they plan to do next, with the focus firmly on their work.

Three key themes emerged from the Guardian’s interviews: many of the skills shown by the winners were learned outside school; they were already building their networks of peers and industry contacts both online and in the real world; and they were willing to grapple with the business side of what they do.

School’s out

In England, programming – or at least programming-like thinking - is now part of the national curriculum for children as young as five. But for the Future 8 winners, their technology skills had largely been developed outside their regular schooling.

“All my programming, my projects, they’ve all been self-taught. From a young age I made websites out of HTML, then I started making games. And I decided I would keep a notebook and write down all my ideas,” said Faheem Anwar.

He won the mobile app category for his The Youth Booth idea for an app that helps children organise days out at attractions, and get collective discounts. Anwar said he’d been programming in HTML and making games “from a young age”, encouraged by his parents.

“In the Irish school system, they don’t do much in animation. I guess the closest you’d get to it is with art, which is quite interesting, but that’s the closest you get,” said Jonathan White, who won the animation category. “You have to get tutorials off the internet and online forums.”

Fin Moorhouse, who won the online video category, told a similar story of self-motivation. “There is a degree of space within other areas of study, but it’s mostly entirely up to me to do what I like to do really,” he said.

“I taught myself everything I know about blogging and the publishing industry,” said Amber Kirk-Ford, who won the blogging award for her The Mile Long Bookshelf site.

“A lot of people seem to think I paid for someone to design my blog professionally, which is definitely a compliment, but I learned how to code it myself and all of the graphics were designed by me. From personal experience, I think people – children and teenagers especially – are more willing to continue with a hobby if they’re left to experiment with it and essentially teach themselves.”

Several winners caught the technology bug at dedicated “tech camp” events held in the summer holidays. “I went in there knowing absolutely nothing about coding. I came out and could make a website, and had made a top 40 UK music app,” said Seb Gallop, who won the Future 8 games category with his Lifeless City concept.

Billy Timimi, who won the Maker category with his idea for a ConvertaDesk that shifts between soldering table and traditional workstation, also cut his teeth at a tech camp.

“I got to learn about quite a lot really: I learned how to do some robotics and how to do some programming,” he said, adding that he also got his first sight of a 3D printer there.

Building networks

It’s no revelation at all to suggest that teenagers are using social networks, but it was notable how many of the Future 8 winners are already using Twitter and YouTube as their public profiles, to forge contacts and (where relevant) promote their work.

White has a YouTube channel where he shows off clips of his animations and games, while Moorhouse prefers to use Vimeo to publish his films.

“I’m publishing the majority of my films that are acceptable to watch on Vimeo. That’s one of the great things about film: that social aspect, sharing with people you’ve never met,” said Moorhouse.

Natalie Shay, who won the music category, has built up a following through YouTube, which she uses to publish her videos. Like other YouTube musicians, she sees the service is an alternative way to build an audience to traditional routes, whether within the music or TV industries.

“I’ve been scouted for X Factor so I could do that, but it’s very risky: if you don’t succeed in it, it can ruin everything,” she said. Instead, Shay has been running a YouTube channel since 2010.

“I tend to want to go the organic route: it ensures a long career. Instant fame doesn’t always work that well,” she said.

Kirk-Ford said that running her blog and its spin-off YouTube channel has also helped her forge relationships within the book publishing industry. “Especially in the last couple of years or so, I’ve definitely noticed the publishing industry getting more and more excited about book bloggers and booktubers,” she said.

“I think because we dedicate so much time to books outside of actually reading them - so, making videos about them, writing blog posts about them - people can tell that we’re truly passionate about books and they know we can build a lot of buzz.”

“For kids, the ability to upload to YouTube is now essentially the equivalent of basic literacy,” said Dylan Collins, chief executive of SuperAwesome. “That’s huge.”

Thinking business

The final thing that marked the Future 8 winners out was their willingness to get to grips with the business side of their chosen careers – or their side-careers, in the case of Anwar, who intends to become a doctor with a sideline in app development.

“I hope to make apps, and the advertising revenue will be another source of income for me,” he said. The costs of medical education being what they are, that sounds like a wise decision, with Anwar keeping his options open. “I’ll go into gaming, I’ll go into a bit of social media. I’ve got a few ideas,” he said.

James Corneille won the web development award for a website that’s already a business in its own right: Skizzie.com. It’s a site that teaches foreign languages to children using animation.

“It initially started as Irish, then I decided to expand it so added English and French,” he said. “I’m going to hopefully expand it further, with tons of languages and different premium packages. I have tons of concept ideas for how to make money out of it.”

Shay, meanwhile, has already self-released her first single, which got to number 15 in the singer/songwriter chart on Apple’s iTunes store last year.

“It was a completely independent project. Someone in the year above me at school filmed the video, I got it recorded by one of my friends, and then I did the whole promotion from home, online,” said Shay, who added that being a student at the Brit School for Performing Arts and Technology is providing business skills, not just creative skills.

“They don’t distinguish between creation, distribution and monetisation: it’s just the same thing for them. Stuff like YouTube and the app stores on iOS and Android have created that paradigm,” said Collins.

“You don’t see kids going round as much looking for a label deal for their music or a publishing deal for their app or game. What they’re interested is in someone paying attention to them, and they can get this stuff out there themselves to do that.”

Getting out and about

These experienced business heads on young shoulders are also relishing the prizes at the Future 8 awards, which include visits to and mentorship from industry sponsors including Sony Music, Penguin Random House, WeMo, Outfit7, NOW Music, NaturalMotion Games, Stick Sports, Bin Weevils and 55Pixels.

Another teenage stereotype – the surly work-experience student – was scotched by the winners’ clear intentions to use their prizes to further their careers, from White’s desire to study the workings of NaturalMotion’s games studio to Shay’s plans to use her time in a recording studio to polish off her next release.

“It’s not just about seeing how a games company works and how they tick,” said Gallop, of his upcoming visit to Stick Sports. “The mentoring sessions are going to be really good, because I can understand how to be a games designer, not just how to try and be a games designer.”

Kirk-Ford, whose prize includes mentoring sessions at publisher Penguin Random House, agreed. “I feel like the people in the publishing industry in general are really inspiring and I can’t wait to get the chance to talk to them in more detail.”

Nobody talked about networking in a starry-eyed way: the winners were aware of the value of getting out and about within their chosen industries, rather than conforming to more stereotypes of teenagers cloistered in their bedrooms.

“That’s a huge stereotype: that we don’t go out,” said Corneille, who recently drove up to Dublin from his home in Limerick for a Google networking event. “I know for a fact that isn’t true.”

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