Last Day at ExecCorp #
On our final day at Exec, we were tasked with creating a presentation to give in front of the company from a topic of our choice. The presentation had to talk about possible applications of AI & Facial Recognition in Australia. I struggled to come up with ideas as Australian’s have always had a pretty negative view of facial recognition (as seen in the reaction to the Bunnings facial recognition scandal).
Japan was hit with a pretty significant earthquake the other day (here’s a relevant news article). It shook my apartment in Tokyo pretty hard, but most of the damage was in the north of Japan. Afterwards, I was thinking about how when there’s a natural disaster, people become separated and concerned about each others welfare. I wrote my presentation on how facial recognition could be used in Australia to reconnect people during bush fires or floods. Generally, natural disasters accelerate during times of crises, which would create a societally accepted application of facial recognition in the country (link). At some point I’ll upload that research & script in it’s own unrelated post.
This was a great opportunity to talk under pressure in front of a group of people and I really enjoyed the challenge!
ExecCorp Overseas #
While at Exec, the leadership team spoke a few times about wanting to establish the company in the global market. They expressed concerns surrounding the fact that with the aging population, the number of schools is decreasing, meaning the target market is also decreasing. They tasked us with trying to find ways that their existing technologies or products can be applied in other industries, not just targeting schools.
It was fun to challenge ourselves to think as business people and not engineers. Mr Suzuki expressed the importance for engineers to be well rounded professionals (understanding of business, law, finance) in order to be successful, which is something that resonates with me! It also felt that ExecCorp had a lot of respect for our ideas and took the things that we had to say into serious consideration.
I’ve really enjoyed my time with Exec and hope to stay connected with the company after I return to Australia!
Multidisciplinary Requirements in Cyber #
Similar to Mr Suzuki’s comments, as cyber security professionals, we often have a requirement to understand more industries than just the technology. In most countries, the cybersecurity law dictates the requirements of the industry. To keep up with evolving technologies, we need to follow any changes that come from government (more info here). We also need to have an understanding of finance. Cyber security is a department that does not produce any income for companies as they do not produce or sell anything. That means that we need to do as much as possible while limiting costs for the company. It seems that this is a similarity between Australian and Japanese industry.
I haven’t taken many photos this week, but here’s some random photos from the trip.
