Rick at rest
Perpetually on the verge of joining the circus, Ricky lives in the Brisbane, Australia suburb of Chapel Hill, nestled at the southern foot of Mt Coot-tha. He shares his life with his wife, Karen, his son, Xander, his daughter, Claire, and a rascally West Highland White Terrier named Random.
His roles as a parent of young children and an author of scientific publications means he is in the habit of speaking about himself in the third person. He is socially liberal and leans towards free markets with a few pragmatic caveats. He therefore considers himself to be a classical liberal, but not a conservative, which makes it difficult come election-time. Sometimes Ricky sports a scruffy beard, sometimes he doesn’t. When he visits the dentist, he enters a zen-like state approaching total relaxation, which is the only reason he bothers going for a regular check-up.
Ricky holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Queensland, and he works at NICTA, Australia’s ICT Centre of Excellence, where he performs a mix of research, customer development, government and industry liaison and, of course, software engineering. He advocates learning through experimentation and is therefore particularly attracted to the methods espoused by the Lean Startup movement as a guide for starting up, well, anything.
Likes: football (the round ball kind, in case clarification is needed), Devonshire tea, caramel latté (hey, don’t judge me!), The Beatles, The Cat Empire, travelling, fast food, slow food, all food, the news.
Dislikes: political correctness, irrational fear, green eggs and ham.
Ricky is @rickyrobinson on Twitter.