Tinni in Japan!

A lot of things have happened in the first 4+ months of this year. Including my trip to Japan!

Before going to Japan, I undertook a six-week course on Project Management for Professionals with RMIT. I have been doing project management for the last 10 years, but I felt that it was good to do a formal course to plug any gaps in my skills.

This is the second short course I took at RMIT. Two years ago, I completed a course on Business Analysis to consolidate my knowledge on that front. But unlike last time, we had to bring our own project to manage for this course.

Most of my current projects have an element of confidentiality and were not suited to the waterfall management methodology we were supposed to apply. So, instead, I did my final assessment on a planning project for my trip to Japan!

I had to submit the project a week early because of my planned trip since the last two weeks of the course overlapped with my trip. So literally the day before I was flying off, I was finalising the documents and recording the presentation.

I got the results back shortly after the Easter holidays, and I, unfortunately, had to redo the budget sections to demonstrate more clearly that I knew what I was doing. So that sucked, but I redid the project schedule and other documents and re-recorded the presentation. And I passed!

Tinni in Japan

In between my RMIT submissions, I, of course, went to Japan to try and catch some cherry blossoms! I succeeded to an extent, but the bulk of the blooms were delayed due to the weather still being wet and cold.

I had a lot of fun. I experienced a Tokyo earthquake and missed my flight on the last day because of how much fun I was having. I spent way too much money, but now I am back!

I am glad to get a bucket list item of seeing the Sakura bloom in Japan, checked off and now on to the next thing!

New Year, New Me... because I got COVID!

So I actually googled “How long can you see Happy New Year” for this post because it’s already the 26th of January!

The answer seems to be that after the first week, the greeting sort of wanes. Well, in my defence, I spent the first week of 2024 suffering from COVID! I managed to avoid it for almost four years, but I attended one board game day with my brother, and suddenly, I had COVID!

Good thing I was vaxxed. I can’t imagine how much worse it would be if I wasn’t vaccinated. Unfortunately, I still have a cough, and some of my friends have said that cough might last for awhile. I hope not because it hurts to cough!

Anyway, I am getting better and ready to face 2024. It is going to be a year of change, no matter what. Hopefully, I will be back to 100% soon and so I will be able to face what the year brings without much issue.

Judging UQIES Weekend of Startups

It’s been sometimes since I was back at UQ for any reason. So it was nice to be back this Sunday to be a Judge for the University of Queensland Innovation and Entrepreneurship Society (UQIES) weekend of startup.

This year’s theme was “Future of Work”, and it was interesting to see the mix of startups that were pitched. There were a lot of pitches solving “now” problems like an AI marking startup. However, I think it is obvious to all that assessments need to change drastically going forward since people are already using ChatGPT to cheat.

Unfortunately, a good portion of the solutions were technology being thrown at very human problems that can’t meaningfully be solved with tech. I hate to say this as an engineer, but the simple fact is that no amount of employee retention tech will work if you can’t or are unwilling to fire the nepo-baby toxic manager.

There were also a few startups pitched towards trying to solve the lingering isolation issues from COVID, including two pitched towards getting remote co-workers to socialise more. However, the issue is that the ideas rest on the premise that we want to be friends with our co-workers. Most people don’t, and those who do are unlikely to wait for company-mandated togetherness to socialise. I am not saying remote work isolation isn’t a real issue. It’s not an issue you can solve with minigames during lunch breaks.

Winners: Teach Wise, Photo Credit: Aryan Rustagi

The three winners addressed the theme of the Future of Work well. Two of the winners focused on pitching technologies that automate need-to-be-done but annoying tasks. One proposed a robotic sander for bespoke furniture. I think the startup was called Joynery or something like that, and they were planning to use computer vision and machine learning to allow for the robots to sand non-standard parts. The other, and the winner, Teach Wise, proposed using generative AI to help teachers create lesson plans. Teaching has become more of a transient field, and it is likely to undergo massive changes in the coming years, so anything that can reduce drudgery is a welcomed service.

The third place, Joynery was second, went to Attention Cube (I think that was the name), which attempts to solve the sticky problem of how to focus! It was an issue I tried to tackle with my team during the MIT Bootcamp, and it’s not something that will ever be truly solved because paying attention is hard! Attention Cube is probably not a longterm business, but it’s a great project that can net the founders a fair bit of money. So yes, I hope the students do pursue the venture!

Aryan Rustagi took all the UQIES event day photos.

Finally, I was one of the mentors for the Catalysr accelerator for high-performing migrant and refugee entrepreneurs - aka Migrapreneurs again this year. I could not attend all the sessions, but I hope I added value to the two sessions I did attend. The expression of interest for their 2024 program is open now. So interested migrapreneurs should apply today!

The Kyco Way Webinar

Yesterday, Trond hosted the first webinar to present the Kyco way to interested people. The webinar had a strong interest, with 159 people signing up. But unfortunately, the turn-up wasn’t as strong.

So it’s unlikely we’ll host another webinar anytime soon. But we did record Trond’s explanation of what Kyco is, and we’ll be sharing that with the public in due course.

I think it’s important to realise that in Start-up land, more things don’t work than do work. The trick is to learn, adapt and move forward. We tried to do a webinar because we had a strong showing when we hosted these information sessions in person. But I think a webinar doesn’t have the same appeal. So no more webinars!

New Year, Still Me!

Happy New Year to all, and to all, a sincere wish for prosperity. 2022 was a year of great uncertainty for us all, and I don’t foresee a lot of stability in 2023. All we can do is think carefully, plan well and do our best!

For the immediate future, I am looking forward to the upcoming launch of the Kyco advertising campaign and the upcoming Kyco information webinars. We have a lot of things planned, and I am looking forward to helping make them a reality.

I am still keen to reboot my podcast, especially since I think I can add value to people looking to switch careers, plan their education and other next steps in a recessionary environment. But beyond that, I am keen to take things a day at a time!