Introduction

My turn for an introduction. I was born and raised in South Australia's wine region, e.g. the Barossa Valley. Having graduated high school with few future job prospects within our community and the surrounding area, I travelled to what I thought at the time was a big city, Adelaide. It was here that I realised my passion for working with people and being able to help guide their learning and inspire positive change through my work as a Personal Trainer and Massage Therapist.

Moving cities

I quickly learnt that Adelaide wasn't quite as big of a city as I once thought, and after a weekend trip to Melbourne, I'd fallen in love. So, upon arriving in Melbourne, I opened a sports therapy clinic. After a wild ride to get the business up and running within three months (hell of a story for another time), the business was flourishing and stable. From there, I decided to return to study and started my Bachelor of Health Science degree. However, similar to Byron's journey into ISE, I found similar difficulties.

Forever the Entrepreneur

While studying for my degree, I took a genuine interest in sports nutrition subjects (maybe an easy jump because it complemented my already successful sports therapy clinic). Thinking I'd find a new passion and direction for the business. As a result, I extended my studies and gained a Certificate in Applied Sports Nutrition. However, this was short-lived after a financially successful twelve months of running the sports nutrition business alongside the sports clinic. Although I was no longer enjoying the work, it was at this point I realised that my time within the fitness, sports and allied health industry was coming to an end, but I didn't yet know or have any future direction or plan.

By this stage

I was still completing my Bachelor of Health Science degree even though I knew deep down that I might not use it. I was, however, on the search for my next adventure. By this stage, I'd met Byron, and he'd been in my ear about learning programming (probably seeing something in me that I clearly couldn't at the time). So I started small, like most of us do, I began by automating a lot of my daily admin tasks, and from there, I was hooked. I have always been interested in computers, games and how things work, but I never thought I was smart enough to "make it".

Enter the pandemic

Restricted to staying at home and unable to continue operating the sports therapy business became the final pivot point. It was time to finally take the leap and go from taking on the occasional web development side project to transitioning industries and becoming a full-time software developer/web engineer.

After months of trying to convince me to join ISE

I finally relented and accepted Byron's offer, diving head in. Initially, I was hesitant, having taught myself almost everything I knew about software and web development and only had a few years of experience. In addition, I'd only teamed up to work with one developer at a time before. This was a new (even scary) experience, and I couldn't be more excited. It had been a long time since I'd been pushed that far beyond my comfort zone. I relished the challenge.

Fast forward almost twelve months

This has easily been one of the most challenging journeys I've ever undertaken. I loved (almost) every second of it. What I realised I was missing to take that final leap into full-time web/software development was a project significant and scary enough to challenge me. What we've built, been able to achieve and continue to develop has unlocked a passion that I long thought lost.

I'll leave it here, but...

I'll be back to share more of our journey and how we've built some of the things we have, the pivots that occurred as development progressed and why we made some of the infrastructure choices we did along the way. For now take a read of one of the infrastructure optimisations we've go in the works The Bundler.