Returning to Bradford University

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In a few weeks’ time, I’m returning to Bradford to speak to Undergrads on the subject of data and applied analytics.

I was last there perhaps 15 years ago and spoke in Lecture Theatre 4.2, which was possibly the last lecture theatre I sat in before graduating. There were lots of ghosts in that particular lecture theatre, people who I had long forgotten. Some I was able to track down in later years, others just disappeared. It also was one of the places where I was to meet my future wife. As I left the theatre after a Friday morning lecture, she was waiting to go in, and our paths would cross on the stairs outside the room.

When I was last there, the students looked so young and now, 15 years on, they will look even younger. My task will be not only to share my knowledge, but to empathise and communicate effectively.

I wonder how I would have felt 40 years ago if, as an undergrad, I had listened to someone like me? What would I have asked? How do I find a job? What does the future hold?

One reasonable question to ask now is why I’m doing it? The answer is that it’s a sort of payback time. Don’t we all have to pay ‘our dues’, sooner or later?

Perhaps there will be someone listening who will remember what I say, and that their career will change for ever. And, as the flapping wings of a single butterfly also makes a global impact, then maybe my visit will affect the future somehow.

Who knows?