About Me
Hi there. Welcome to my site. For those of you unfamiliar with personal websites, this is the part where I give a protracted, gratuitous spiel about life in general, and mine in particular. Here goes…..
How do you contact me?
Feel free to use any of the mechanisms listed on the right-hand side of the page. I do receive a ridiculuous amount of spam, and I mitigate that by running aggressive filtering on all of my incoming mail. Please take that into account when attempting contact, and if you don’t get a response please try to make your email look less like spam.
The Fact-File
- My name is: Peter WILLS.
- You probably know me through one of these contexts:
- NBN Co - which is like a religous call for telco engineers
- Telstra - where I used to work full-time.
- Monash’s MBA Program - where I studied full-time until recently.
- The IEEE - which I am heavily involved with.
- The YoungLibs - I was previously President of the Albert Park Branch.
- RMIT’s CS Dept - where I worked part-time until a couple of years ago.
- I reside in Melbourne, Australia.
- Wanna see my resume? Check it on LinkedIn.
- No, I do not manufacture cermamics (wrong Peter Wills).
- No, I am not a NZ-based physics professor (another wrong Peter Wills).
- No, I was not the original guitarist in Def Leppard (you want Peter Willis; common error).
The Spiel
Here’s a brief summary of my life to date. I was born in Sydney, Australia in 1977 and I lived in that city for more or less my first 14 years. During that time I attended Lane Cove Public School and Hunters Hill High School, and I’d be delighted to hear from anyone who remembers me from either of those two schools because I’ve lost track of all but two of you……
My immediate family (Mum, Dad, my sister Jane and our golden retriever) moved to Brisbane in late 1991 in order to be closer to our relatives, and to avoid the spiraling cost of living that Sydney residents faced back then. The remainder of my high school education was meted out by Ormiston College; a (then) small, independent school a pleasant 5 minute stroll from where my parents and sister still live today.
After high school it was off to The University of Queensland for a four year degree majoring in electrical engineering, which I completed in December 1999. One of the highlights of my time at UoQ was the work I did with The UoQ Solar Racing Team (aka Sunshark). The 2 & 1/2 years I spent on that team was extremely stressful and very rewarding. We all still keep in touch, albeit a little more sporadically these days…… Studying at UoQ also gave me my first introduction to The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), to whom I now donate about 10->15 hours of my time per week.
Halfway through my final year, Telstra Research Laboratories (TRL) offered me a position in Melbourne, which I immediately accepted. I started working for them in January 2000. It turned out to be a good decision. I spent 2.5 years working at TRL; learnt heaps, and made lasting friendships. Then, following a 3.5 year stint working various cellular engineering roles I arrived in my final Telstra position - in the company’s Chief Technology Office; a business unit concerned with the 3-5 year view of all Telstra’s technology platforms. I left in January 2010, and following gardening leave have now started at NBN Co where I look after the company’s OSS programme.
…….. and that brings us up to the present.
