Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Hello and welcome. I'm here to provide acknowledgement of country. For those who don't know me, I'm kj Karen Jackson, director of Moon Dani Balletic. My genealogy tracks back to Moira Lakes in Barma Forest and Mount Hope in Pyramid Hill. Giving me my connections to Yorta, Yorta, and Barra language groups. There's a couple of things I'd like you to take away from my acknowledgement. The first is to remember the hidden history of Aboriginal people since invasion, our loss of language removal from country, and our new extinction from massacres and pandemics. The second is our strong and inherent connection to community and country. These connections have given us the resilience and courage to rebuild our languages, gain access to country, regenerate our cultural practices in acknowledging the traditional owners of the country on which you are now on. I'd like to sincerely thank them for their generosity and kindness in welcoming people onto their lands. Lands never seeded and lands that run deep into their being and spirit. I wish to pay my deep respect to the ancestors, elders, communities, and families of the rung wri on whose land I stand and who create connection and share knowledge with all of us. Thank you.
Speaker 2 00:01:18 Hello, colleagues. My name is Adam Schumaker and I'm delighted to be the vice chancellor of this great university, Victoria University. I'm also the host of this podcast, which we call People of vu, and we delve into the fascinating stories and achievements of the exceptional individuals who make up the vibrant community of Victoria University. But before we start, a sincere thank you KJ for the acknowledgement of country, which we've just heard. I too want to add my own deep respects, not only to ancestors and elders, but also to the families of the traditional owners and all of our campuses, wherever they may be. And extend that to wherever you may be listening to this podcast too. Now, today I have a particular treat. We're talking with Milan Fernando v's. Very own digital experience officer at the Wyndham Tech School at our Werribee campus. Now, he specializes in many things, technology, implementation, project management, and operations.
Speaker 2 00:02:14 And as it turned out, we met each other almost by accident one morning, quite early, waiting in the queue at the coffee line, and it was the best meeting ever. But VO is also in many others aspects. As I said, a staff member with the Australian Air Force Cadets, and that comes from a fascinating background too. His exploration of his roots of his cultural identity will come up today as will music 'cause he loves to play, to jam and to perform. And he's absolute proof that exploring your interests and passions makes for the most fulfilling career. vo welcome to the Vu, people at VU podcast. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you here today. So VO, tell me when we met and we were sort of shaking hands for the first time, did you have any idea about my background and did you know that I was gonna ask you about your parents?
Speaker 3 00:03:02 No, I was, I, I just simply knew that the big boss was in at work and, you know, just to make sure everything's activated functioning well for, for the meeting that you had, I believe something, whatever you had organized. And I just popped in just to say, you know, if, if you need anything let me know. And then just from there, we just had a great conversation. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:03:23 It was so good. Now tell me about your family. You said that you come from others who've had VU links in the past. So let's just start there and go back in time and we'll talk about you. Yeah, tell me about them first. Sure.
Speaker 3 00:03:33 So basically four out of five members of my family graduated from vu. Wow. So basically my dad after immigrating from, from, well it was actually Sri Lanka to Yemen and then Yemen to, to Australia. Wow. So yeah, he did a little stint at the United Nations with, with my mom there, and then came, came to Australia and that's where he did his PhD in chemistry at vu, at the Werribee campus. And so then moving on, then we had my brother who graduated with honors in civil engineering. Yep. And then, and then I graduated with the Bachelor of it professional. Wow. Then I have my younger sister who graduated with a Bachelor of music specializing in music performance.
Speaker 2 00:04:21 You more than one of you is interested in music in the family. Yes. Do you, do you ever perform with your sister as well?
Speaker 3 00:04:26 Almost all the time, yeah. Ah,
Speaker 2 00:04:28 So tell me what does, so she a singer,
Speaker 3 00:04:31 So she's a piano player. Piano. Ah, yeah. Yeah. So it started off with my mom. My mom is an excellent pianist, so she, I think she scored I think the highest diploma in Sri Lanka in, in piano playing. So yeah. Then wow. Grandpa was a singer as well. It's a big family of, of musicians and like, even extended family as well. We love just coming together, having a good sing along and karaoke session and yeah, just having a good time. Oh,
Speaker 2 00:04:58 That is so outstanding. I mean, and when was the last time you had a family reunion where you could all do that? The music?
Speaker 3 00:05:04 It was actually quite recently. So my brother got married just these past holidays, summer holidays. Wow. So he, he married a, a Filipino woman, which is now my sister-in-Law. And yeah, we had the wedding was in the Philippines, then went to Sri Lanka afterwards. And yeah, just got together with the family, did like, just how we always do it and got together, had some fun, had some music, and yeah, just really reconnected it. It was a beautiful moment. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:05:31 Oh, it's such a great thing. And tell me a little bit more, you have a band that you play in as well?
Speaker 3 00:05:36 Yes. So I'm in, I'm in a little amateur band at a couple of my friends formed called The Octaves. Oh yeah. So we, we do a lot of, just a lot of like general community events in the Sri Lankan community. We do a lot of Sri Lankan music, but also just some of the classic Western hits as well. Just some old school stuff just to cater for everyone and yeah, just have a good time.
Speaker 2 00:06:01 I think that's so great. And do, are you a percussionist?
Speaker 3 00:06:03 Yeah, so, well I, I'm, I'm actually a singer maybe. Yes. But I also, but I'm also starting to get into percussion now. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:06:09 And how do you manage the, the, the hands moving while the vocal chords are moving? I mean, did you ever have any trouble balancing the two?
Speaker 3 00:06:16 All the time. So I'm, so currently, currently I've, I've tweaked it where, you know, whenever we're performing, if I'm singing something I'm not, I'm not touching a thing. Right. But I'm, I'm starting to practice and, and get the hang of it. It's, it's a very underrated skill to be able to play percussions while singing. I I, there's a lot of artists who are very, very good at it.
Speaker 2 00:06:33 Yeah. It's not an easy thing at all. I know what you mean. And when it happens, it's legendary to watch it. Yeah. And, and to listen too. Oh, absolutely. So let's come back to the school. There is a bit of music in the school actually embraced around the edges in terms of some of the technology. Do you wanna tell us a little bit about that?
Speaker 3 00:06:48 Yeah, I guess in terms of technology, there are, so our tech school doesn't necessarily specialize too much in, in the music side of things, but the tech school. But there are a lot of other tech schools, I believe I went to the Ballarat textbook, I'm not mistaken. They have a incredible sound studio and everything. A great music equipment. And that's like kind of the special thing about a lot of the tech schools that they cater a lot to the what's, what the, the needs and what's, what a lot of the school students are interested in, in that, in their specific areas. And so, whereas with us it's more just digital technology, digital
Speaker 2 00:07:25 Digital tech. But I was thinking too that when you have this incredible games sort of theater Yes. You know, like the sort of games room. Yeah. And of course music is a big part of games too. Yeah. So tell us a little bit about that whole thing. 'cause I think I was one of the first in the state to actually be embraced, you know, having the right chairs and the right approach. Yes. You wanna just explain that for us?
Speaker 3 00:07:42 Yeah. So, so yeah, you'd be talking about our eSports arena. Great. Basically Gail Bra, shout out to you, Gail, she introduced, she was, she was the director at the Wyndham Tech School and at the time she, she intro, she noticed that, you know, this is an emerging industry that is gaining a lot of popularity, a lot of money, and it's turning into professional jobs. Mm. And a lot of other professional services like health psychology, business analytics, all sorts of things are going into gaming. And so that's, that was pretty much the inspiration in terms of designing that space because of Yeah. Just how, how much it's coming up.
Speaker 2 00:08:20 And do you find that almost everyone, 'cause lots of schools come and probably not everyone knows first just wanting to get back when a school comes to the, to your visiting group of, to school kids comes to the tech school, where do they go first? Like what sort of, just run us through, what do they see, what do they do on a tour, where you're involved, that kind of thing?
Speaker 3 00:08:36 Yeah, sure. So our most common program is our Future of Work program. It's a one day program that combines different, different subprograms that specialize in different things such as game development, drones, podcasting, Lego robotics. Those are like four of our main ones. The students would, will rotate around those, but winding back to their initial experience as they start. So they'll come in at, at nine 30 on the bus and they'll be greeted by spot the robot dog from Boston Dynamics. And basically it'll be just such a good way of like, getting them excited, just waking them up from the morning if they've been up all night gaming or doing whatever kids do nowadays. But yeah, it, it would get them excited, like immediately capture them and Spot will walk them from, from the, from the bus all the way through the entrance of the building.
Speaker 3 00:09:27 Yeah. And from there I'll, I'll have the fun of, you know, grabbing two of the Cheekiest students outta that group Yeah. And putting them in our podcasting room. Oh. While the rest gets settled in our atrium. In our atrium we'll have our humanoid robot pepper and pepper will give just a little speech, an introduction as to where the bathrooms are, emergency exits, just general housekeeping. And then it will flick over to the podcast room. The podcast room will get, will get casted to the giant screens that we have in our atrium. And all of a sudden the school kids will see two of their mates just up on the screen in a, in a professional podcast environment. Great. From there they'll have teleprompter scripts pre-made with what their school's doing for the day. Yeah. And they'll be basically introducing, introducing the school, what, what the school's program is. Okay.
Speaker 2 00:10:17 That's so good. And does the teacher take part as well? Or just watch? So
Speaker 3 00:10:21 The teachers, they'll, they'll be signing in and doing a lot of like, just some light administrative stuff, but if they quickly sign in enough in enough time, they'll be able to jump in and watch the whole thing happen. Isn't
Speaker 2 00:10:32 That great? Well, look, I've watched this occur. Yeah. And it's incredible how much laughter there is to people really learn through enjoyment and it's almost like love of the technology. That's what I see. Do you find that too? Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:10:43 Absolutely. I think what a lot of these school, a lot of these schools do go to certain excursions and things like that going to, going out to the city, to the NGB and different things. And what we found is that a lot of the introductions and it's, it's quite difficult to tailor introductions to engage students in a way that we do. But what we, what we found is that by getting the students involved in that introduction, they feel immediately a part of what everything is rather than something that's just being served to them, service to them. And so just that in itself just captures them from the start and just kind of initiates that initiative within them to be more inclined to take part in. Yeah. Yeah. In any of our programs, whether it's drones or anything else, we, we've kind of tailored it to be accessible to
Speaker 2 00:11:32 Everyone. You know, it started off way back when things like Questacon, you know, quite, quite good interactive stuff. Yeah. But this is taking it to a whole new level. Yeah. You know, and I think it's marvelous to watch. What do you think is one of the biggest lessons that one of the students has taught you?
Speaker 3 00:11:49 That's a very good question. Yeah. I think, I think just the mere fact that if we just give these students access to just, just access to Indus, like leading industry tools and just what's relevant now. And we're able to address certain questions. Like the classic question of what am I gonna do with this in my future? That they, that they always ask in school that immediately just connects it. Because a lot of the time that I see, and like at a certain point in time when I was in high school, I was the same kid who, you know, had his arms crossed and was just like, oh yeah, whatever. You know? Yeah. It's not really, it's not really cool to try, you know what I mean? Yes. It's not really cool to make yourself vulnerable and put yourself out there in that way. And I see for the few, and it's, it's not all the kids, but for the few kids that do do that, you just see them flourish in, in the work that they do.
Speaker 3 00:12:45 Like if, because everyone's, like, for instance, with the Lego robotics, everyone has the same base model that they have, but they have to get creative and start thinking in a certain way to, to solve the problem. To like, to solve the problem of, you know, sorting little mini 3D printed lettuces and stuff like that. Yeah. And there'll be, there'll be students who, who are able to achieve that, the specific objective that we've set. And then there'll be some kids who create something completely beyond that Wow. With like adding different senses and, you know, oh, we can also do this and that. And like, just that imagination is, I honestly haven't seen that before.
Speaker 2 00:13:22 Mm. It really unleashes them. It really does.
Speaker 3 00:13:23 Does. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:13:24 Yeah. Yeah. And are you excited about the fact that we're going to have a second tech school at the Sunshine Campus? What do you reckon about that? I mean, what are your thoughts about that name being in one Yeah. And designing another one. Are you involved at all in that, in that process? Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:13:36 Absolutely. So I'm, I'm one of the advisory stakeholders with, with Yona the, the new director. And so yeah, she's, she's, we've been in, in communication just helping out with the digital side of things because if you put it into perspective, the Wyndham Tech School was built, I'd say in 2018, I think. And that's what the future look like in 2018. Yeah. So the vision of this new tech school is what, what does the future look like now? Mm. Yeah. Don't get me wrong, beautiful space, the Wyndham Tech School. But again, with, with New Tech school, we have to like keep thinking forward. Yes. And so it's incredibly challenging to do that. It's not easy. Yeah. But it's completely doable.
Speaker 2 00:14:17 Yeah. It just shows, doesn't it? Because when you, when you look at technology, the things you think were last year are so last year Yeah. But the things that are coming. Yeah. I mean, two years ago AI was not on everyone's lips. Now you cannot get through a conversation without mentioning it. Exactly. So what do you reckon is the next big thing in technology?
Speaker 3 00:14:36 I don't know. I genuinely dunno. I've, I've known and I, and I was thinking about, like, I was thinking about this kind of thing on my way here, you know, how can I answer like a question like that and like, because it, it's not easy. And I think what I've noticed just in my years of working in the industry is just that over time the same bits of technology have innovated within itself. So virtual reality has been around for like almost two decades now at this point. Yeah. But the innovations in terms of the immersive experience that you have,
Speaker 2 00:15:08 Putting
Speaker 3 00:15:09 Those, those headsets on, you are not looking at some like 3D animated thing that, you know, the Simpsons could have been made up, made on. Now it's more hyperrealistic visualizations. And you know, some, some of the work that we've done with the BU nursing students have, have been to facilitate a program where the VU nursing students were put in a simulation dealing with a disgruntled patient Mm. Swearing at them acting aggressive, even coming at them with a punch as well. Really? Yeah. Ah,
Speaker 2 00:15:37 And
Speaker 3 00:15:38 It's that kind of immersive experience where, you know, it's not easy to hire a bunch of actors to get that role-based scenario playing in a realistic sense. And so when you, when you have certain problems like that and you look for the problems and you look for the improvements that you can make, that's where the innovation comes from within these existing technologies. Yeah, I get you. That's not to say that's something brand new could be, could be made tomorrow. Yeah. But I think, like from the trajectory that I've seen, that's basically what I can see. And I can only imagine that, you know, virtual reality gaming in itself as well and like, you know, high performance computing, you know, transistors in, in CPUs are getting smaller and smaller, therefore we can process more computation. Yeah. All of these things are just refining itself and, and yeah. Allowing us to do more.
Speaker 2 00:16:30 And so much in that is voice activated, it's not even like finger activated. Yes. You, it's getting more and more that way. So, and that is extremely good for things, in most cases for disability access for example. That's one of the things which I was, you know, reading about and I'm wondering, we're probably gonna try and do more of that, you know, at the next tech school. Yeah. Plus the fact that it's at a, a campus where a national center of excellence in paramedicine is. Yeah. So you can imagine a sort of paramedical science approach as
Speaker 3 00:16:53 Well. Yep. The health lens. Yeah. You know, the
Speaker 2 00:16:54 Health lens. Yeah. So I think that's great. Imagine those working together. Yeah. So just winding it by, how many students a year approximately visit the Wyndham Tech School? Approximately?
Speaker 3 00:17:03 I wouldn't be able to put it down any year. So I'm, I'm operational in the digital side. Yes. So I don't really take care of programs as much, but when we do run a lot of our, our tours and everything, that's when I'm able to hear like our, our stats. So we have access to just about 40 partner schools Right. Within our area. Right. And that gives us access to about 16,000 students. Right. Well
Speaker 2 00:17:24 That's a huge number. It's a huge number. Imagine that. Imagine if you just said one school in the past doing technology and now it's 16.
Speaker 3 00:17:30 Now it's 16.
Speaker 2 00:17:31 With that, you know, with that many, and that's that multiplying effect that you're talking about. It's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 3 00:17:35 And it's all equity based as well. Yeah. It's not just the high achieving students that are able to like, you know, achieve these grades and they're able to go here. This is everyone across the board. And what we're finding is that even with school, with low socioeconomic schools, we're able to put them in programs that get them, like Center Adelaide on the world stage, competing against extremely expensive national private schools as well. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:17:58 That's a great idea.
Speaker 3 00:17:59 And like seeing them just soar like that is just more living proof that it's all just about giving everyone equal access to, to these technologies. Right.
Speaker 2 00:18:08 And you know, and sort of seeing it through in a great way. Yeah. You know, like when we're there, even inside and outside, you know, we've got the Volusia Farms approach, you know, within sort of ag tech, if you can call it that as well. Yeah. So there's nothing which just doesn't have tech at the end, you know, it's sort of med tech, sports tech, ag tech, you know, health tech. It's just fantastic to see it all there in the school. Now you yourself, just to round run, round this together, close to the end, you do more than just tech. Yes. You're also in the Australian Air Force Cadets, you play music, you've got a, a massive, you know, like all these intersecting interests. How do you divide your time?
Speaker 3 00:18:46 Very methodically, I guess. I don't know. I like, yeah. I, I somehow, honestly, I dunno how I do, but I, like, I, I somehow make it work. I think even during, during covid especially that like, if anything, I had more, more of a workload. Like I was studying, I was working, I was running the TEDx Victoria University as well, the first ever TEDx event. Well, wow. I I ran that with a couple of other students. So you
Speaker 2 00:19:09 Ran that during, during the pandemic? That
Speaker 3 00:19:11 Was, yeah. That was a virtual event. Yeah. Holy
Speaker 2 00:19:13 Macro. And how did you get people to get involved in practice and all that kind of thing? During that we, we
Speaker 3 00:19:18 Went through, so yeah, we put out applications for speakers. We, well, even before that, we, we were talking to the founder of TEDx Melbourne, and we were just having a chat gathering insights on how we approach looking for speakers Yeah. How to, how to figure out what's a new idea that we can put into, into our events. So a lot of information, a lot of, a lot of interviews, a lot of meetings, a a lot of changes in venue and like, you know, because this was smack bank during Covid as well, so there were a lot of restrictions. Yeah. But yeah, eventually we, we made it work. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:19:52 Congratulations. Honestly, I did not know that till this minute. That's what's so wonderful of a podcast. Things just emerge that in the script. Right. And there happened to be some of the best things too. Yeah. And of course you've mentioned your Sri Lankan heritage. Yes. How do you think that sort of plays into what you do? Like, do you still maintain a very strong cultural connection?
Speaker 3 00:20:10 Yeah. Well, it's only as of the past couple of years that I've been starting to look into my cultural roots and my identity. Yeah. As a second generation Australian, my parents were, so, I was born here, but my parents were born in Sri Lanka. And so, you know, I was, I was never taught the na the native language growing up. Even my grandparents were, were English speaking as well. Yeah. And so for, for, for quite a while, I kind of felt disconnected. It's a classic second generation Australian experience where, you know, you're not, you don't feel as connected to your culture and like in some instances you kind of feel like you should distance yourself from that. And so I I, I came to find out, well, yeah, just over time I came to realize that I felt so much more comfortable with my personal identity by connecting that to my cultural identity. Yeah. And so just, you know, asking my parents, you know, what was like, what was life like in, in, in Sri Lanka, you know, they, they, they were there during the civil wars and everything during a lot of hardships. And there's like so many differences, but so many beautiful, like, so many beautiful things. I never really realized, like, you know, about the music side of things as well in Sri Lanka, how, like how music's done there and how like food, like, it's just so much to discover
Speaker 2 00:21:21 It goes on, doesn't it? Yeah. And of course, we ourselves as a university have a really very good developing relationship with the green university just outside Colombo, you know. Yeah. So more to do there and I'm sure they're gonna need lots of technical advice, so believe me, we should be talking about that separately. Definitely. But I mean, I guess the word that one could use for you is, aside from super talented and frankly, I, I think that is clearly multi-passionate. So is there a topic or is there an industry or something which is really catching your, in your interest right now?
Speaker 3 00:21:50 Well, recently I've just completed just a little short foundational course on large language models, which is basically under the hood of artificial intelligence. I've heard it, you know, I've heard the word ai just Amal just turn itself into, you know, frankly speaking a corporate buzzword. Yes. Almost
Speaker 2 00:22:08 Everything. Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:22:09 Yeah, yeah. And so, and so I was just like, okay, I feel like I can look into this beyond, I, I, I got a c under the hood. I want to see the mechanics behind it. Yes. The technical side of it. And so as like, you know, someone who's only spent like four years in the industry, I jumped into a course that was made for machine learning engineers. Right. I felt quite outta my depth, honestly. Yes. Just going into that and like, candidly speaking, I was actually using chat GPT on the side of my screen to actually explain some of the terms that I was learning in that, ironically. So I was like, you know, finessing it in my own way. But yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm really, I'm really interested in how, you know Yeah. Just the mechanics of a lot of these buzzwords work and how, and how they Yeah. Just how they function, how they can be optimized and the innovations that are occurring within that as well. You
Speaker 2 00:22:54 Know what I love, you can explain this in a way that people can understand and so many things that are associated with AI are really almost impossible to break into unless you're an expert. And we should make it available to everyone, just like the tech school. Break it open, make it democratic, make it understood. So I just look back at what you said with your siblings, your parents. I think we should have a competition to say how many people have had siblings and parents at vu, and we'll just make a big fuss about this next graduation, you know? Sure. Because it is one of the special features of this place. Yeah. You know, we just come back from Malaysia. Yes. And I met four members of one family there also who graduated at different times from our partner Sunway College. And they were so proud. We've had special photos taken and it's something forever. We must do the same for you and your family as well, I believe.
Speaker 3 00:23:40 Yeah. That's amazing. Like in another country as well. That's, that's, that's
Speaker 2 00:23:43 Incredible. It's the vu thing. It's, it really is the vu thing. But can I say this, I've really enjoyed learning more about you, your passions, your technology, and the fact that it applies to people in the best possible way. Yvo, thank you so much. Thank you, Adam.
