December 19, 2020 • 56 mins
Want to make the most out of uni? Nick Lambourne, former president of UQCS and intrepid UQ alumni, is here to help. Join Nick as he walks you through his university experiences, from Brisbane to Silicon Valley and everywhere in between.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi there and welcome to the router, the official
podcast of the youth incomputing society, where we
explore the human side of tech.
I'm your host, Matt and I hopeyou've been having a wonderful
summer break today.
We'll be having a chat with NickLambourne, former president of
UK UCS, and currently interningat Atlassian as a site,
reliability engineer.
He's done pretty much everythingyou can do during his time at
(00:20):
university.
And he's here to share hisadvice for making the most out
of your university experiencetoo.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (00:40):
All right.
Welcome to the rouser neck.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hi, thanks for having me.
Um, it's a pleasure to be here
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Lastly, for the rest of the audience.
Uh, could you introduce yourselfand, uh, your history?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Yeah.
Um, so, uh, some people who havebeen around a while might know
me, um, I was president of ETCs,uh, in 2019.
Um, and before that I was sortof around the periphery.
Um, and then last year I stuckaround to help out the what's
now the old committee, uh, with,uh, with running things.
(01:16):
Um, so if you've been to some ofthe ETCs talks, they've
organized, uh, a lot of those,uh, my experience, uh, with the
university, uh, is a bitdifferent than most I've been at
Yuku.
Um, and having just left, uh,last week, uh, I I've been at IQ
(01:37):
for 10 years, which means that,uh, I've, I've seen a lot, I've
missed out on a lot ofopportunities, but I've been
able to take advantage of a lotof others.
Um, and yet in that time I'vestudied, uh, psychology and
finance to begin with.
Cause I really didn't know whatI wanted to do, uh, after school
.
And then, uh, when I finallyfound out what it was that I
(02:01):
wanted to spend my life workingon computer science, uh, and
that's sort of how I, uh, endedup, uh, involved in uqc.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
W what was the thing that, that, I guess after like
four, four or five years ofstudying psychology and finance,
what was the thing that made youchange, change your mind and go
into computing in general?
Is that like a catalyst forthat?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
It was, yeah, so I, um, I've taken, I've sort of
gotten a bit bored.
I was bored a lot during those,those years in, in, uh, in
finance and in psychology.
Um, so I did a lot of stuff onthe side.
Um, I worked a fair bit, um,mostly sort of customer service
jobs, but then moved into a moresort of retail and, uh, sorry,
(02:52):
uh, more, uh, substantive jobs,like, uh, I did a bit of
lobbying.
I worked as a technical advisor,um, but the thing that sort of
solidified this, this idea thatI'd had, um, of sort of being
interested in computer science,um, was, uh, taking this one
(03:13):
particular online course, CS 50,uh, Harvard, uh, the
introduction to computer science, um, put through Harvard and
taught by this amazing, likecrazy passionate, uh, lecturer,
uh, Nick, David Malin, andtaking that course was sort of,
I took that course six monthsbefore I was due to finish, uh,
(03:35):
my, uh, first sort of doubledegree there.
And I knew at that time that Ineeded to go and do this
instead.
Um, this is, this got me excitedabout the prospect of work, uh,
or the prospect of study even,um, in a way that I hadn't been
before.
So, uh, that, that was reallythe catalyst and doing that, and
(03:56):
then getting more into Pythonand then starting to use Python
in my work, um, uh, as atechnical advisor and, and, uh,
as, uh, as the manager of anetwork of led billboards, um, I
set up this, uh, Django basedapplication to help me do my
(04:16):
job.
Um, and it was then that Icould, like, I could really see
the true, I don't know that thetrue power of what I could learn
in computer science.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
And with that experience, I guess there's,
there's, there's degrees,there's past degrees.
Do you find yourself ever usingthings from those nowadays, or
are there any experiences thatyou've gathered from those that
time that you still
Speaker 3 (04:45):
It's the only other tangential?
Um, of course I wish that I haddiscovered computer science.
I was kind of, I was initiallyput off, um, because I didn't
want to, I did like computers, Ienjoyed building computers and
playing around with them as achild, but I didn't, I was
worried when I was at school,but doing that, uh, for work
(05:06):
would sort of ruin the fun.
Um, so obviously it was a longtime before I realized my
mistake there and I do wish Ihad of gone straight into
computer science or computerscience and math straight out of
school, but I mean, there havebeen parts of it.
It's it's yeah.
The application is only evertangential it's, uh, little
(05:28):
things, um, like being familiarwith the accounting terminology
or, um, things like, uh, a bitof the organizational psychology
stuff that I did, um, helpedwhen I was working with people
on the QCs committee inparticular, um, that I guess it
did help, but probably weren'twith the five years that it took
(05:51):
to get there.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I guess, tell me a bit more about your QCs, uh, the
committee, I guess you say youstarted, um, university journey.
When did you get involved withyou?
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yes, first.
So I, uh, I'd done, uh,obviously I'd done this course.
Um, I started doing a bit of webprogramming, um, and I was
looking for ways to get involvedbecause I knew that the way that
I'd gone about my first degreeor first double degree, uh
wasn't that, that wasn't the wayto do university.
(06:27):
I've been there long enough andI'd missed out on enough
opportunities that I knew that Ihad to do something different.
So even before I, uh, started inwhat initially was software
engineering, um, in 2016, uh,sort of in the later part of
2015, I started to, uh, look forways to get more involved.
(06:49):
And I came across the computingsociety and it was in a very
different state to what it isnow.
Uh, my first ever hit UCS eventwas actually their AGM in that
year.
And I went along and the entireevent was, uh, well, the vast
majority of the event was themtrying to find 30 people to sign
(07:10):
the attendance form, to keep theclub going, uh, which when you
look at UGCs now is kind of hardto imagine.
Um, I mean, there's always thatfear, uh, that you're not going
to have enough people, but ithasn't been a, a real risk for,
for many, many years.
Um, so that, that was my, myfirst engagement.
(07:30):
And then after that, it was, uh,into 2016, it was attending the
events.
Uh, they weren't quite asfrequent back then, but, uh, the
vibe was there.
And I guess I, I kind of feltlike I, uh, had found my people
if that makes sense.
(07:50):
Um, which, uh, in, in contrastto finance and psychology, like,
I, I just couldn't say, like, I,I certainly couldn't tell you
now, but I even would have beenstruggling to tell you them a
single person who I had studiedwith, um, apart from one person
that I've known from high school, um, in those, in those
previous two degrees.
(08:11):
But yeah, I got more involved.
Um, I got, uh, to know, uh, thepresident at the time, um, uh,
Taylor Manderson and sort of gotin with that circle, I guess.
And I developed this, thisnetwork of people that would
(08:33):
come to be my, my sort of corefriendship group.
And again, that wasn't somethingthat I'd experienced, um, in
either of the two previous, uh,degrees.
And I guess the other thing wasthat I was, uh, I was in
engineering.
So I went through those firstyear engineering subjects and
(08:54):
there's this cohort vibe, butdevelops around engineering
because you are effectivelytraumatized, uh, into bonding
with your fellow students by thecourses.
Um, they force you to do groupwork with people you've never
met.
They, uh, have a ridiculousamount of assessment.
And if you're not relying onyour fellow students, then, uh,
(09:18):
it's unlikely that you're goingto get through it all.
So that, so there were a fewsort of, uh, QCs people that I,
that I, or people that wouldbecome new QCs, uh, members that
I met through there as well.
Um, and he had just developedthis sort of network and that
went on, and obviously there afew years there, um, where, uh,
(09:45):
the, the, the clubs started togain a bit of momentum, um,
particularly under Taylor.
Um, the society started to grow,obviously there's this, uh,
external influence, uh, sort ofbuilding up technology and
computer science, um, that meantthat they were all of these
students coming in.
Um, and we had more numbers,more resources, and, uh, I got
(10:11):
sort of got more involved,attended more events, um, got to
know more people.
And again, got in with this,this sort of core group who
would become my, my closefriends.
And then, um, at the end of 2018, uh, Cameron was stepping down
or graduating.
(10:32):
Um, everybody was up from theexisting committee was leaving
and, uh, I had decided to runfor president.
Um, now that was after that feltquite radical to me because,
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Because I hadn't, uh,
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I hadn't held a committee position before I'd
run, um, the year before Ithink, and been knocked back.
Um, it, it is the, the, thevoting process is a little bit
of a popularity contest.
We tried to obviously addressthat as the years have gone by,
but, um, I hadn't served before.
So I felt like it was a bit of along shot running, running for
(11:10):
president.
Um, but I, I got voted in, um,by a margin of one vote.
Um,
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
It was a very close thing.
Um, and talking to people after,uh, I was sitting down with
someone a couple of days ago andthey're like, Oh, I could have
been that deciding vote.
Um, and, uh, but, and I was abit worried because like that
one vote margin and sort of, itwasn't contentious, but it was
(11:43):
competitive.
Um, but Jack, uh, who, uh, wasthe, the, the one vote shy, I
ended up secretary and I wasone, I was a bit worried about
how that relationship was goingto go if that was where it was
starting.
Uh, cause we didn't really knoweach other before then, but, um,
I know the course of, uh, well,the time since, uh, that, that
(12:07):
year in particular, when weworked so closely together to
change the society and keep itgoing, um, we we've developed
into really good friends.
Um, and then we, we workedtogether as interns at Canva.
Um, and it was just, I dunno,uh, it, it, it, it developed
(12:30):
into what, what, what waseffectively a competition
developed into just this really,really good friendship.
Um, and I wouldn't have beenable to do make all of the
progress that we made and do allof the things that we did that
year without Jack's support
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Out of the things you did, I guess, as president or
with, with Jack a secretary,what is, what is the thing or
things that you're most, mostproud of achieving during that
time?
Is there anything that you canlike point out and say, I did
this, you know, that's somethingthat feature UGCs, I guess
(13:07):
iterations will be,
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I mean, it's, it's a little bit complicated because
it's, it's something that I'mboth proud of.
And I guess regret slightly,because we may have taken it a
little bit too far, but turningwhat was sort of at most weekly,
typically sort of biweekly, uh,events into at least two events
(13:32):
a week, every week throughoutthe year, um, or at least
throughout the semesters, um,meant that the students and the
members got a lot more exposureto, uh, the talent, because I
was effectively relying a lot ofthe time again on that, that
(13:53):
network of friends that haddeveloped in of QCs, most of
whom had gone on and graduatedand were working at places like
Atlassian or, uh, Canva,Microsoft, those kinds of
places.
Um, but it does, it did put alot of pressure on the rest of
the committee and Jack and I inparticular, um, in terms of
(14:14):
organization.
And I mean, we would justwrecked, uh, AF after a year of
that, and then sort of, I guess,setting the bar so that the
subsequent committee, I guess,that I was also on and
organizing events for, um, feltlike that was the standard that
needed to be maintained.
Um, and I guess the, the otherdownside of that is that I, I
(14:40):
was much better at organizingthe, the technical talks and I
was at the social aspect.
Um, and I can see now that whatyou QCs needs, particularly in
the environment that we're innow, is that social aspect, um,
more than they need to belearning about Coobernetti's or,
(15:03):
uh, T mucks or whatever.
Um, so I think the regret is, isthe balance, um, in terms of
workload and social versustechnical.
Um, but I am also proud that wewere able to pull that much off
because over the last two years,it's probably been nearly a
(15:23):
hundred events.
Um, by the time we tally themall up, um, that have been
organized, um, by, by ETCs,which is just a massive
increase.
And I guess the other, the otherbig thing that I'm proud of is
that that growth continued.
Now, it's difficult to say, uh,how much of that growth is due
to the influx of concisestudents, um, and how much is
(15:48):
due to us doing a better job ofadvertising, but it was nice to
finally, um, with the help ofMadoff's, uh, last minute
recruiting efforts to reach, uh,500 paying members before, uh,
handing it over, uh, in 2019.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, I think, I think the influx of members has
been really good.
And I think, I think with COVID,I guess it kind of affected the
turnout, but even the onlineturnout was I think really good.
And I think the consistency wasgood as well.
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (16:26):
That was, that was something that I struggled with
a lot was dealing with the shiftin turnout, because obviously as
the person organizing events, Iwas relying on turnout as my, as
my metric of how interested orhow engaged people were and
going from sort of a 40 personsort of median, uh, in like
(16:49):
in-person to sort of strugglingto get, uh, 20 people to watch,
uh, when it was live online, um,was, it was, it was a little bit
difficult to swallow, but thenyou'd see things like over the
course of that week, a hundredmore people would watch it.
Um, and you'd feel, uh, slightlymore redeemed now slightly more
(17:09):
like the effort that you put inwas worth it.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Hmm.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it, it, it, it, Ithink the, the way that since
the events was strained andrecorded, I guess that also
affected the way that, you know,members would consume the talks
and things like that, then thatwould be, I guess, less
incentive to watch them on, uh,live, but because they'd know
(17:35):
that they would always berecorded and available to watch
whenever it was convenient.
So, yeah, I guess, I guess themetrics it's kinda hard, but,
um, yeah, I, I do still thinkthat, uh, despite the
circumstances it's been quite agood turnout of all of you out
of all the streaming and all therecorded.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it, it gave us theopportunity to go out and buy
equipment so that we can streamand have this, this catalog of
resources that we can linkpeople to.
Um, so even like, I'm hopingthat we continue the tradition
of things like, uh, having, uh,their main team ups talk, uh, at
the beginning of each semester,the 2310 runs.
(18:15):
But we, if, if we have a didn't,um, or for whatever reason, uh,
like the recording failed orwhatever, we have something to
link back to.
Um, and I think those resourceswill, uh, probably outlive the,
any, any of our tenure, uh, withQCs.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So I guess it sounds like UCS has been a really big
part of university experience.
Um, yeah, I guess that wasn't itthere, right?
Like there was other stuff too.
Um, yeah.
Other experiences, where do yougo into those?
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Absolutely.
Um, so obviously if you see us,we've been a massive part of my
life for the past two and a halfyears.
Um, and, and even before that,uh, but there have been out the
aspects of university that Ithink people don't like, again,
me going through my doubledegree, it sort of took four and
(19:16):
a half years before I was evenaware that these things were
available.
Um, and some of them weren't, uh, full finance or psychology,
like computer science andtechnology, is, is someone
special in that it has thisfocus on it right now, um, that
may not always be the case, butthat doesn't mean that there are
opportunities, um, that you cantake advantage of.
(19:38):
So a couple of the big ones forme, um, where, uh, I'll go sort
of shortest impact to longest,but the, uh, there's a space at
[inaudible] called idea hub, andthey describe it as this pre
(19:58):
accelerator.
Um, and it's a little bit cringycoming from a comp side
perspective.
Um, and a lot of this stuff willbe familiar to anybody who's
gone through sort of early, uh,years business education, but
they offer this program wherethey will effectively talk you
through how to take an idea, uh,and turn that into a business or
(20:21):
a startup.
And you go through this processand then you, you, once you've
completed it, I think it's a onenight, a week for five weeks or
eight weeks.
And you, you just go and you'lldo some, uh, you participate in
some cringy activities likedesign jams, and that kind of
thing, but you, you will, you'llactually talk to entrepreneurs.
(20:44):
And, uh, it's, it's a worthwhileexperience, particularly if you
don't have that businessbackground, but, um, it's even
more worthwhile because when youfinish, you become eligible to
go on these trips.
Uh, now they're, they're calledstartup adventures and by go to
different places.
So there's, uh, Shanghai,Televiv San Francisco and
(21:08):
Singapore, I believe were theones that were available last
time I checked.
And what it is was effectivelyan all expenses paid trip to one
of these commercial hubs whereyou were placed with a startup.
Um, now those startups sort ofvaried from the couple of people
in an office to a couple of acouple of hundred people, um,
(21:33):
where you're starting to wonderif the word up still applies,
but the, like this, this tripand the it's not just going
there and working and getting,uh, like experience working in a
company, particularly a smallcompany where you're forced to
(21:53):
wear many hats, um, is, is justincredible.
But then you also, so, um, wewere taken by the coordinator,
um, Nimrod, uh, climate, uh, whoI believe now runs NICU
ventures, which is sort of theparent organization of this idea
hub.
And he, in addition to us doingour sort of eight to nine hour
(22:18):
work days in the startups, Iworked with a med tech startup
called patched, um, with, uh,another one of your podcast
guests.
Um, whereas this is the CEO, um,and, uh, the, the work was
interesting.
I was doing, um, uh, trainingoptimization for some machine
(22:40):
learning for medical technologyso that their goal is to detect
sepsis and other illnesses, um,using vital sign data, um, and
sort of, uh, recurrent neuralnets defectively.
Um,
Speaker 5 (22:56):
And
Speaker 3 (22:58):
So I go to do that work, but then Nimrod would take
us out in the evenings.
Um, and it would be, uh, we we'dgo to like, uh, we work or we go
to Uber and we'd have, there'dbe networking events or fireside
chats, or, um, we went to UCBerkeley, um, and sat down.
(23:20):
And, uh, there was a firesidechat with someone, uh, from
Sequoia capital.
So getting this experience,getting this exposure to this
world, um, was, was justphenomenal.
Now I've I'm, I was at the timeand remained a little bit
skeptical of the startup space.
(23:41):
Um, mostly because running astartup and being a part of a
startup takes a lot out of you.
Um, and I don't always have thatto give with other obligations.
Um, but it's just like, it was aphenomenal experience.
Um, this was just after I'd beenelected president of VPCs.
So it made for some very longdays, I do sort of eight or nine
(24:03):
hours doing this, um, machinelearning optimization, and then
I'd go and do those networkingevents.
And then I come back to thehostel where we were staying,
um, and sort of sit up until twoor three in the morning
organizing ETCs talks for thecoming semester, um, or, uh,
market day or whatever.
Um, and it was a lot of work,but it was incredibly worth it.
(24:26):
And you, the people that youmeet there, um, and work with
will become part of this networkthat you develop and what I've
discovered again, over andabsurdly long time, uh, at
university is that the networkis the most important thing.
Like the classes.
Um, a lot of it, you can sort oftake a leave, uh, but the
(24:50):
network in particular isincredibly valuable and miss was
one of the best, uh, experiencesthat I'd had for developing that
network.
Uh, I arrived back from that atlike 6:00 AM and then, uh, had
(25:10):
to go to market day, whichthankfully, um, Jack had done a
lot of the organizing for, uh,so it was, it was a very hectic
beginning to the semester, butabsolutely would recommend going
and following up or trying toget into this program.
Um, the other, the other bigthing that, again, I think
people don't realize is there,um, is research.
(25:35):
Uh, you can get involved as anundergraduate and it's
particularly valuable whenyou're an undergraduate and you
don't like, you don't have verymuch experience and your, uh,
you're ineligible for the vastmajority of technical
internships, because they'reonly looking for penultimate
(25:56):
year students.
So what you can do is you can doin the winter or summer break,
um, instead of sitting at homeand bemoaning your lack of
eligibility for interns, you canas many, as many as many dude.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, yeah, it'sdisappointing.
And I think it's a failing ofthe, of the industry that
(26:17):
they're only willing to investat that point where it's most
likely they will get their, gettheir return.
I mean, it makes sensefinancially, but it's, it's, I
don't know.
It seems a bit too much like theNetflix, we don't do interns at
all kind of attitude.
Um, but yeah, this, thisresearch opportunity, so it's,
(26:39):
it's in the, the winter break inthe middle of the year or the
summer at the end of the year,and it's sort of four or five
weeks for winter.
Um, or I think you negotiate it,but it's like eight to 12 for
summer.
Um, and they pay you the pay.
It's certainly not internshippay or, uh, but it's, it's
(27:01):
enough to get you by.
Um, but it gives you access to,again, this network that's
critically important.
Um, so my, my first experiencewas this was applying.
I was on exchange at the time.
Um, so the application processwas a bit based.
You have to normally getinterviewed by zoom or
something.
(27:22):
Um, and I had to organize a timethat would work, but I ended up
in a position where I wasworking with, uh, one of the Q,
uh, ITW researchers, uh, on,they ha they have these, um,
robots, uh, they call Opie.
(27:46):
And what they are is effectivelya, a couple of, uh, tablets, uh,
secured to this wooden framethat gives it sort of a almost
BEMAX kind of vibe, um, if BMXwas flat for some reason, um,
but you, you, you interact withit.
(28:07):
And the, the idea is that, uh,you participate in these
activities and these games onthese tablets, uh, that will
teach you language.
Um, and they're sort of targetedat Australian indigenous
languages, uh, where therearen't a lot of resources.
So my job was to build somethingthat turned, uh, linguistic
(28:30):
transcription files, these Elandfiles, uh, into resources like
there, the correct format forresources.
So I built a little, uh, Python,uh, QUT application, and this,
the, the, the, uh, researcherwho was supervising me, uh,
[inaudible], um, wassufficiently impressed that he
(28:54):
invited me to come back as aresearch assistant to work on
other projects for the lab.
Um, so that was, that was how Igot started in research.
Now, while the summer researchand winter research scholarships
don't pay very much, the, uh,the research assistant position
is basically work whenever youwant during the week.
(29:15):
And we will give you the samerate as tutoring, um, sort of
guaranteed up to a certainnumber of hours per week.
So for me, I think that was, uh,15 hours a week that I could
spend, uh, working on theseprojects.
Now, the work will vary based onthe researcher and the project.
(29:35):
Initially, I started outcleaning up, uh, some of the
code they'd already written.
Now, if you have the misfortuneto interact with academic code,
it's very different to sort ofindustry code, uh, you'll have
single little variables or inone particularly fund case,
every variable being named data,um, regardless of what it
(30:00):
contains.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so cleaning that up andmaking it a little bit more
professional, a little bit moreextensible was my first job.
And I spent a few months doingthat before I was moved to
another project, uh, working onspeech recognition.
So developing a framework, uh,for speech recognition, uh,
(30:22):
developing speech recognitionmodels based on, again, this,
this transcribed data, um, youdevelop a machine learning model
, um, to effectively recognize,uh, language.
And obviously your resultsdepend on how much data you have
(30:43):
and how you get set up.
But the idea was that if peoplehave the data, but don't have
the technological sophisticationto work out, uh, the underlying
library, then we can give them anice, pretty GUI, uh, that lets
them build their own models andinteract with it and use it, uh,
(31:05):
with sort of minimal, minimaltechnical background.
And I still work on this projecttoday.
Um, I'm still sort of a researchassistant.
Um, I did go in for anothersummer scholarship following the
winter one, um, which I was alsodoing while on that trip to San
Francisco and newly president.
(31:27):
So again, it was, it was a bithectic, but, um, in, in my
experience, uh, it's almostpossible to make anything work.
Uh, if you're like I was worriedabout going on the San Francisco
trip, uh, having just sort oftaken on this, this new role,
(31:48):
uh, as a research assistant.
Uh, but my boss was fine withit.
He was like, do what you can.
And then we can sort of, if youwant to, you can make up the
hours when you get back.
Um, or you can work from thereif you need to, or if you have
the time.
Um, so that, that flexibility isfantastic, particularly when
you're a uni student and you'vegot other deadlines and the
ability to not do work for acouple of weeks is just
(32:10):
fantastic.
And I would recommend it toanybody.
Um,
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Hm.
I, yeah, I guess, yeah, that,that, uh, comment about you can
make anything work, I think, isthere good, um, thing to say,
cause like when you have allthese different opportunities,
I've found you get a lot moremileage out of just taking them
and seeing where they go thento, I guess, see an opportunity
(32:38):
and say, Oh, I don't have time.
Or, Oh, I wouldn't be able to,you know, to an extent of
course, like be able to manageyour time, but
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, you, you, you need to need to keep in mind
things like your mental healthand your ability, like you need
to get sleep and stuff.
But in, in, in my experience,people are much more willing to
compromise and work with you,uh, than you'd expect.
And sure.
It might lead to an awkwardconversation.
We have to say to somebody, Oh,I'm look, I'm sorry.
(33:08):
Uh, I've I need to cut down onmy obligations and I've had to
do that as well, because I, um,in, in what I would call
downtime or I didn't have a fewjobs on the go, uh, I reached
out to some, uh, startupfounders at, uh,[inaudible] I
lab and worked with them.
But eventually when betterpaying or well paying work, uh,
(33:33):
came along, I had to turn aroundand say, uh, I look, I'm sorry.
Uh, here's, here's what I'vebuilt for you.
I hope it helps.
Um, I, uh, I need to go andfocus on other stuff and like
I've never had someone not beokay with that, um, that they,
they, they might bedisappointed.
(33:54):
Um, but, uh, in my experiencethey rarely even show that.
Um, so you have to, I guess thebiggest thing for me was that I,
I didn't know about theseopportunities the first time
around, so I was determined totake advantage of everything
that I could.
Um, and you don't, you don'treally, apart from LinkedIn
(34:16):
stalking people, you don't, youdon't really know what what's
available.
Um, I mean, I, I have a feelingit's just a problem of like,
there's too much on the go atonce for the university to
communicate this all veryeffectively.
Um, but it certainly feels likeif you're not paying attention,
you can, you can miss out.
(34:36):
Um,
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, I found the LinkedIn stalking is a wonderful
way to find out opportunitiesfor myself.
I guess I found some I engagedin even like, um, yeah, but I
guess, um, there's also thisexperience, um, I guess both of
us have a little bit offamiliarity with, um, in
(34:58):
different ways.
Uh, and that's I guess, asemester exchange.
Um, yes.
Uh, I guess, yeah.
Can you tell me about that?
Um, Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Yes.
Uh, for, for those unaware, um,COVID has, uh, destroyed and
cruelly torn apart.
The plans of, of many people,uh, intended on going on
exchange.
Um, and fortunately I did myexchange back in 2018.
(35:35):
Um, but if I know it's, it'sdifficult to talk about it now,
and it's difficult to say, yeah,go out and do this now.
But as far as, as far asexperiences that are going to,
uh, broaden your horizons, Iguess, uh, for want of a better
phrase, uh, it's, it's difficultto go past exchange.
(35:57):
Um, and a lot of people look atexchange and immediately write
it off as something that's infeasible because of the
financial burden, but there'ssupport there from the federal
government.
Um, you can effectively get, uh,seven or$8,000, uh, added to
your hex, but then they, theygive you that money, uh, to use
for facilitating your exchange.
(36:19):
You add that to the exchangegrants that are normally
provided by the university, um,which I think, uh, most, most
students, uh, if I understandcorrectly get a thousand
dollars, which is what I got.
And if you're a particularly,uh, academically gifted, uh,
then you're entitled to a$3,000grant.
(36:39):
Um, but it's, it's difficult tostate how, how valuable the
experience was.
Um, I know a lot of people useit as an opportunity to learn
another language.
For me, it was an opportunity togo overseas and study things
that weren't offered at ECU.
(37:00):
Um, that was my firstmotivation.
Um, the second motivation wasthat I wanted to travel, um, and
particularly travel the UnitedStates.
Cause I hadn't been there sinceI was three years old.
Um, I, I tried to make the mostof it.
I, I had planned, um, and set upfor, uh, exchange first, uh, at
(37:25):
the university of Connecticut.
Um, and then a second semesterstraight after that, uh, at the
university of Edinburgh, theuniversity of Glasgow, um,
obviously the, cause it wasstill six months out.
It was all still pending.
Um, but, uh, I, I didn't make itto the UK, um, because I got
(37:46):
sick, uh, after my firstsemester, but the first semester
alone was definitely worthwhile.
Um, I really enjoyed my time atYukon, but I also traveled
around it.
So I landed in New York.
Um, it was nine days beforesemester was supposed to start,
um, and traveled up throughBoston and Rhode Island, um,
(38:09):
sort of seeing all the science,doing the freedom trail and, um,
I didn't get to see as much ofNeil cause I would've liked to
because there was a snowstorm.
Um, so I didn't make it toColumbia.
Um, but uh, finally got toYukon.
The university experience isvery different over there.
(38:30):
Um, it's, it's sort of,mind-boggling like the, I guess
the, the tape that they have onit is that if you're paying that
much to go to university, um,you should focus on university
and all of the things universityhas to offer.
Um, the, I guess the norm isthat people, uh, weren't
(38:53):
working, which compared toAustralia was, was very
different.
Um, there also a lot less peopleor a lot smaller proportion who
would sort of commute, uh, to,to, uh, stores where, um, Yukon
is sort of out in the sticks ofConnecticut.
Um, but it's a little town anduniversity set up and you get,
(39:18):
you get assigned to a dorm,which again is wild, uh, by
comparison, I guess it wouldn'tseem that strange to people
going through college at UVU,um,
Speaker 1 (39:30):
The minority, I guess.
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, yeah.
So it sort of flipped on itshead over there.
Um, and I don't know, it was, itwas weird being like food was
all included.
Um, they just had these, uh,refectory, uh, outlets that were
open all the time.
You go in and excuse me, uh,fill up your tray.
(39:52):
And, uh, they like bottomlessice cream and pancakes every
morning for breakfast.
Um, it was, it was kind of wild.
It was also kind of insightfulas to like how that would impact
your, uh, health and physiology,but it certainly impacted mine.
Um, but I guess the, thosethings were weird, but there
(40:16):
were also things that were, Iguess, fantastic.
Um, I was there during what theycall the spring semester.
Um, but it snowed every week.
Um, which again, as, as a, inConnecticut.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Yeah.
I mean, it makes sense likethat, but it's also a weird
thing to experience coming fromspending most of your life in
Brisbane.
Um, uh, especially when you'vejust taken to shaving your
entire head, the feeling of likesnowflakes melting on like a
bull scalpers, uh, quiteconcerning.
(40:52):
Uh, but they're also facilitiesthat we didn't have, um, things
like, uh, on campus skating,rinks, um, massive sort of, uh,
again, this was pre COVID, but,uh, big rallies when there were
basketball games and, um, thingsthat were just eminently
(41:15):
uncomfortable, like cheerleadersand like the whole Greek scene.
Um, but they're also like veryinteresting cultural things like
you've down one, uh, uh, streetone, one of the streets that
hemmed in the university proper.
Um, there was, uh, religiousinstitutions for every major
(41:41):
faith just to just down a wholestreet.
Um, and those big Jewishpopulation at Yukon.
Um, so I got to talk with somepeople that Judaism in the way
that like, you're just notexposed to here, I guess.
Um, and the courses, the courseswere very different, um, of
(42:03):
courses like.
So I, I, I set out to takecourses that weren't offered at
EKU.
Um, so the, the two of those atthe time, um, were theory of
computation what's theory ofcomputing at AEQ, um, 2048, uh,
that was taught very differentlythere.
(42:24):
It was basically a mathematicscourse.
Um, so we went through Turingmachines and Lambda calculus and
push down automata and thosekinds of things.
Um, and those have become a sortof a passion of mine since then.
Um, the course was quitedifficult, uh, and I'm not a
particularly diligent student.
(42:46):
Um, I'd also done somethingquite foolish.
Uh, this was the first time in,um, think like 12 years that I
haven't been employed.
Um, so I decided to take all ofthat extra time, um, given that
I was, was nearly free andinvested into doing more uni
(43:07):
work, um, which I guess isn'tthe normal thing.
Most people would travel or, uh,do like social stuff.
Um, but I, I don't know.
I was trying to take advantageof stuff like, uh, they offered
a graduate class in quantumcomputing that they would let me
take.
Um, and I also took, uh,information security, uh,
(43:31):
networking and operating systemsbecause I had heard that they
weren't the best at Yuku.
Um, so that, that I guess, andthat would, would remain my
recommendation, um, try and picksubjects that either aren't
offered or aren't taught well.
And, um, but, uh, I did, and Idid do some traveling.
(43:54):
I did most of my travelingbefore and after I spent a month
after sort of traveling backacross, uh, the top of the
States.
So I went up to, um, Columbus,Ohio went to a music festival,
and then I went on to Cleveland,Ohio and went to U S pay con,
um, and met some interestingpeople, um, sort of a
(44:16):
fundamental two or three thatyou hear about on the internet,
but then there there's suddenlyreal.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it was, it was crazy like,um, the Michael, uh, who runs a
long running podcast on PythonPython, um, taught by them to me
(44:36):
, uh, who, uh, yeah, I've beenlistening to for years.
Um, at that point, uh, I endedup having dinner with him and,
um, at piko it was just wild andI met, um, Kenneth[inaudible]
who was there.
Um, I think he was working fordigital ocean at the time.
(44:59):
Um, I saw van Rossum.
Uh, it was just very, veryintense.
Um,
Speaker 1 (45:06):
The,
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I don't go and then I made my trip off.
It was basically visiting, uh,us, uh, universities.
So I went to the university ofChicago and Washington and
Stanford.
Um, and,
Speaker 1 (45:20):
And just to
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Tried to take in the culture, I also tried pizza in
all of the major us cities andwhich one
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Was the best I have to say,
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Chicago.
Um, that's sort of like deepcrusty sort of thing.
I dunno.
Um, yeah.
Um, and I got to take in like,uh, art museums and stuff, just,
I guess the, the culture thatI've always found kind of
(45:53):
lacking in Australia.
Um, there was also unpleasantparts to being in a kind of
like, we take a lot of stuff forgranted here in Australia.
Um, things like, uh, health careand, uh, homelessness and stuff,
uh, much more prevalent in the US as I went down the West coast
(46:16):
from Seattle, um, it just gotworse and worse.
Um, and it's, it's hard to takein when you've been relatively
isolated from that in Australia.
It's not that it doesn't existhere.
It's just that it's lessprevalent and it's sort of,
depending on where you go, you,you you're not necessarily
exposed to it.
(46:38):
Um, but it was, it was veryconfronting and it did very much
, uh, sour.
My, my view of the UnitedStates, I went over there with,
I guess, rose-tinted glasses.
Um, I don't, I don't regretdoing it at all.
I mean, the friends that I madeand the stuff that I got to
study, um, at Yukon and all ofthose cultural things that I got
(47:01):
to see, um, made it all muchmore worthwhile.
Um, but, uh, there, there are,uh, there are things that, um,
positive that are a part ofthose experiences as well.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yes.
Yeah, the good, the bad, and Iguess you don't really see the
bad until he spent six monthsliving there.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause I mean, it's, it's easyenough.
Like obviously I've been on, um,I have visited, uh, the States
since for like, for that startupadventure trip.
Um, and it's, it's quite againlike prevalent in San Francisco.
(47:45):
Um, but where we were, we weresomewhat isolated from it.
Um, and only being there forfour weeks, it was, um, sort of,
not enough for it to gets creepunder your skin,
Speaker 1 (48:00):
I guess.
Um, I guess after all thoseexperiences, um, if you've just
graduated, which I guess isreally exciting.
Um, firstly, congratulations.
Uh, thank you.
And secondly, uh, what's next?
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Um, so I'm, I'm moving, excuse me.
Uh, I'm uh, moving down toSydney, um, I'm currently doing
an internship with it last year.
Um, and then, uh, I'll be, uh,looking to just start a grad
role, um, in February.
Um, but I'm also looking forwardto being able to have a bit of a
(48:40):
change of scenery.
Um, after 10 years at Q, um, Idon't necessarily want to stop
learning.
I mean, the, the appeal ofundergraduate course workers has
kind of faded a tad after adecade, but, uh, I'm, I do need
to, uh, take on honors, um, the,uh, and I'm, and I'm planning on
(49:04):
doing that at USW.
Um, and hopefully I can, cause Ihad a bit of a strange situation
where I transitioned fromsoftware engineering, where I,
uh, had to do a thesis and Ididn't do a thesis, uh, and then
transitioned into computerscience so that I could sort of
leave early and get started on,on a career.
(49:26):
Um, but I have this sort ofthesis hanging over my head and
I'm trying to, uh, get creditfor that at UNFW.
Um, so that I can just sort ofdo my coursework and move on.
And then from there, um, I meanI'm hoping one day to, to do a
PhD.
Um, but I suspect it wouldprobably be sort of part-time on
the side of, of work.
(49:48):
Uh, yeah.
So those, those are the plans.
Um, I guess we'll see how it allpans out.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
You still, I guess, want to stay around and you need
just a little bit on the side.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I, I don't know if Iever want to stop learning.
Um, I've always been the kind ofperson who was motivated by
deadlines and, uh, sort ofkeeping up with my peers and
that kind of thing.
Um, so I've gotten, I've gottenbetter at learning on my own,
but I do need like the PhD isthe goal that honors is kind of
(50:24):
compulsory at this point.
Um,
Speaker 1 (50:28):
One final question I have, uh, is there anything
you'd tell yourself your pastself from when you first walked
into, you know, first of all,through those NICU Gates, I
don't know if he really hasGates, but you know what I mean?
Um, is there anything you'd tellyourself any advice as you just
walk out of high school and you,yeah.
(50:50):
I mean, anyone, anyone listeningto us, he might be in the early
stages of university and wantingto make the most out of that
time, anything you'd say.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah.
Uh, so I guess the first thingis that I would recommend taking
some time to work out what youlike and what you could see
yourself doing.
I didn't do that coming out ofschool.
I just sort of did sort of a mixof what I fell into with
psychology and what my, one ofmy parents did with finance.
Um, and that's not like that'snot the way to go about it if
(51:22):
you, if there are, I I'm, I'mjealous of the people that like
grow up, knowing that they wantto be a doctor or something, um,
or they, they grew up knowingthat they want to be a civil
engineer.
Uh, but if you're not one ofthose people, like I wasn't used
, you really need to take thetime to explore the options.
Now you can do that atuniversity, just enroll in a
(51:45):
sort of general purpose degree,like a bachelor of arts or a
bachelor of science.
You can always change your mindlater, take things, try them
out.
Um, and you'll probably fall inlove with something.
Um, like I did with computerscience.
Um, obviously I was doing itexternally, but, um, I would
have saved a lot of time if Ihadn't done that exploration
first, rather than out ofboredom, uh, four and a half
(52:09):
years into a five, five years ofa degree.
Um, it's not, it's not a problemif you change your mind.
Um, but yeah.
Do do that exploration fall inlove with something, whether
it's computer science or likeone of my friends, um, uh,
comparative religion, um, it,doesn't it like you can make a
(52:32):
career out of practicallyanything.
Um, it's just a matter offinding what it is that you can
do, uh, uh, and, and be happydoing, I guess.
Um, obviously it'd be ideal ifyou, uh, found that thing to be
computer science and joined DTCs, but, um, it's, it's not, uh,
(52:54):
it's not for everybody.
Um, everybody should have theability to do it, but, um, it's,
uh, yeah, just a matter offinding what makes you happy.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
It's exploring all those parts as early as you can.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yeah.
And, and I mean, once, once youhave found that path, uh, look
for people who are further downthat path than you and ask them
what they regret, um, or whatthey, what they've done that
they found to be advantageous,um, find out where the are,
because there won't, there mightnot necessarily be, um, someone
(53:31):
telling you or someone laying itout for, you might have to seek
that out.
Um, and I've found that it's alot easier to find that path
take on all those experiencesthan to have to deal with the
regret of having not even knownthat they existed, um, years
down the line.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Alrighty, thanks so much.
Um, I've learned a lot listeningto this and I guess hearing
about your experiences and I'msure a lot of other, um, uni
students will find it especiallyuseful and especially those, I
guess, in the early, early time.
Um, did, yeah, thanks so muchfor coming along.
Um, thanks for having me.
It's great.
(54:12):
Yeah.
And also, thanks for all thecontributions you've made to,
you can see us, you have thepast few years and, you know,
helping it blossom into thissociety of this today.
And, um, yeah, I guess this,this show is, uh, um, one of
your, uh, I guess littlecontributions as well, getting
this off the ground.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Yeah.
I, I, I mean, giving you QCs hasgiven me so much, it felt only
right to give back and I'dsuggest, I guess that's one
thing that I didn't sayexplicitly was that getting
involved in the club and anybodycan run for the committee.
Um, getting involved in that toois just one of the most
(54:53):
rewarding experiences becauseyou, you form again that network
with those people, um, thatlasts forever.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks so much.
And yeah, I wish you all thebest in your future endeavors.
Thank you.
Hi, it's Martin here again.
I'd just like to say a big thankyou to all of the listeners in
2020 for joining us on this newand wonderful journey over the
past few months, Liv and I havehad the honor to host this new
form of UCS content, and wethink it's been a big hit.
(55:22):
So thanks to everyone for all ofyour support, as I'm sure many
of you are aware it's holidayseason coming up and the router
will be taking a short breakover Christmas and new year's to
recuperate.
We'll be relaunching in 2021with us second season, bigger
and better than ever, andhopefully with a nicer jingle
until then as always come joinour Slack
(55:44):
community@slackdotcs.org andfollow us on our social media to
keep up to date with all things.
If you see us, have a MerryChristmas happy holidays, happy
new year, and we'll see you backin 2021.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
[inaudible].
Hi there and welcome to the router, the official
podcast of the youth incomputing society, where we
explore the human side of tech.
I'm your host, Matt and I hopeyou've been having a wonderful
summer break today.
We'll be having a chat with NickLambourne, former president of
UK UCS, and currently interningat Atlassian as a site,
reliability engineer.
He's done pretty much everythingyou can do during his time at
(00:20):
university.
And he's here to share hisadvice for making the most out
of your university experiencetoo.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
[inaudible]
Speaker 1 (00:40):
All right.
Welcome to the rouser neck.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Hi, thanks for having me.
Um, it's a pleasure to be here
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Lastly, for the rest of the audience.
Uh, could you introduce yourselfand, uh, your history?
Speaker 3 (00:52):
Yeah.
Um, so, uh, some people who havebeen around a while might know
me, um, I was president of ETCs,uh, in 2019.
Um, and before that I was sortof around the periphery.
Um, and then last year I stuckaround to help out the what's
now the old committee, uh, with,uh, with running things.
(01:16):
Um, so if you've been to some ofthe ETCs talks, they've
organized, uh, a lot of those,uh, my experience, uh, with the
university, uh, is a bitdifferent than most I've been at
Yuku.
Um, and having just left, uh,last week, uh, I I've been at IQ
(01:37):
for 10 years, which means that,uh, I've, I've seen a lot, I've
missed out on a lot ofopportunities, but I've been
able to take advantage of a lotof others.
Um, and yet in that time I'vestudied, uh, psychology and
finance to begin with.
Cause I really didn't know whatI wanted to do, uh, after school
.
And then, uh, when I finallyfound out what it was that I
(02:01):
wanted to spend my life workingon computer science, uh, and
that's sort of how I, uh, endedup, uh, involved in uqc.
Yes.
Speaker 1 (02:11):
W what was the thing that, that, I guess after like
four, four or five years ofstudying psychology and finance,
what was the thing that made youchange, change your mind and go
into computing in general?
Is that like a catalyst forthat?
Speaker 3 (02:29):
It was, yeah, so I, um, I've taken, I've sort of
gotten a bit bored.
I was bored a lot during those,those years in, in, uh, in
finance and in psychology.
Um, so I did a lot of stuff onthe side.
Um, I worked a fair bit, um,mostly sort of customer service
jobs, but then moved into a moresort of retail and, uh, sorry,
(02:52):
uh, more, uh, substantive jobs,like, uh, I did a bit of
lobbying.
I worked as a technical advisor,um, but the thing that sort of
solidified this, this idea thatI'd had, um, of sort of being
interested in computer science,um, was, uh, taking this one
(03:13):
particular online course, CS 50,uh, Harvard, uh, the
introduction to computer science, um, put through Harvard and
taught by this amazing, likecrazy passionate, uh, lecturer,
uh, Nick, David Malin, andtaking that course was sort of,
I took that course six monthsbefore I was due to finish, uh,
(03:35):
my, uh, first sort of doubledegree there.
And I knew at that time that Ineeded to go and do this
instead.
Um, this is, this got me excitedabout the prospect of work, uh,
or the prospect of study even,um, in a way that I hadn't been
before.
So, uh, that, that was reallythe catalyst and doing that, and
(03:56):
then getting more into Pythonand then starting to use Python
in my work, um, uh, as atechnical advisor and, and, uh,
as, uh, as the manager of anetwork of led billboards, um, I
set up this, uh, Django basedapplication to help me do my
(04:16):
job.
Um, and it was then that Icould, like, I could really see
the true, I don't know that thetrue power of what I could learn
in computer science.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
And with that experience, I guess there's,
there's, there's degrees,there's past degrees.
Do you find yourself ever usingthings from those nowadays, or
are there any experiences thatyou've gathered from those that
time that you still
Speaker 3 (04:45):
It's the only other tangential?
Um, of course I wish that I haddiscovered computer science.
I was kind of, I was initiallyput off, um, because I didn't
want to, I did like computers, Ienjoyed building computers and
playing around with them as achild, but I didn't, I was
worried when I was at school,but doing that, uh, for work
(05:06):
would sort of ruin the fun.
Um, so obviously it was a longtime before I realized my
mistake there and I do wish Ihad of gone straight into
computer science or computerscience and math straight out of
school, but I mean, there havebeen parts of it.
It's it's yeah.
The application is only evertangential it's, uh, little
(05:28):
things, um, like being familiarwith the accounting terminology
or, um, things like, uh, a bitof the organizational psychology
stuff that I did, um, helpedwhen I was working with people
on the QCs committee inparticular, um, that I guess it
did help, but probably weren'twith the five years that it took
(05:51):
to get there.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I guess, tell me a bit more about your QCs, uh, the
committee, I guess you say youstarted, um, university journey.
When did you get involved withyou?
Speaker 3 (06:05):
Yes, first.
So I, uh, I'd done, uh,obviously I'd done this course.
Um, I started doing a bit of webprogramming, um, and I was
looking for ways to get involvedbecause I knew that the way that
I'd gone about my first degreeor first double degree, uh
wasn't that, that wasn't the wayto do university.
(06:27):
I've been there long enough andI'd missed out on enough
opportunities that I knew that Ihad to do something different.
So even before I, uh, started inwhat initially was software
engineering, um, in 2016, uh,sort of in the later part of
2015, I started to, uh, look forways to get more involved.
(06:49):
And I came across the computingsociety and it was in a very
different state to what it isnow.
Uh, my first ever hit UCS eventwas actually their AGM in that
year.
And I went along and the entireevent was, uh, well, the vast
majority of the event was themtrying to find 30 people to sign
(07:10):
the attendance form, to keep theclub going, uh, which when you
look at UGCs now is kind of hardto imagine.
Um, I mean, there's always thatfear, uh, that you're not going
to have enough people, but ithasn't been a, a real risk for,
for many, many years.
Um, so that, that was my, myfirst engagement.
(07:30):
And then after that, it was, uh,into 2016, it was attending the
events.
Uh, they weren't quite asfrequent back then, but, uh, the
vibe was there.
And I guess I, I kind of feltlike I, uh, had found my people
if that makes sense.
(07:50):
Um, which, uh, in, in contrastto finance and psychology, like,
I, I just couldn't say, like, I,I certainly couldn't tell you
now, but I even would have beenstruggling to tell you them a
single person who I had studiedwith, um, apart from one person
that I've known from high school, um, in those, in those
previous two degrees.
(08:11):
But yeah, I got more involved.
Um, I got, uh, to know, uh, thepresident at the time, um, uh,
Taylor Manderson and sort of gotin with that circle, I guess.
And I developed this, thisnetwork of people that would
(08:33):
come to be my, my sort of corefriendship group.
And again, that wasn't somethingthat I'd experienced, um, in
either of the two previous, uh,degrees.
And I guess the other thing wasthat I was, uh, I was in
engineering.
So I went through those firstyear engineering subjects and
(08:54):
there's this cohort vibe, butdevelops around engineering
because you are effectivelytraumatized, uh, into bonding
with your fellow students by thecourses.
Um, they force you to do groupwork with people you've never
met.
They, uh, have a ridiculousamount of assessment.
And if you're not relying onyour fellow students, then, uh,
(09:18):
it's unlikely that you're goingto get through it all.
So that, so there were a fewsort of, uh, QCs people that I,
that I, or people that wouldbecome new QCs, uh, members that
I met through there as well.
Um, and he had just developedthis sort of network and that
went on, and obviously there afew years there, um, where, uh,
(09:45):
the, the, the clubs started togain a bit of momentum, um,
particularly under Taylor.
Um, the society started to grow,obviously there's this, uh,
external influence, uh, sort ofbuilding up technology and
computer science, um, that meantthat they were all of these
students coming in.
Um, and we had more numbers,more resources, and, uh, I got
(10:11):
sort of got more involved,attended more events, um, got to
know more people.
And again, got in with this,this sort of core group who
would become my, my closefriends.
And then, um, at the end of 2018, uh, Cameron was stepping down
or graduating.
(10:32):
Um, everybody was up from theexisting committee was leaving
and, uh, I had decided to runfor president.
Um, now that was after that feltquite radical to me because,
Speaker 4 (10:44):
Because I hadn't, uh,
Speaker 3 (10:48):
I hadn't held a committee position before I'd
run, um, the year before Ithink, and been knocked back.
Um, it, it is the, the, thevoting process is a little bit
of a popularity contest.
We tried to obviously addressthat as the years have gone by,
but, um, I hadn't served before.
So I felt like it was a bit of along shot running, running for
(11:10):
president.
Um, but I, I got voted in, um,by a margin of one vote.
Um,
Speaker 4 (11:21):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:23):
It was a very close thing.
Um, and talking to people after,uh, I was sitting down with
someone a couple of days ago andthey're like, Oh, I could have
been that deciding vote.
Um, and, uh, but, and I was abit worried because like that
one vote margin and sort of, itwasn't contentious, but it was
(11:43):
competitive.
Um, but Jack, uh, who, uh, wasthe, the, the one vote shy, I
ended up secretary and I wasone, I was a bit worried about
how that relationship was goingto go if that was where it was
starting.
Uh, cause we didn't really knoweach other before then, but, um,
I know the course of, uh, well,the time since, uh, that, that
(12:07):
year in particular, when weworked so closely together to
change the society and keep itgoing, um, we we've developed
into really good friends.
Um, and then we, we workedtogether as interns at Canva.
Um, and it was just, I dunno,uh, it, it, it, it developed
(12:30):
into what, what, what waseffectively a competition
developed into just this really,really good friendship.
Um, and I wouldn't have beenable to do make all of the
progress that we made and do allof the things that we did that
year without Jack's support
Speaker 1 (12:45):
Out of the things you did, I guess, as president or
with, with Jack a secretary,what is, what is the thing or
things that you're most, mostproud of achieving during that
time?
Is there anything that you canlike point out and say, I did
this, you know, that's somethingthat feature UGCs, I guess
(13:07):
iterations will be,
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I mean, it's, it's a little bit complicated because
it's, it's something that I'mboth proud of.
And I guess regret slightly,because we may have taken it a
little bit too far, but turningwhat was sort of at most weekly,
typically sort of biweekly, uh,events into at least two events
(13:32):
a week, every week throughoutthe year, um, or at least
throughout the semesters, um,meant that the students and the
members got a lot more exposureto, uh, the talent, because I
was effectively relying a lot ofthe time again on that, that
(13:53):
network of friends that haddeveloped in of QCs, most of
whom had gone on and graduatedand were working at places like
Atlassian or, uh, Canva,Microsoft, those kinds of
places.
Um, but it does, it did put alot of pressure on the rest of
the committee and Jack and I inparticular, um, in terms of
(14:14):
organization.
And I mean, we would justwrecked, uh, AF after a year of
that, and then sort of, I guess,setting the bar so that the
subsequent committee, I guess,that I was also on and
organizing events for, um, feltlike that was the standard that
needed to be maintained.
Um, and I guess the, the otherdownside of that is that I, I
(14:40):
was much better at organizingthe, the technical talks and I
was at the social aspect.
Um, and I can see now that whatyou QCs needs, particularly in
the environment that we're innow, is that social aspect, um,
more than they need to belearning about Coobernetti's or,
(15:03):
uh, T mucks or whatever.
Um, so I think the regret is, isthe balance, um, in terms of
workload and social versustechnical.
Um, but I am also proud that wewere able to pull that much off
because over the last two years,it's probably been nearly a
(15:23):
hundred events.
Um, by the time we tally themall up, um, that have been
organized, um, by, by ETCs,which is just a massive
increase.
And I guess the other, the otherbig thing that I'm proud of is
that that growth continued.
Now, it's difficult to say, uh,how much of that growth is due
to the influx of concisestudents, um, and how much is
(15:48):
due to us doing a better job ofadvertising, but it was nice to
finally, um, with the help ofMadoff's, uh, last minute
recruiting efforts to reach, uh,500 paying members before, uh,
handing it over, uh, in 2019.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, I think, I think the influx of members has
been really good.
And I think, I think with COVID,I guess it kind of affected the
turnout, but even the onlineturnout was I think really good.
And I think the consistency wasgood as well.
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (16:26):
That was, that was something that I struggled with
a lot was dealing with the shiftin turnout, because obviously as
the person organizing events, Iwas relying on turnout as my, as
my metric of how interested orhow engaged people were and
going from sort of a 40 personsort of median, uh, in like
(16:49):
in-person to sort of strugglingto get, uh, 20 people to watch,
uh, when it was live online, um,was, it was, it was a little bit
difficult to swallow, but thenyou'd see things like over the
course of that week, a hundredmore people would watch it.
Um, and you'd feel, uh, slightlymore redeemed now slightly more
(17:09):
like the effort that you put inwas worth it.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
Hmm.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it, it, it, it, Ithink the, the way that since
the events was strained andrecorded, I guess that also
affected the way that, you know,members would consume the talks
and things like that, then thatwould be, I guess, less
incentive to watch them on, uh,live, but because they'd know
(17:35):
that they would always berecorded and available to watch
whenever it was convenient.
So, yeah, I guess, I guess themetrics it's kinda hard, but,
um, yeah, I, I do still thinkthat, uh, despite the
circumstances it's been quite agood turnout of all of you out
of all the streaming and all therecorded.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it, it gave us theopportunity to go out and buy
equipment so that we can streamand have this, this catalog of
resources that we can linkpeople to.
Um, so even like, I'm hopingthat we continue the tradition
of things like, uh, having, uh,their main team ups talk, uh, at
the beginning of each semester,the 2310 runs.
(18:15):
But we, if, if we have a didn't,um, or for whatever reason, uh,
like the recording failed orwhatever, we have something to
link back to.
Um, and I think those resourceswill, uh, probably outlive the,
any, any of our tenure, uh, withQCs.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
So I guess it sounds like UCS has been a really big
part of university experience.
Um, yeah, I guess that wasn't itthere, right?
Like there was other stuff too.
Um, yeah.
Other experiences, where do yougo into those?
Speaker 3 (18:56):
Absolutely.
Um, so obviously if you see us,we've been a massive part of my
life for the past two and a halfyears.
Um, and, and even before that,uh, but there have been out the
aspects of university that Ithink people don't like, again,
me going through my doubledegree, it sort of took four and
(19:16):
a half years before I was evenaware that these things were
available.
Um, and some of them weren't, uh, full finance or psychology,
like computer science andtechnology, is, is someone
special in that it has thisfocus on it right now, um, that
may not always be the case, butthat doesn't mean that there are
opportunities, um, that you cantake advantage of.
(19:38):
So a couple of the big ones forme, um, where, uh, I'll go sort
of shortest impact to longest,but the, uh, there's a space at
[inaudible] called idea hub, andthey describe it as this pre
(19:58):
accelerator.
Um, and it's a little bit cringycoming from a comp side
perspective.
Um, and a lot of this stuff willbe familiar to anybody who's
gone through sort of early, uh,years business education, but
they offer this program wherethey will effectively talk you
through how to take an idea, uh,and turn that into a business or
(20:21):
a startup.
And you go through this processand then you, you, once you've
completed it, I think it's a onenight, a week for five weeks or
eight weeks.
And you, you just go and you'lldo some, uh, you participate in
some cringy activities likedesign jams, and that kind of
thing, but you, you will, you'llactually talk to entrepreneurs.
(20:44):
And, uh, it's, it's a worthwhileexperience, particularly if you
don't have that businessbackground, but, um, it's even
more worthwhile because when youfinish, you become eligible to
go on these trips.
Uh, now they're, they're calledstartup adventures and by go to
different places.
So there's, uh, Shanghai,Televiv San Francisco and
(21:08):
Singapore, I believe were theones that were available last
time I checked.
And what it is was effectivelyan all expenses paid trip to one
of these commercial hubs whereyou were placed with a startup.
Um, now those startups sort ofvaried from the couple of people
in an office to a couple of acouple of hundred people, um,
(21:33):
where you're starting to wonderif the word up still applies,
but the, like this, this tripand the it's not just going
there and working and getting,uh, like experience working in a
company, particularly a smallcompany where you're forced to
(21:53):
wear many hats, um, is, is justincredible.
But then you also, so, um, wewere taken by the coordinator,
um, Nimrod, uh, climate, uh, whoI believe now runs NICU
ventures, which is sort of theparent organization of this idea
hub.
And he, in addition to us doingour sort of eight to nine hour
(22:18):
work days in the startups, Iworked with a med tech startup
called patched, um, with, uh,another one of your podcast
guests.
Um, whereas this is the CEO, um,and, uh, the, the work was
interesting.
I was doing, um, uh, trainingoptimization for some machine
(22:40):
learning for medical technologyso that their goal is to detect
sepsis and other illnesses, um,using vital sign data, um, and
sort of, uh, recurrent neuralnets defectively.
Um,
Speaker 5 (22:56):
And
Speaker 3 (22:58):
So I go to do that work, but then Nimrod would take
us out in the evenings.
Um, and it would be, uh, we we'dgo to like, uh, we work or we go
to Uber and we'd have, there'dbe networking events or fireside
chats, or, um, we went to UCBerkeley, um, and sat down.
(23:20):
And, uh, there was a firesidechat with someone, uh, from
Sequoia capital.
So getting this experience,getting this exposure to this
world, um, was, was justphenomenal.
Now I've I'm, I was at the timeand remained a little bit
skeptical of the startup space.
(23:41):
Um, mostly because running astartup and being a part of a
startup takes a lot out of you.
Um, and I don't always have thatto give with other obligations.
Um, but it's just like, it was aphenomenal experience.
Um, this was just after I'd beenelected president of VPCs.
So it made for some very longdays, I do sort of eight or nine
(24:03):
hours doing this, um, machinelearning optimization, and then
I'd go and do those networkingevents.
And then I come back to thehostel where we were staying,
um, and sort of sit up until twoor three in the morning
organizing ETCs talks for thecoming semester, um, or, uh,
market day or whatever.
Um, and it was a lot of work,but it was incredibly worth it.
(24:26):
And you, the people that youmeet there, um, and work with
will become part of this networkthat you develop and what I've
discovered again, over andabsurdly long time, uh, at
university is that the networkis the most important thing.
Like the classes.
Um, a lot of it, you can sort oftake a leave, uh, but the
(24:50):
network in particular isincredibly valuable and miss was
one of the best, uh, experiencesthat I'd had for developing that
network.
Uh, I arrived back from that atlike 6:00 AM and then, uh, had
(25:10):
to go to market day, whichthankfully, um, Jack had done a
lot of the organizing for, uh,so it was, it was a very hectic
beginning to the semester, butabsolutely would recommend going
and following up or trying toget into this program.
Um, the other, the other bigthing that, again, I think
people don't realize is there,um, is research.
(25:35):
Uh, you can get involved as anundergraduate and it's
particularly valuable whenyou're an undergraduate and you
don't like, you don't have verymuch experience and your, uh,
you're ineligible for the vastmajority of technical
internships, because they'reonly looking for penultimate
(25:56):
year students.
So what you can do is you can doin the winter or summer break,
um, instead of sitting at homeand bemoaning your lack of
eligibility for interns, you canas many, as many as many dude.
Yeah.
I mean, it's, it's, yeah, it'sdisappointing.
And I think it's a failing ofthe, of the industry that
(26:17):
they're only willing to investat that point where it's most
likely they will get their, gettheir return.
I mean, it makes sensefinancially, but it's, it's, I
don't know.
It seems a bit too much like theNetflix, we don't do interns at
all kind of attitude.
Um, but yeah, this, thisresearch opportunity, so it's,
(26:39):
it's in the, the winter break inthe middle of the year or the
summer at the end of the year,and it's sort of four or five
weeks for winter.
Um, or I think you negotiate it,but it's like eight to 12 for
summer.
Um, and they pay you the pay.
It's certainly not internshippay or, uh, but it's, it's
(27:01):
enough to get you by.
Um, but it gives you access to,again, this network that's
critically important.
Um, so my, my first experiencewas this was applying.
I was on exchange at the time.
Um, so the application processwas a bit based.
You have to normally getinterviewed by zoom or
something.
(27:22):
Um, and I had to organize a timethat would work, but I ended up
in a position where I wasworking with, uh, one of the Q,
uh, ITW researchers, uh, on,they ha they have these, um,
robots, uh, they call Opie.
(27:46):
And what they are is effectivelya, a couple of, uh, tablets, uh,
secured to this wooden framethat gives it sort of a almost
BEMAX kind of vibe, um, if BMXwas flat for some reason, um,
but you, you, you interact withit.
(28:07):
And the, the idea is that, uh,you participate in these
activities and these games onthese tablets, uh, that will
teach you language.
Um, and they're sort of targetedat Australian indigenous
languages, uh, where therearen't a lot of resources.
So my job was to build somethingthat turned, uh, linguistic
(28:30):
transcription files, these Elandfiles, uh, into resources like
there, the correct format forresources.
So I built a little, uh, Python,uh, QUT application, and this,
the, the, the, uh, researcherwho was supervising me, uh,
[inaudible], um, wassufficiently impressed that he
(28:54):
invited me to come back as aresearch assistant to work on
other projects for the lab.
Um, so that was, that was how Igot started in research.
Now, while the summer researchand winter research scholarships
don't pay very much, the, uh,the research assistant position
is basically work whenever youwant during the week.
(29:15):
And we will give you the samerate as tutoring, um, sort of
guaranteed up to a certainnumber of hours per week.
So for me, I think that was, uh,15 hours a week that I could
spend, uh, working on theseprojects.
Now, the work will vary based onthe researcher and the project.
(29:35):
Initially, I started outcleaning up, uh, some of the
code they'd already written.
Now, if you have the misfortuneto interact with academic code,
it's very different to sort ofindustry code, uh, you'll have
single little variables or inone particularly fund case,
every variable being named data,um, regardless of what it
(30:00):
contains.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, so cleaning that up andmaking it a little bit more
professional, a little bit moreextensible was my first job.
And I spent a few months doingthat before I was moved to
another project, uh, working onspeech recognition.
So developing a framework, uh,for speech recognition, uh,
(30:22):
developing speech recognitionmodels based on, again, this,
this transcribed data, um, youdevelop a machine learning model
, um, to effectively recognize,uh, language.
And obviously your resultsdepend on how much data you have
(30:43):
and how you get set up.
But the idea was that if peoplehave the data, but don't have
the technological sophisticationto work out, uh, the underlying
library, then we can give them anice, pretty GUI, uh, that lets
them build their own models andinteract with it and use it, uh,
(31:05):
with sort of minimal, minimaltechnical background.
And I still work on this projecttoday.
Um, I'm still sort of a researchassistant.
Um, I did go in for anothersummer scholarship following the
winter one, um, which I was alsodoing while on that trip to San
Francisco and newly president.
(31:27):
So again, it was, it was a bithectic, but, um, in, in my
experience, uh, it's almostpossible to make anything work.
Uh, if you're like I was worriedabout going on the San Francisco
trip, uh, having just sort oftaken on this, this new role,
(31:48):
uh, as a research assistant.
Uh, but my boss was fine withit.
He was like, do what you can.
And then we can sort of, if youwant to, you can make up the
hours when you get back.
Um, or you can work from thereif you need to, or if you have
the time.
Um, so that, that flexibility isfantastic, particularly when
you're a uni student and you'vegot other deadlines and the
ability to not do work for acouple of weeks is just
(32:10):
fantastic.
And I would recommend it toanybody.
Um,
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Hm.
I, yeah, I guess, yeah, that,that, uh, comment about you can
make anything work, I think, isthere good, um, thing to say,
cause like when you have allthese different opportunities,
I've found you get a lot moremileage out of just taking them
and seeing where they go thento, I guess, see an opportunity
(32:38):
and say, Oh, I don't have time.
Or, Oh, I wouldn't be able to,you know, to an extent of
course, like be able to manageyour time, but
Speaker 3 (32:47):
Yeah, you, you, you need to need to keep in mind
things like your mental healthand your ability, like you need
to get sleep and stuff.
But in, in, in my experience,people are much more willing to
compromise and work with you,uh, than you'd expect.
And sure.
It might lead to an awkwardconversation.
We have to say to somebody, Oh,I'm look, I'm sorry.
(33:08):
Uh, I've I need to cut down onmy obligations and I've had to
do that as well, because I, um,in, in what I would call
downtime or I didn't have a fewjobs on the go, uh, I reached
out to some, uh, startupfounders at, uh,[inaudible] I
lab and worked with them.
But eventually when betterpaying or well paying work, uh,
(33:33):
came along, I had to turn aroundand say, uh, I look, I'm sorry.
Uh, here's, here's what I'vebuilt for you.
I hope it helps.
Um, I, uh, I need to go andfocus on other stuff and like
I've never had someone not beokay with that, um, that they,
they, they might bedisappointed.
(33:54):
Um, but, uh, in my experiencethey rarely even show that.
Um, so you have to, I guess thebiggest thing for me was that I,
I didn't know about theseopportunities the first time
around, so I was determined totake advantage of everything
that I could.
Um, and you don't, you don'treally, apart from LinkedIn
(34:16):
stalking people, you don't, youdon't really know what what's
available.
Um, I mean, I, I have a feelingit's just a problem of like,
there's too much on the go atonce for the university to
communicate this all veryeffectively.
Um, but it certainly feels likeif you're not paying attention,
you can, you can miss out.
(34:36):
Um,
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Yeah, I found the LinkedIn stalking is a wonderful
way to find out opportunitiesfor myself.
I guess I found some I engagedin even like, um, yeah, but I
guess, um, there's also thisexperience, um, I guess both of
us have a little bit offamiliarity with, um, in
(34:58):
different ways.
Uh, and that's I guess, asemester exchange.
Um, yes.
Uh, I guess, yeah.
Can you tell me about that?
Um, Oh, I'm sorry.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
Yes.
Uh, for, for those unaware, um,COVID has, uh, destroyed and
cruelly torn apart.
The plans of, of many people,uh, intended on going on
exchange.
Um, and fortunately I did myexchange back in 2018.
(35:35):
Um, but if I know it's, it'sdifficult to talk about it now,
and it's difficult to say, yeah,go out and do this now.
But as far as, as far asexperiences that are going to,
uh, broaden your horizons, Iguess, uh, for want of a better
phrase, uh, it's, it's difficultto go past exchange.
(35:57):
Um, and a lot of people look atexchange and immediately write
it off as something that's infeasible because of the
financial burden, but there'ssupport there from the federal
government.
Um, you can effectively get, uh,seven or$8,000, uh, added to
your hex, but then they, theygive you that money, uh, to use
for facilitating your exchange.
(36:19):
You add that to the exchangegrants that are normally
provided by the university, um,which I think, uh, most, most
students, uh, if I understandcorrectly get a thousand
dollars, which is what I got.
And if you're a particularly,uh, academically gifted, uh,
then you're entitled to a$3,000grant.
(36:39):
Um, but it's, it's difficult tostate how, how valuable the
experience was.
Um, I know a lot of people useit as an opportunity to learn
another language.
For me, it was an opportunity togo overseas and study things
that weren't offered at ECU.
(37:00):
Um, that was my firstmotivation.
Um, the second motivation wasthat I wanted to travel, um, and
particularly travel the UnitedStates.
Cause I hadn't been there sinceI was three years old.
Um, I, I tried to make the mostof it.
I, I had planned, um, and set upfor, uh, exchange first, uh, at
(37:25):
the university of Connecticut.
Um, and then a second semesterstraight after that, uh, at the
university of Edinburgh, theuniversity of Glasgow, um,
obviously the, cause it wasstill six months out.
It was all still pending.
Um, but, uh, I, I didn't make itto the UK, um, because I got
(37:46):
sick, uh, after my firstsemester, but the first semester
alone was definitely worthwhile.
Um, I really enjoyed my time atYukon, but I also traveled
around it.
So I landed in New York.
Um, it was nine days beforesemester was supposed to start,
um, and traveled up throughBoston and Rhode Island, um,
(38:09):
sort of seeing all the science,doing the freedom trail and, um,
I didn't get to see as much ofNeil cause I would've liked to
because there was a snowstorm.
Um, so I didn't make it toColumbia.
Um, but uh, finally got toYukon.
The university experience isvery different over there.
(38:30):
Um, it's, it's sort of,mind-boggling like the, I guess
the, the tape that they have onit is that if you're paying that
much to go to university, um,you should focus on university
and all of the things universityhas to offer.
Um, the, I guess the norm isthat people, uh, weren't
(38:53):
working, which compared toAustralia was, was very
different.
Um, there also a lot less peopleor a lot smaller proportion who
would sort of commute, uh, to,to, uh, stores where, um, Yukon
is sort of out in the sticks ofConnecticut.
Um, but it's a little town anduniversity set up and you get,
(39:18):
you get assigned to a dorm,which again is wild, uh, by
comparison, I guess it wouldn'tseem that strange to people
going through college at UVU,um,
Speaker 1 (39:30):
The minority, I guess.
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (39:31):
Yeah, yeah.
So it sort of flipped on itshead over there.
Um, and I don't know, it was, itwas weird being like food was
all included.
Um, they just had these, uh,refectory, uh, outlets that were
open all the time.
You go in and excuse me, uh,fill up your tray.
(39:52):
And, uh, they like bottomlessice cream and pancakes every
morning for breakfast.
Um, it was, it was kind of wild.
It was also kind of insightfulas to like how that would impact
your, uh, health and physiology,but it certainly impacted mine.
Um, but I guess the, thosethings were weird, but there
(40:16):
were also things that were, Iguess, fantastic.
Um, I was there during what theycall the spring semester.
Um, but it snowed every week.
Um, which again, as, as a, inConnecticut.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Yeah.
I mean, it makes sense likethat, but it's also a weird
thing to experience coming fromspending most of your life in
Brisbane.
Um, uh, especially when you'vejust taken to shaving your
entire head, the feeling of likesnowflakes melting on like a
bull scalpers, uh, quiteconcerning.
(40:52):
Uh, but they're also facilitiesthat we didn't have, um, things
like, uh, on campus skating,rinks, um, massive sort of, uh,
again, this was pre COVID, but,uh, big rallies when there were
basketball games and, um, thingsthat were just eminently
(41:15):
uncomfortable, like cheerleadersand like the whole Greek scene.
Um, but they're also like veryinteresting cultural things like
you've down one, uh, uh, streetone, one of the streets that
hemmed in the university proper.
Um, there was, uh, religiousinstitutions for every major
(41:41):
faith just to just down a wholestreet.
Um, and those big Jewishpopulation at Yukon.
Um, so I got to talk with somepeople that Judaism in the way
that like, you're just notexposed to here, I guess.
Um, and the courses, the courseswere very different, um, of
(42:03):
courses like.
So I, I, I set out to takecourses that weren't offered at
EKU.
Um, so the, the two of those atthe time, um, were theory of
computation what's theory ofcomputing at AEQ, um, 2048, uh,
that was taught very differentlythere.
(42:24):
It was basically a mathematicscourse.
Um, so we went through Turingmachines and Lambda calculus and
push down automata and thosekinds of things.
Um, and those have become a sortof a passion of mine since then.
Um, the course was quitedifficult, uh, and I'm not a
particularly diligent student.
(42:46):
Um, I'd also done somethingquite foolish.
Uh, this was the first time in,um, think like 12 years that I
haven't been employed.
Um, so I decided to take all ofthat extra time, um, given that
I was, was nearly free andinvested into doing more uni
(43:07):
work, um, which I guess isn'tthe normal thing.
Most people would travel or, uh,do like social stuff.
Um, but I, I don't know.
I was trying to take advantageof stuff like, uh, they offered
a graduate class in quantumcomputing that they would let me
take.
Um, and I also took, uh,information security, uh,
(43:31):
networking and operating systemsbecause I had heard that they
weren't the best at Yuku.
Um, so that, that I guess, andthat would, would remain my
recommendation, um, try and picksubjects that either aren't
offered or aren't taught well.
And, um, but, uh, I did, and Idid do some traveling.
(43:54):
I did most of my travelingbefore and after I spent a month
after sort of traveling backacross, uh, the top of the
States.
So I went up to, um, Columbus,Ohio went to a music festival,
and then I went on to Cleveland,Ohio and went to U S pay con,
um, and met some interestingpeople, um, sort of a
(44:16):
fundamental two or three thatyou hear about on the internet,
but then there there's suddenlyreal.
Um, yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it was, it was crazy like,um, the Michael, uh, who runs a
long running podcast on PythonPython, um, taught by them to me
(44:36):
, uh, who, uh, yeah, I've beenlistening to for years.
Um, at that point, uh, I endedup having dinner with him and,
um, at piko it was just wild andI met, um, Kenneth[inaudible]
who was there.
Um, I think he was working fordigital ocean at the time.
(44:59):
Um, I saw van Rossum.
Uh, it was just very, veryintense.
Um,
Speaker 1 (45:06):
The,
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I don't go and then I made my trip off.
It was basically visiting, uh,us, uh, universities.
So I went to the university ofChicago and Washington and
Stanford.
Um, and,
Speaker 1 (45:20):
And just to
Speaker 3 (45:23):
Tried to take in the culture, I also tried pizza in
all of the major us cities andwhich one
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Was the best I have to say,
Speaker 3 (45:33):
Chicago.
Um, that's sort of like deepcrusty sort of thing.
I dunno.
Um, yeah.
Um, and I got to take in like,uh, art museums and stuff, just,
I guess the, the culture thatI've always found kind of
(45:53):
lacking in Australia.
Um, there was also unpleasantparts to being in a kind of
like, we take a lot of stuff forgranted here in Australia.
Um, things like, uh, health careand, uh, homelessness and stuff,
uh, much more prevalent in the US as I went down the West coast
(46:16):
from Seattle, um, it just gotworse and worse.
Um, and it's, it's hard to takein when you've been relatively
isolated from that in Australia.
It's not that it doesn't existhere.
It's just that it's lessprevalent and it's sort of,
depending on where you go, you,you you're not necessarily
exposed to it.
(46:38):
Um, but it was, it was veryconfronting and it did very much
, uh, sour.
My, my view of the UnitedStates, I went over there with,
I guess, rose-tinted glasses.
Um, I don't, I don't regretdoing it at all.
I mean, the friends that I madeand the stuff that I got to
study, um, at Yukon and all ofthose cultural things that I got
(47:01):
to see, um, made it all muchmore worthwhile.
Um, but, uh, there, there are,uh, there are things that, um,
positive that are a part ofthose experiences as well.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Yes.
Yeah, the good, the bad, and Iguess you don't really see the
bad until he spent six monthsliving there.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
Yeah.
Yeah.
Cause I mean, it's, it's easyenough.
Like obviously I've been on, um,I have visited, uh, the States
since for like, for that startupadventure trip.
Um, and it's, it's quite againlike prevalent in San Francisco.
(47:45):
Um, but where we were, we weresomewhat isolated from it.
Um, and only being there forfour weeks, it was, um, sort of,
not enough for it to gets creepunder your skin,
Speaker 1 (48:00):
I guess.
Um, I guess after all thoseexperiences, um, if you've just
graduated, which I guess isreally exciting.
Um, firstly, congratulations.
Uh, thank you.
And secondly, uh, what's next?
Speaker 3 (48:17):
Um, so I'm, I'm moving, excuse me.
Uh, I'm uh, moving down toSydney, um, I'm currently doing
an internship with it last year.
Um, and then, uh, I'll be, uh,looking to just start a grad
role, um, in February.
Um, but I'm also looking forwardto being able to have a bit of a
(48:40):
change of scenery.
Um, after 10 years at Q, um, Idon't necessarily want to stop
learning.
I mean, the, the appeal ofundergraduate course workers has
kind of faded a tad after adecade, but, uh, I'm, I do need
to, uh, take on honors, um, the,uh, and I'm, and I'm planning on
(49:04):
doing that at USW.
Um, and hopefully I can, cause Ihad a bit of a strange situation
where I transitioned fromsoftware engineering, where I,
uh, had to do a thesis and Ididn't do a thesis, uh, and then
transitioned into computerscience so that I could sort of
leave early and get started on,on a career.
(49:26):
Um, but I have this sort ofthesis hanging over my head and
I'm trying to, uh, get creditfor that at UNFW.
Um, so that I can just sort ofdo my coursework and move on.
And then from there, um, I meanI'm hoping one day to, to do a
PhD.
Um, but I suspect it wouldprobably be sort of part-time on
the side of, of work.
(49:48):
Uh, yeah.
So those, those are the plans.
Um, I guess we'll see how it allpans out.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
You still, I guess, want to stay around and you need
just a little bit on the side.
Speaker 3 (50:00):
Yeah, yeah.
I mean, I, I don't know if Iever want to stop learning.
Um, I've always been the kind ofperson who was motivated by
deadlines and, uh, sort ofkeeping up with my peers and
that kind of thing.
Um, so I've gotten, I've gottenbetter at learning on my own,
but I do need like the PhD isthe goal that honors is kind of
(50:24):
compulsory at this point.
Um,
Speaker 1 (50:28):
One final question I have, uh, is there anything
you'd tell yourself your pastself from when you first walked
into, you know, first of all,through those NICU Gates, I
don't know if he really hasGates, but you know what I mean?
Um, is there anything you'd tellyourself any advice as you just
walk out of high school and you,yeah.
(50:50):
I mean, anyone, anyone listeningto us, he might be in the early
stages of university and wantingto make the most out of that
time, anything you'd say.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Yeah.
Uh, so I guess the first thingis that I would recommend taking
some time to work out what youlike and what you could see
yourself doing.
I didn't do that coming out ofschool.
I just sort of did sort of a mixof what I fell into with
psychology and what my, one ofmy parents did with finance.
Um, and that's not like that'snot the way to go about it if
(51:22):
you, if there are, I I'm, I'mjealous of the people that like
grow up, knowing that they wantto be a doctor or something, um,
or they, they grew up knowingthat they want to be a civil
engineer.
Uh, but if you're not one ofthose people, like I wasn't used
, you really need to take thetime to explore the options.
Now you can do that atuniversity, just enroll in a
(51:45):
sort of general purpose degree,like a bachelor of arts or a
bachelor of science.
You can always change your mindlater, take things, try them
out.
Um, and you'll probably fall inlove with something.
Um, like I did with computerscience.
Um, obviously I was doing itexternally, but, um, I would
have saved a lot of time if Ihadn't done that exploration
first, rather than out ofboredom, uh, four and a half
(52:09):
years into a five, five years ofa degree.
Um, it's not, it's not a problemif you change your mind.
Um, but yeah.
Do do that exploration fall inlove with something, whether
it's computer science or likeone of my friends, um, uh,
comparative religion, um, it,doesn't it like you can make a
(52:32):
career out of practicallyanything.
Um, it's just a matter offinding what it is that you can
do, uh, uh, and, and be happydoing, I guess.
Um, obviously it'd be ideal ifyou, uh, found that thing to be
computer science and joined DTCs, but, um, it's, it's not, uh,
(52:54):
it's not for everybody.
Um, everybody should have theability to do it, but, um, it's,
uh, yeah, just a matter offinding what makes you happy.
Speaker 1 (53:05):
It's exploring all those parts as early as you can.
Speaker 3 (53:08):
Yeah.
And, and I mean, once, once youhave found that path, uh, look
for people who are further downthat path than you and ask them
what they regret, um, or whatthey, what they've done that
they found to be advantageous,um, find out where the are,
because there won't, there mightnot necessarily be, um, someone
(53:31):
telling you or someone laying itout for, you might have to seek
that out.
Um, and I've found that it's alot easier to find that path
take on all those experiencesthan to have to deal with the
regret of having not even knownthat they existed, um, years
down the line.
Speaker 1 (53:51):
Alrighty, thanks so much.
Um, I've learned a lot listeningto this and I guess hearing
about your experiences and I'msure a lot of other, um, uni
students will find it especiallyuseful and especially those, I
guess, in the early, early time.
Um, did, yeah, thanks so muchfor coming along.
Um, thanks for having me.
It's great.
(54:12):
Yeah.
And also, thanks for all thecontributions you've made to,
you can see us, you have thepast few years and, you know,
helping it blossom into thissociety of this today.
And, um, yeah, I guess this,this show is, uh, um, one of
your, uh, I guess littlecontributions as well, getting
this off the ground.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Yeah.
I, I, I mean, giving you QCs hasgiven me so much, it felt only
right to give back and I'dsuggest, I guess that's one
thing that I didn't sayexplicitly was that getting
involved in the club and anybodycan run for the committee.
Um, getting involved in that toois just one of the most
(54:53):
rewarding experiences becauseyou, you form again that network
with those people, um, thatlasts forever.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
All right.
Thanks.
Thanks so much.
And yeah, I wish you all thebest in your future endeavors.
Thank you.
Hi, it's Martin here again.
I'd just like to say a big thankyou to all of the listeners in
2020 for joining us on this newand wonderful journey over the
past few months, Liv and I havehad the honor to host this new
form of UCS content, and wethink it's been a big hit.
(55:22):
So thanks to everyone for all ofyour support, as I'm sure many
of you are aware it's holidayseason coming up and the router
will be taking a short breakover Christmas and new year's to
recuperate.
We'll be relaunching in 2021with us second season, bigger
and better than ever, andhopefully with a nicer jingle
until then as always come joinour Slack
(55:44):
community@slackdotcs.org andfollow us on our social media to
keep up to date with all things.
If you see us, have a MerryChristmas happy holidays, happy
new year, and we'll see you backin 2021.
Speaker 2 (56:08):
[inaudible].
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