Academic institutes’s Open days are hugely important occasions as these events provide much needed opportunities to the prospective students and their parents to find out all sorts of details about different academic programs, faculty and students’ profiles, academic and extra-curricular environmental facilities, and career prospects. These events also enable academic staff to directly speak with the prospective students and their parents about different degree programs, their suitability for the types of backgrounds different students may have, and how those degree programs can fulfil the career goals of the prospective students. I really enjoy these events as there are so many exciting things to do and observe. The last open day at the University of Adelaide was really very special and exciting event that I enjoyed a lot. From the School of Computer Science, I gave the open day talk titled – Software Driven Innovation – was purported to convey the message that software development is an exciting area of work with huge potential for successful career path with the right type of aptitude and training. I also spoke with several parents and their children about different aspects and benefits of studying Computer Science in general and Software Engineering in particular. The summary of my talk is below:

Software is becoming increasing pervasive in the modern day living. We have been witnessing dramatic changes and improvements in our lives courtesy to software based devices and systems. Whilst software has been enabling most of the social, economic, organisational, political, and technological innovation over the last many years, we hardly notice or think about software as one of the key drivers of innovation and productivity in this century. It is increasingly becoming clear that software and software development need to gain appropriate visibility and recognition to attract and retain the best talent to this field. This talk will highlight the role of software in driving the innovation and productivity in the developed as well as developing Worlds – I’ll also talk about some of the key reasons because of which the software development is (and will remain) one of the highly ranked professional across the globe.