Good Afternoon Everyone,

Do you know why I am with this paper? I came with this paper because I am the shy type but fortunately for me today; I have been seeing cool and beautiful faces here this afternoon. So, it seems I am not frightened yet.

It’s a great pleasure for me to be in the midst of my tutors, mentors and friends after about 3 years.

I would like to borrow 5 minutes of your time, which is about 0.35% of your day to share my experiences when I was a student here 4 years ago and what I have gone through since I left this beautiful institution which is about three years now. but please don’t ask me how I intend to pay back the 5 minutes.

The Forbes World Wealthiest Individuals released on the 12 of March 2015 has Bill Gates (Microsoft) at No.1, Carlos Slim (Telmex) No.2 and Warren Buffett (with Investment in IBM) as No.3. In fact 6 of the top 10 wealthiest personalities are in the IT Industry. That means we all here have chosen the right profession. But every industry and profession come with its woes and challenges, for us, it is the dynamism and constant change. In those days, we run to Myspace for Social Networking, but now all of us are on Facebook, for instant messaging we visit cyber cafes to use the Yahoo! Messenger but now WhatsApp has over 1 billion downloads on Google Play Store. Our search engine used to be Lycos in the late 90s, but everybody is hanged on Google Search now. What all that means is that as IT professionals, to remain relevant and be successful like Bill Gates, we have to be on our toes and self-development is the only answer.

My Name is Ibrahim Adedeji Adefila; I graduated with the Middlesex Class of 2012 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Information Technology and Business Information System. It may interest you to know that I joined this beautiful university having completed a career program from one of the colleges its hold articulation agreements, which is APTECH. I enrolled with a fairly good background in programming with the belief that I can develop a workable system.

It was not far into the program that I discovered that I had neglected a very crucial component of development over my years of studying programming syntax and semantics, I know you would not believe what I have sidelined, the User. I used to develop to suit my concise, but Novel Interactive Technologies (HCI) anchored by Ms Engie Bashir uncovered the need to develop a system that is not only user-friendly but also driven by the usability principles and methodologies. With the support and supervision of the IT Staff, a few of my colleagues and I won the 2012 National (UAE) Software Development Trade Show and participated in the 2nd Gulf Programming Contest (GPC). Since you all here are students of the institution; I do not need to tell you how supportive and hospitable the staffs and tutors were which I believe has far improved.

I would also like to share with you, how I got my current job. I got my job indirectly through the Middlesex Career Office. Middlesex seems to have some sort of alliance with the Shk. Saud Bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation and I applied, took the interview and was fortunate to get a placement as an Intern. Then, the Foundation then had a team of about 5 – 6 persons and as such do not have the business needs to hire a full time IT personnel, but they had to go out of their way to recommend me to an associate company (RAKGAS) where I have been for about 2 and half years now. Recently, the Foundation hosted the RAK Film Festival, and I was saddled with the responsibility to collate the films submitted by the participants and merge them into a single video without losing the video and sound quality, bit rate, among others, all thanks to the ideas I gained from New Media.

Since my day to day responsibilities at work is not programming oriented, at my spare time I try to develop applications, my recent development is a Mobile App with a corresponding Web App where I have to put to use the knowledge I gained from Data Warehousing and Project Management. The apps were made for a political party in Nigeria towards the general elections that are coming up on the 28th of this month and 11th of April, 2015. The duo app is designed to curb and reduce electoral fraud and rigging. You can download the demo version of the Android Mobile App and check out the demo website from demo.elections.org.ng.
I would like to conclude with a recap of what we have discussed so far, definitely information about the year I enrolled or graduated from Middlesex is not of importance to you, but I have three points which I believe is known to all, but I have just re-affirmed today. They are:
1. All subjects included in the program are relevant in real life scenario and well thought-out and as such must be taken seriously.
2. The IT profession and the IT industry itself is a highly dynamic industry, hence requires continuous self-development.
3. Finally, I would appeal to us to work closely with the Middlesex career department to secure job and internship placement to improve our skills.
If you need to contact me, you can reach me via my email address: Ibrahim@adefila.org

Thank you for having me.

Do have a good evening.

Ibrahim Adedeji Adefila