Practitioner Cameos
We are very fortunate to have six guests who will each meet with us during lectures, for 20 minutes. Each of these guests is deeply engaged in real-world software development in a wide range of contexts. Their visit provides all students with an opportunity to ask questions and listen. Above all, our guests will give real texture to the question of practical software development.
I encourage all students to formulate questions to present to our guests. I have provided a template. Download the template, rename it to questions<your uid>.txt, replace the sample questions with your own, and then add it to the admin folder of your group repository. There is one line (All:) for a question you want to ask all guests, plus one line for each guest (BE:, MS:, etc), identified by the guests' initials. You can leave some blank if you wish. I will use a tool to extract questions for each of the guests, so please don't mess up the formatting of the file (just replace the questions with your own, or remove them if you don't have a question). I will gather the questions and make them available to the guests slightly ahead of time. There are no marks associated with this. However, it is good practice to prepare for exchanges with guests like this, so as to make the most of your opportunities. I strongly recommend you do so. Oh, and I'll be awarding prizes for the best questions...
Friday 12/10/12 (Week 10)
Matthew Sheppard (2:00pm)
Matthew Sheppard studied software engineering at ANU, graduating in 2002, and since then has worked for several small-to-medium sized Canberra based software development companies. These days Matthew is the Manager of Research and Development at Funnelback Pty Ltd, a search engine company based in Dickson, which began as a Joint ANU, CSIRO project.
Ben Elliston (2:20pm)
Ben completed a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Engineering at the "other university" in 1995. He has spent most of the intervening years working (telecommuting) for several companies on the GCC compiler. This involved work such as implementing new optimisations, porting the compiler to new processors and adding new language features (eg. decimal floating point types). He has always worked in companies with very flat management structures and a good deal of autonomy. Ben has an MSc from UNSW (ADFA) in information technology and an ME from ANU in sustainable energy systems. In 2010, he commenced a PhD in electrical engineering to pursue his interest in renewable energy.
Tuesday 16/10/12 (Week 11)
David Sitsky (3:00pm)
David Sitsky completed his honours degree at the ANU and proceeded to work there for many years within the CAP Research Program, a collaborative research initiative with Fujitsu, Japan, investigating software support for high-performance supercomputing. He then worked at Cisco Systems as a systems software engineer before moving to NUIX, which specialises in "big data" processing of unstructured data for forensic, legal and corporate governance arenas.
Richard Walker (3:20pm)
I work for Software Improvements, a local company that provides products and services to support critical system and software development projects, and that does its own software development in the domains of stakeholder risk analysis and electronic voting.
Before joining Software Improvements I taught computer science at the ANU (including COMP1110).
I have a BSc with honours in computer science from the ANU. Apart from computer science, I also studied lots of mathematics, and I completed the first-year courses in chemistry and physics.
Friday 19/10/12 (Week 11)
Davin Fifield (2:00pm)
Oracle (Oracle Policy Automation)
Davin Fifield is a Vice President for Product Development at Oracle Corporation with the responsibility for global product development of the Oracle Policy Automation product line. Prior to joining Oracle Corporation, Davin Fifield has held executive positions as a product development leader at RuleBurst, Microsoft and RealLegal. Davin has over 20 years of experience in product development working on software products for public sector, legal and commercial organizations. Many moons ago, Davin completed his Honours degree in Computer Science at the ANU.
Andrew Tridgell (2:20pm)
Andrew "Tridge" Tridgell is an Australian computer programmer best known as the author of and contributor to the Samba file server, and co-inventor of the rsync algorithm. He is known for his analysis of complex proprietary protocols and algorithms, to allow compatible free and open source software implementations.
