On Thursday 13th July, about 500 secondary school students from around Melbourne visited RMIT’s spectacular The Capital theatre for the 2023 Melbourne Big Day In event.

Big Day In events are run by the Australian Computer Society Foundation and involves representatives from large and small IT related organisations sharing the value of a career in STEM.

I had the honour of being the opening keynote presenter and shared a presentation about the most important skills to thrive in the STEM (and virtually any other industry). One of the most important of these skills is creativity.

I encouraged each student to make the most of the access to Adobe tools that is provided to them by their school so that they can develop their digital creativity skills.

One of the Adobe applications that I showcased was Character Animator, a great tool for making creative animated presentations just by tracking facial movements via a normal web-cam.

Another app/resource I showcased was Adobe’s new generative AI solution FireFly as we discussed the impact AI is having on a range of industries.

My colleague Abigail Nelson and I met with most of the students at the Adobe booth throughout the day and encouraged them to take part in a special competition aimed at sharing their future dream job and the skills required to get there.