Guest Lecture at the Hanoi University of Industry

One of the great things about speaking at FOSSASIA this year was that I also had the opportunity to give a talk to the amazing students at the Hanoi University of Industry (HaUI) I'm always super excited and extremely grateful when I get invited to talk to the next generation of engineers, and I consider it a true privilege! I just hope I didn't bore anyone too much!

The Five 'S'

The Five 'S' is a presentation I put together that shares my thoughts on how students and young engineers (and also anyone really early in their careers) can help boost their careers or at least give themselves every advantage in the modern world.

Admittedly the content is nothing new (and I'll write a blog post on it in the near future), but it's information that generally isn't shared in a university setting. That makes sense as even the most forward thinking of curriculum can only fit in so much information. Besides, it means I actually get the chance to be useful, so I'm happy to take it :)

Discussion Panel

After each of us had done our talks, we had the opportunity to interact directly with the students and faculty and answer their questions. I was really happy to see how eager and engaging the students were. Often when it comes to Q&A, at least in Hong Kong, in can be very difficult to convince anyone to ask anything. This time we had more questions than we had time to answer which was really great!

We addressed a lot of interesting topics, such as how Vietnam (and Vietnamese engineers in particular) can be competitive in a global workforce, how to make a living with FOSS and of course a discussion on AI and how to get started with it.

It's clear that Vietnam has a lot of great engineers, and I think there's a lot of untapped potential here. Many international businesses have already realised this, and that has meant a lot of those businesses have come to Vietnam. But I think these same engineers can export their talents on the international market place, and bring great wealth into the country both for themselves and others.

How can they do this? By building their confidence and portfolios, as well as seeing if some of my advice in the presentation might be useful for them. However they decide to approach it, I think it's entirely possible that Vietnam is going to be the next tech hub of Asia.

Wrapping it up...

Overall I had a lovely time at HaUI and it was great to interact with such engaging people. Hopefully one day I'll get invited back :)