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We’re back in your ears with a special episode this week.

We have chosen the best bits and nuggets of information from the first ten episodes of NewyTechPeople sharing some tech insights with our listeners.

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Transcription:

from episode one Matthew Finch what got you into technology in the beginning like whining out right back yeah right I think I’ve sort of always been interested in technology intact probably because I played a lot of video games as a kid and my daughter plays a lot of video games now so hopefully that’s a good time but um yeah I think technology is always in a constant state of change and I’m pretty excited about change and pretty excited about doing new things and and thinking differently so technology’s pretty well aligned with that I remember what was I probably was in u10 going to year 11 or something like that and um spoke with one of the advisers at the school you can choose your electives and yeah I went in and I looked at all the electives and there were three I think you got to choose three electives I can remember rightly and there are three of them three technology related electives and I was like yeah that’s what I’m doing I want to be in tech I want to do tech I’m really excited about it sat down with this advisor and said I’m doing these three tech ones I think was like software design and information process and information technology something like that and she said I know I can’t you kind of do three three tech ones you know like that’s uh that’s people don’t do that you know you need to kind of broaden your horizons you’re in school you need to try a few different things and I said this is what I want to do this is what I’m passionate about that’s what I’m excited about and she’s like I’m greatly advising that you don’t do this and I guess always been a little bit rebellious so I was like oh well mom dad I’m doing this this what I want to do and I know I’m excited about this and and I probably best thing I ever did because yeah jumped into those three subjects and shot the lights out and fortunately for me there was lot of overlap between the three so only had to do sweat over once said I studied to get good grades across all three subjects and maybe that’s why she didn’t want me to do it in the first place but um and I know it all worked out and yeah I think I’ve been doing tech sort of ever since fixed computers when I was a young kid for the lady down the street for 20 dollars or something you know and yeah Here I am so here it’s always what I’ve been excited about twenty bucks back now would have been all right uh sir I was hoops coming like for truth smackers arrogance from episode two Joshua Liske now what do you think it’s sort of some of the I think we both agree that Newcastle’s growing from a tax perspective it’s still not anywhere near one of the capital cities but now what do you think would be sort of some of the advantages of being in around Newcastle I’m gonna take professional perspective um well before I get onto the tech benefits I guess the lifestyle benefits use is why we move from that one so you need to Newcastle um in Sydney I lived nine kilometres to work and it took me 50 minutes and here I lived 19 kilometers and it takes me 20 minutes yeah I get huge difference and um you know big like nice leafy suburb we when we move we and this is before the price boom in Sydney and we could have bought a two crappy two-bedroom unit in there since others or now we’ve got like a not the big size like two bedroom house you know nice other all the rest of it the same money um and the salaries like there can be a bit lower but it’s certainly um it makes up in terms of what you can get and the lifestyle here the beaches the lake I was out on the lake last weekend for float your boat yeah that was good and just stuff like that in Newcastle was a great place to live but in terms of tech um it’s interesting because we don’t have as many big players um we have quite a few small players but the opportunities and the same with my wife in law it’s it you get to be like I don’t know how to put it nicely you get to be a bigger fish you know smaller Bowl yeah um you can see me you can easily get to follow it up you can be a you can be a kicker for like 30 years and never go anywhere um Newcastle is a bit better in terms of like for progress and and having your crew go forward it seems it seems not easier well I can play okay I think there’s a big big fish small pond but us I think two people probably like yourself who are prepared to sort of you know go to the meetups and I know you just you know finish your MBA recently well that’s actually 10 years ago and he sounds like a long like I not racing yeah I’m ready to sell for me in VA the other day and I couldn’t believe it was yeah don’t return use again yeah right well let’s say somebody that’s actually gone ahead and done their MBA right somebody that’s actually gonna invest in themselves and invest so instead of moving forward you know you’re I’ll be supplying you know a side hustle and we’re fanatically as well so you know a guy that’s actually looking at new technologies looking at you know progressing yourself I think there’s opportunities for guys like yourself that you know going to continue to sort of investing themselves and moving forward and those opportunities probably present themselves in Newcastle quicker then you might get in Sydney yeah um yeah and the UM in the other side and their other reason for that is um networking um you get to know like most people don’t like a lot of people around town um and it’s not what you know it’s who you know a lot of the time so that really helps you Newcastle you can’t you just can’t know everyone at the sort of head of all the company in Sydney just in Newcastle you can go to meet you can if you’re active with the council and you know business chambers and whatnot you can actually meet all the UM all the bigwigs from all the companies here and make connections like completely agree from episode three Jonathan Millgate there are differing opinions out there on University and the value of university for technology professionals in particular I think there’s you know things have changed over time yeah you know what remains the same is there are a lot of either hiring managers or HR managers looking out there and the first thing or this thing they have got in their requirements is degree in computer science something of the equivalent now what’s he you’ve obviously done your degree probably two questions I did how did you find that valuable or not and to what’s your what’s your opinion on is it a necessity it’s that’s a really tough question actually I don’t think it’s a cut and dry I just mentioned P minor easy roads but it’s it’s not anymore back when I did my degree which is so many years ago it was if you didn’t have that piece of Pepa then you couldn’t get the job and that’s essentially why I did it in the first place but I’ve since gone back and done a master’s degree and that was more personal for me because I needed that is the goal setting technique that if I have this subject it needs to be done by now and I need to study and make sure I get it done by then so for me the university degree was more about getting something done like I know I wanted to achieve this goal and that’s how I got to it in terms of what you learn at university I think it’s much better to learn about how to do things in the history of things and the the theory behind it whereas the actual hands-on technical things as we said technology is transient it will change I learned Java when I was at uni no one uses Java well that’s not true people use Java but it’s it I’ve never written a line of code in Java in the real world in my life but I did four years over that university but what I learned was how to write code and how how to build systems and that’s what’s really driven me to where I am today the I don’t think it’s a necessity if you’ve got the knack for it if you want to do it if you’ve got passion for it and you can teach yourself how to do it then go for it you don’t need University for that sort of thing to an extent but if I think for us as I mentioned and Deedee’s got quite a few PhD students and that’s about research so we do a lot of research a lot of our time and our budget goes towards research and development how do we do new things and try out new things and I think you’ve got to have a good background in physics and maths to be able to do that I can’t imagine anyone not going to university figuring out how to to learn about physics and maths and otherwise completely away yeah so I think it’s a it’s it’s a two-way street now a lot of people are not as a little bit don’t need to go to university anymore to get where they need to be especially in software development there’s a lot of good resources out there code Academy Card Academy Khan Academy udemy there’s heaps of different resources out online too to learn software development and design and interaction design and things like that that you won’t get at university anyway and if you want to learn how to write particular language you don’t go to university you know you do that online or you find a specific course about it yeah matters good chance whatever you’re running a university probably will not be the language of choice as a surfeit yeah right so I did four years of Java and never written a line of Java in my life okay outside of uni I’ve said for David Williams a lot of papers a lot of tech professionals are unique uh some there’s a lot more limited opportunity and you people might say there’s limited sort of educational opportunities as well where you’ve actually taken upon yourself to travel internationally to conferences and things like that is there any advice you can provide to people how you got involved in doing that it was that sort of self initiated would you go socialize out and and go search out those conferences on you and back or advice would you give to others to just sort of further education or mindset internationally you know well that’s that’s a good and a hard question I must confess I didn’t have a terrific answer I think you know funding yourself to go overseas is difficult I have to admit I had the fortunate privilege that I was sponsored to go to a number of these events so in addition to you know we talked about lecturing to running user groups and so on I also write a column for a publication called ity comso of as well written for print and online for 30 years and that’s really given me some tremendous opportunities at that exposure so so I guess my case you know it’s it’s right leg is forgiven answer saying well you know write have an audience and write about it and people will send you somewhere but I think you know I guess I would encourage people that if they can somehow find opportunity to go some of these conferences it’s a tremendous you know the insights and the exposure you get is just incredible not only to specific technologies but even to just the general trends and thinking and I would even like to suggest that you know when you go to some of these events you can see technologies it’s emerging the the you know isn’t going to be in production for for another couple of years it’s really an opportunity to learn what really is going to be the next sort of wave but as to how people get there I guess you know there’s no real good easy simple answer ahead as they accept you know if you can find somebody generous enough to sponsor you so awesome but otherwise you know if you can make your own way there I think there’s definitely a lot of benefits in doing so yeah you mentioned you’re lucky enough I don’t know if like the actual you know the actual answer there because you did mention you’ve written for you know you’ve got to to vlogs running at the moment you’ve just you’ve written how many publications oh you know what I would count it in thousands I couldn’t even say so I actually in when I’m still back at high school in 1988 when I was in year 11 I had my first article ever published in the australian comedor review which now you and think about as a car magazine but back then it was a Commodore 64 commodore 128 magazine in three university i sort some articles to American publications in Newcastle I wrote for the Newcastle Herald they had a weekly QA column some people might remember for the Australian for a pc magazine but since in the last 10 years it’s all been online only but you know I would have to say thousands thousands of articles in print and online over that time I’m episode 5 I’m art Levine well it’s gonna be a second networking probably as little of less coffee more another beverage 7030 tell us about that 70/30 is 70% social and 30 is 30 percent business and it is women in communication and marketing there’s not really it doesn’t really matter if you don’t directly in communication and marketing it’s more just a way to meet some more people I found that I kept going to networking events and I wanted to know what people were into and they wanted to know what I did yeah and that’s okay but I realized that the networking might my purpose for networking was very different to a lot of other people’s I thought I’ll just start my own yeah and it’s also Newcastle can be quite lonely if you move here from somewhere else it can feel like everyone is very established and everyone’s got their friends and there’s some people who grew up together went to university together and I’m working together and so if you’re new here and I’ve actually found there’s a lot of women who’ve moved here from Sydney or Melbourne to be with a partner yeah and if you’ve moved here it can be really hard to find your people and 7030 is super relaxed we meet for drinks about once a month sometimes it ends up being only every two months sometimes it’s twice a month it’s just whenever we can all get our act together we mostly exist as a Facebook group so if you just want to look for 7030 Newcastle probably that I finish Oh No yes thank you and that’s where we might we’re we mostly exist on Facebook but we we meet up and it’s a chance to not feel like we have to impress anyone we can just be who we are and sometimes we’re exhausted so sometimes it’ll be a Thursday afternoon and we meet up somewhere and some of us just go I’m not talking any work today no work don’t care I just want to know what everyone’s up to on the weekend and we all kind of get it we already have don’t worry I hear you and it’s it’s a really nice supportive group there’s a lot of value in meeting without an agenda right yeah and I think another part the other key part you mentioned was sort of like finding out the person behind the job so it’s the same this is this podcast for example it’s about people in and around the technology space but for me it’s more so the people behind the technology as in technology will continue to be down continue to go at a fast pace but technology’s just only as good as the people behind the technology and those people are working well with other people it’s going to be where the the technology either succeeds or doesn’t right it’s not the actual technology itself the vast majority of times it’s it’s the people behind that that’s what I’m super interested in so who are those people what drives them why some people are more successful than others like what are those little sort of things that laitanan people being sick yeah I absolutely agree that you’re right technology well it will continue to exist and it will continue to roll but the way the direction that it goes is gonna be so dependent on the people that are involved I completely agree completely agree episode 6 wine Ingram any advice you just give to people outside yeah and not talking to an earlier version so for just anyone let’s say there they’re looking they’ve got an interest in technology and they wanted to grow their career and the advice you give to other people yeah um just have a go learn be curious and try things out I think that’s a common you know a July slot things are become quite popular these days and one of them entrances to fail fast nothing doing that yourself is probably good advice as well not everything going to do is going to work no every jobs gonna work out yeah especially when you’re younger you have the ability to take risks you know once you get family and kids that’s all stuff you become a bit more safe in that regard with your career but yeah when you’ve got no dependents and you’ve got you know you can go work overseas for 12 months just do it yeah you know you have the skills and the life experiences you’ll pick up would be excellent so great oh great my Dom that’s kind of Newcastle specific for a sec yeah and you’ve obviously been around Newcastle for a while you’ve done you’ve done a few of the bigger organizations around town you’ve done hunter water and IB and mine super no maybe what’s your opinion on the changing state of the technology Center Newcastle I think I certainly think the startup sort of stuff is a lot bigger now that sort of didn’t exist my first came up here and I think there’s very much a to ends of the spectrum now you got your traditional enterprises that have existed here for a number of years and probably quite traditional in the way they operate and then you have the upper end spectrum you have two startups that are very agile doing using a lot of new technologies and those sorts of things so I think that’s probably the biggest difference is that that that pickup and it’s taking some time but it’s like in there where some of those traditional businesses are moving more into that center space where they’re we’re sort of letting go of some of the traditional stuff and taking on board some of the newer technologies and new ways of doing things but that’s probably the biggest change that I’ve seen is that startup and now the in Newcastle yeah and it’s not even the sort of startups doing it themselves as much as as you said it’s probably the the larger organizations having more of a stop mentality and we’re a babe in a startup mentality I’m just more of an agile approach and there’s obviously been a significant rise in that job over the past few years but I think there is definite move towards that sort of fail fast move quicker type approach which definitely wasn’t there I mean I think Ennis is General in across the board but that moved from technology being the cost Center to the enabler yeah I think there’s that general recognition now but no matter what you do a business involves some form of technology so you’ve got to have the capability to move quickly if the business wants to do something they aren’t acquire another company yeah or divest or whatever it is they want to do they need to have the capabilities and skills in-house to do something and it may not be expected that’s I guess back to that being able to morph into what you need really quickly have an ability to learn things and take on things quickly and service traditional now I’m an exchange admin I’ve got 20 years experience an exchange admin more exchanges on the 365 now so that skills gone if that’s what your bread and butter is yeah and you’re not don’t have the ability to adapt quickly but then you’re gonna have a good you know yeah yeah oh tractor across town and so I think businesses I think are acknowledging the fact that they need to have those sorts of people in their technology team to be able to enact what the business decide to do next okay from episode 7 anthony millenia extremely refreshing for a lot of people to actually hear something like yourselves help driving a project that might be blockchain related or other other you know pra our project but just to hear that the university is actually thinking about these things in and trying to disrupt themselves so to speak yeah well look the university i mean we’re a regional campus and and being a regional campus and not part of a large metropolitan city we have the opportunity to be a little bit more flexible believe it or not so you know we need to leverage off of those advantages in terms of being able to be flexible and being being able to be a little bit innovative utilizing the space we have available to us really operate as a living lab and ER or microcosm of a city and teshia and using the university to be tested that way to support the regional communities and also then to be translated into a broader metropolitan city completely agree on the technology you might mention before an innovation team I think 99% of organizations don’t have innovation teams are dedicated innovation teams they’re looking at you know different different different variations of ways to innovate with from within being the fact that you actually made mention the university has that internally in is a massive advantage you want to give a quick overview to the people that might not know about that some of the projects that they might be working on yes the innovation teams a small team and it’s purposefully a small team and it’s been very fruitful I mean they’ve they’ve done a lot of projects in a short period of time basically the project that I mentioned previously augmented reality virtual reality to demonstrate how effective and mostly technology can be in the learning space particularly for for both those that require a safe environment to learn in and simulation environments are often very expensive like physical simulation environment and or to deliver a level of equity so sometimes you know students have to actually have to work in order to pay to go to university and can’t come to all the tutorials or to the to the lab lab lab work that they have at university to give them a virtual reality kirtan and access it to that software provides a little of equity for those for those students that do unable to attend all the courses or and all all the labs on the university so that’s that’s one aspect they’ve also spent some time in the or artificial intelligence base you know developing what we see is you know almost like a a student assistant which is not uncommon in the university space and they’ve started to work in the blockchain they’re very small very small team there’s five or six of them in the team but it’s designed to be a collaborative unit so whilst there’s five or six in the team their specialties are in user experience human centered design design thinking as well as in you know a broad range of technology stacks and then engaging and collaborating with people from the school to help define the the the problem and our opportunity and then with external parties to help provide augmented resources to drive the outcomes their projects last anyway between twelve and sixteen weeks from zero to hero from concept to delivery and you know they’ve you know in the space of eighteen months got through fourteen projects so the they’re very effective in that space however I think we need to turn turn the dial up in that space and make innovation a a bias as opposed to a team on a turn right so I have a bias of innovation I have a bias to action so we’re actually looking to bring innovation into all aspects of our of our arm of our business lines if you will and try and drive innovation throughout all the teams not just in you know one or two areas from episode 8x shraddh and if we take it all the way back right what got you into you know technology what got you into the development space in general like how having this come about for you and I think the more we go back in time the more approximate viens and will be the round we try my best I would say I already had a winner gaining winning or t7 I will say that again like genuine okay I always add a genuine interest into science yeah just because it was a way for me to explain what was going on around me and also I always hated doing more than two or three times the same thing so I wanted to automate things as much as I can or at least doing one travel instead of three you know cooking the dishes or whatever yeah so effectively I was into I was attracted by Matt Matt Matt Matt mathematical University first so I studied math for couple of years and then I moved into computer science just because I didn’t see what lead me the math just the pure math inspector that and into computer computer science I could actually satisfy this need of automating a lot of things so a lot of tasks we do out there and and we feel like we are efficient because we use an Excel spreadsheet it’s actually poorer trust 10% of what is possible to do nowadays yeah and that’s you know the first person I’ve interviewed that says you know there’s a I want our desire to sort of start to automate something cannot repeat a task over and over and that thing and driving influence in in getting in this technology and building things I think yeah you’re definitely not alone that from episode 9 Austin Turner productivity less you’ve just opened opened the door outside of that is there any other you’ve mentioned three tools that just say I don’t know anything else to use from a Productivity perspective I think I think my approach to productivity very strongly at work is everything is open by default so the old model of for a while computers seem to lend us to everyone having their private store of files and information and so you would have to go to the person who had the information to get it and things that should be long dead by now if you’re using email for most of you communication you’re just having a point-to-point conversations there’s no transparency and other people can’t jump in there and add you know valuable insights etc so as long as as long as your default everything being open maybe there’s a there’s a few files maybe it’s some of your HR or something you finance stuff or whatever that’s you a small bit of private stuff and you might just share that with your manager everything else I do confluence slack just make it open it’s all there I went on holiday for a month recently and and no one bothered me I think that I responded in one email about an audit for some information that was you know more of that Confidential’s type stuff yeah everything else just just floats because everything’s everything’s open everything’s there can be picked up something can be away for a day and you just you just carry on with the work yeah and you know this once again different approach to a lot of people I think I don’t think that I don’t think that’s the default position most people or most companies I think it’s very risky to take any other approach because you basically you basically siloing things and you’re siloing information and in that case like do I really think that keeping information to myself is going to make me more valuable I don’t think so I think it’s going to take a lot more of my time to retrieve it and give it to people all the time so I can be a lot more valuable if I’m not serving 100 requests a day for like information that should just be opening yeah public within the organization from episode 10 Jess Vandenberg and how do we encourage more females getting technology do you think it’s this is a really interesting point for me I guess a part of it does start in that school level at that school level you a technology isn’t just programming being so sad men and all that type of thing and networks like connecting networks it’s not all about that there is a different side and so maybe not just for women but for all kids to understand what is available in the digital space for them to work on what is in technology what does technology mean you know so diverse now the the building of a website is many things other than what we were taught initially about IT processes and things like that it’s not all about understanding the zeros and ones which someone might find really boring so yeah how do you kind of get people into the school saying hey this is different career paths it’s no longer just a dentist or a fireman or a policeman your insert generic businesswomen here you know like one day I’m gonna work in business you know that kind of thing is no longer how jobs work I’m angry so yeah how do we get that happening at a school level I think in women in tech space is is and has grown a lot especially over the past five years here referencing the past five years but it has grown a lot there are groups dedicated women in product women in technology dev women you know all this kind of thing the support is there and women are really firing up because they’ve got that support and are able to bring their ideas to the table I think I didn’t go but with the DevOps day that was recent Hinduism there’s a lot of women talkers at that event speakers women speakers at that event and that’s just a really good reflection that people care about bringing women on board now and there is support for that and women and I seem to be just the same as men in his face so I think that’s kind of a good direction to head for people who what am I going to do I kind of really like working in technology but am I going to be successful or there is all these groups available that I could be a part of I think that also helps support that a definitely thing there’s a growing support for it yeah I think it’s being encouraged better and better which is great and I think your other point there about and what is technology technology it’s not just ones and zeros you don’t have to be you know sitting in a dark corner and just banging my keyboard and that might be your thing yeah that’s ok too right so we’ve got you know heaps of dev ops type people I’m an administrators at ni B and you know that’s just their gem that’s what they’re into but that’s not everyone yeah it’s not everything that’s not all what technology is about a completely very thing some people are brilliant about some people enjoy that and that’s their jam and then there’s other bits where you said technology where does the life technology stop right like technology business yeah so much overlap you don’t have to be somebody that wants to get into the nitty gritties of you know back in the infrastructure or you know in coding yeah is that there’s a lot to be done it’s in the grade of realm of Technology in business that there’s more and more opportunities that really you can’t let your skills to you don’t have to be that super super yeah