Below is a draft e-mail that I wrote a few weeks ago, intending to send it to the Level 7 mailing list at DSTC. Note the word draft. It is obviously miles too long and far too, well, preachy to be coming from a mere Ph.D. student. All the same, it does contain the sentiments I wanted to get across, albeit in a long winded fashion. It didn’t get sent for a number of reasons, but mainly because I was hoping to have submitted the final version of my thesis before saying farewell to the DSTC. With the recent news about the closure of the DSTC, I figured I’m probably about the last person to be sending farewell e-mails to Level 7, so I’ve relegated my farewell to this blog entry. Anyway, here it is…
Dear all,
It has come time for me to say goodbye to the DSTC after five years. I began as an honours student affiliated with the M3 project, which doesn’t get mentioned much these days, largely due to the direction it began to take after a large German corporation became involved. But hey, I learned a lot during that year, and the experiences I had convinced me to come back and do a Ph.D. Since that time, I’ve been affiliated with the PACE project as a Ph.D. student. It’s been great.
First of all, I’d like to thank Ted McFadden for being my "DSTC Contact person" and for just being plain cool. Thanks to the other DSTC Ph.D. students past and present (Suzanne Little, James Cole, Brett Campbell, Karen Henricksen, David Hearnden, Ryan Wishart and others) for sharing your experiences and allowing me to share mine. I am grateful to the sys admins for doing the often thankless job that they do (especially for helping to clear up my desk which had gathered five years of my own junk and who knows how many years of Andry’s junk). Thanks to everybody at the DSTC I’ve ever had the pleasure of having lunch with (because those were some of the best moments). Lastly, thank you all for helping to create an atmosphere conducive to research and learning. Thanks for helping me when I needed help and knowing when I needed to be challenged. You all should know the tremendous difference you make to the life of a young (I hope I am still numbered among the young :-) researcher, and it is really appreciated. I have truly been made to feel a part of the DSTC, despite my lowly status as a Ph.D. student.
The DSTC is a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, firstly as an honours student back in 2000 and then as a Ph.D student since that time, it’s been the perfect place to learn and grow as a researcher and as a person. One would be hard pressed to find another IT organisation in Australia with such a distinguished array of intelligent, knowledgeable and friendly staff (and that includes admin/business staff like Liz, Doug and Naomi). Off the top of my head I can think of DSTC staff/students (past and present) who are graduates of MIT, INRIA and other educational institutions that have come to be considered world class in our general field, who have been awarded Honorary/Adjunct Professorships, who have written books with some of the household names in our industry (e.g. James Gosling), who have received university medals, who have been named the University Graduate of the Year, who have been awarded internships/residencies at the Sun Microsystems and IBMs of this world, and who the media regularly interviews for their expert opinions. But that’s just the honour roll I’ve been able to think of in 30 seconds, and doesn’t even begin to touch upon the real work, the real research that has been and is still being conducted in this place. To have been part of that, if only for five years or so, has been an honour and an experience I won’t forget. It would be a shame if we ever forgot about these wonderful achievements and the accomplishments to which you’ve all contributed over the years.
I wish you all the very best in the future wherever you might be, and hope that you continue to conduct world class research, and afford the same opportunities to the next generation of Ph.D. students as you have afforded me.
Although I’m sending this farewell e-mail, you might still run into me from time to time when (if?) my thesis examiners send back their reports and I have to address their comments. In the meantime I’ve taken employment at a small business in Toowong, as those of you who read Planet DSTC would already know.
Regards,
Ricky
