I'm highly interested in the education of young adults, but why 7th graders? 7th graders and programming just don't seem to fit together. Perhaps you're talking

I'm highly interested in the education of young adults, but why 7th graders? 7th graders and programming just don't seem to fit together. Perhaps you're talking to a gifted bunch, but are they really precocious enough to understand the concept of 9-5, let alone "startup"? If not, then I would cut out points 2-5. I agree that inspiring youngsters is very important, but do you have particular reasons for focusing on the professional aspect of it, as opposed to, say, being able to do cool things with software? Many years ago, there was a kid at a programming camp; he was a bit too young, but not far off from 7th grade. And he declared that he wanted to learn programming to make games, the kind that he played everyday, some 3D RTS. Starting from scratch, for 2 months, that was quite plainly an impossibility. He probably would've had a more profitable experience if he had more reasonable, and relevant, expectations. Rather than PG's essay as a starting point to motivate 12-14 year olds, I would be more inclined to use more "palpable" examples, perhaps like the Mars Rovers or movie special effects or something. It'd be pretty cool if you started with a demo where by changing certain parts of the code you could create interesting changes. (But I know nothing about the interests or attention spans of the kids you are going to speak to.) Just a thought. Please post after the talk!