Friday Five: Michael Wyres

Renai LeMay
Friday, 11 February 2011 06:28

IT People - People

Every Friday we profile a prominent figure from Australia's IT, telecommunications or video gaming industries in the Friday Five.

Michael Wyres is that most valuable of beasts; an engineer as good with words as he is with technology. Equally adept at his day job '” developing Voice over IP and unified communications solutions '” as he is at analysing the telecommunications industry, Wyres is a frequent commenter on his popular blog and on Delimiter, and can also be found on Twitter. Oh, and he's also a proud Dad. He's this week's guest for the Friday Five.

What was your first job ever?

That actually depends on what you call a 'real job'!

I did a couple of brief stints (along with my two sisters) helping out over school holidays at the component manufacturing plant where my father was the production manager. I remember one summer individually checking literally thousands of those army spoon/can opener/bottle opener combination contraptions, making sure that the blades were all attached properly. I still get apoplexy every time I see one of those damn things!

As for the IT industry, while studying computing at the University of Ballarat during the early-to-mid 1990s, a late night thunderstorm basically destroyed what was an already very poor student dial-up bank, and late night telnet sessions became impossible. Someone amongst the 'powers that be' decided that it wouldn't be repaired, and the small group of serious online students at the university were at a loss. Not to be outdone, a lifelong friend (who was studying engineering at the time) and I 'offered' to redevelop the university's very poor website - in what was become the first serious attempt they'd made at a website at that time. Our 'payment' was to be given access to the staff dial-up bank so we could update the site as we worked on it.