Jeff Gelles: Techies in training at Teen Tech Camp

SunGard Data Systems is a Fortune 500 company with 20,000 employees and $5 billion in annual revenue. But for a group from Teen Tech Camp visiting its Broad Street data center Tuesday, the number that really stuck may have been one that tour guide Wayne Martin revealed after asking the 10 campers to guess the facility's monthly electric bill.

"Maybe $5,000?" one ventured.

"How about $10,000?" another asked.

Eyes widened at Martin's answer: $500,000, largely to keep the site's thousands of servers and network and storage devices running round the clock for clients that rely on SunGard for "mission-critical" aspects of corporate data management, including the disaster-recovery services the company pioneered three decades ago, when it was spun off by Sun Oil Co.

"I'm impressed by how much power they use," said Zamir Brown, 15, a ninth grader at Philadelphia's World Communications Charter School who is plainly well-suited to the camp's T-shirt logo: "Techie in training."

It was just Day Two of the five-day camp, sponsored by the Philadelphia chapter of the Society for Information Management, but some of the messages the group aims to impart were already sinking in.

Dominique Walton, a 10th grader at Parkway Northwest High School, plans to become a pediatrician and already knew how to use a computer for tasks such as practicing for the SAT. But on Monday, she learned about tools she had never encountered, such as Google Docs for writing papers or presentations, or Oovoo.com for video chatting or conferencing.

Both sounded promising for managing school projects, she said. And she was already convinced that learning about technology would be valuable, whatever path she followed.

"Doctors use computers to keep track of their patients," Walton said. "We learned yesterday that technology is a part of everything."

Yes, there's no swimming or hiking at this camp - Teen Tech Camp is more like a short course of summer school, albeit with guest speakers and field trips. But for teens from less-privileged backgrounds, particularly the ones with promise in math or science that the program tries to attract, it offers an unusual opportunity.

Joseph M. Tait, director of IT at Willow Grove's NMS Labs, has been involved since the Society for Information Management began sponsoring Teen Tech Camp six years ago.

When Tait spoke Monday to the group, as he does each year, he focused on envisioning and planning a career - with a plug toward a field that he said was hungry for qualified employees even during today's plague of joblessness.

"I grew up in a tough neighborhood in North Philly, by Temple Hospital," said Tait, who graduated in 1977 from the now-closed Cardinal Dougherty High School. "I just talk about opportunities. What technology has done for me is to give me a path to success."

Tait may have helped inspire at least one of this year's tech campers. Kristina Sary, a ninth grader at Mastery Charter School, arrived knowing that she was interested in forensic science, thanks to the TV show NCIS. Listening to Tait, whose company does that work in real life, cemented it - as much as is possible when you're 14.

"I'm going to be a forensic scientist," said Sary, who said the exposure to SunGard's vast array of computer technology was valuable to her "because I'm probably going to be surrounded by it" as she works later using science to solve crimes.

If Teen Tech Camp was valuable to Sary because, as she put it, "it's going to help me with my future career," it was useful to some of her fellow campers just to see what's out there.

Brown, the ninth grader at World Communications Charter, has helped fix his mother's computer, poking around and somehow managing to clear it of a virus. He borrows it sometimes to write essays for school, as well as to surf the Internet and play math and science games. But he readily confesses that he'd rather be playing basketball or football.

"My grandmother said I should try something new," Brown said. "I'd rather play sports, but she said I should learn something about computers."

His conclusion after the tour, in which Martin explained how SunGard hosts data centers for some of the world's largest businesses, and enables others to instantly shift all their IT operations to one of its hundreds of facilities around the world?

"You've got to be really smart to work here," he said.

At the end of Teen Tech Camp, Brown and the others will go home with their own laptops, thanks to a contribution from one of the society's member companies.

He'll also leave with a broader view of the technological horizon, and of the opportunities awaiting those who master it.