About Me
Hi, my name is Abbas Heidari and I have been involved in the IT industry since 1996. During these years I’ve gone on an incredible career journey.
I’ve been involved with, and enjoy presenting on, technical topics to various industry and user groups. I am also a co-organiser of Melbourne SEO Meetup.
1996
I’m old enough to remember 5 1⁄4-inch, and 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disks and watching people carrying a box of ten 3 1⁄2-inch floppy disks, that together had one game on them. The Y2K bug was another classic example of those years.
I started studying Software Engineering in Iran in 1996 and working in the industry at the same time. From an early age I strongly believed academic knowledge could take me somewhere, but practical experience would complete that. After graduating, I was very happy with the experience and knowledge I had gained while studying.
2001
After my graduation in 2001, I worked for a digital agency for 2 years, before I started my own digital agency. The business expanded and I hired a few specialists to assist. We were busy designing and developing websites for clients, but I had a big desire to extend my knowledge in IT and specifically learn more about how the World Wide Web could be used to improve performance and productivity.
2006
In 2006 I moved to Melbourne, Australia and a whole new world opened up to me, both from personal and professional aspects.
Since 2006 I have worked in the IT industry and during that time I have worn a few different hats including Joomla developer, Dot Net Nuke developer, SEO specialist, Google Analytics practitioner, Project Manager and Service Delivery Lead was my last full-time role.
2008
I was always interested in data and how it can be used to improve performance. Google Analytics was new and I decided to learn more about it. I took an online course run by Google and passed the Individual Qualification test for Google Analytics. I passed the test again in 2015.
2011
In 2011 I started my Masters of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne in the Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) department. I can confidently say this course had the biggest impact on my IT career so far. I was exposed to topics which I normally didn’t have any chance to hear about in the workplace, like Enterprise Application and Architecture, Information Systems Strategy and Governance, Impact of Digitisation, Professional Information Systems Consulting and Business Intelligence.
I finished my masters by taking a research unit. My research topic was ” ICT’s Effect on Parents’ Feelings of Presence, Awareness, and Connectedness during a Child’s Hospitalization”.
Working with Professor Frank Vetere and Dr Greg Wadley, as my research supervisors for this research was an amazing experience. Additionally, I learned that regardless of how sophisticated a technology is, it needs to work in the current context and, more importantly, users must like working with it. It also has to be easy to use.
My data was collected at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and I visited a few different wards in order to collect data. The result was fascinating. The study showed kids prefer not to use video all the time to communicate with their parents for various reasons and text was the main media they liked to use.
Later on, this research became an article and I presented it at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) in 2015 in Adelaide, Australia.
That research showed me the importance of human interaction with technology and how it can be affected depends on situations and circumstances. This learning later on affected my approach to training and working with people in organisations and assisting them, and gave me an extra lens to see the behaviours involved in using IT.
2015
I started implementing my new knowledge at my next full-time job. For instance, implementing a knowledge management system was a direct outcome of my Enterprise Architecture lectures and paying more attention to security was a result of the Impact of Digitalisation ones.
Later on, I was introduced to Agile and that was another step in my career which had to be taken. I had done project management before, but this method was like fresh air to me, and a system which could create outstanding results.
I enrolled in a course, Training and Assessment (Cert IV TAE), which allowed me to understand the different ways people like to learn new skills and understand these differences and how they need to be addressed.
2017
To extend my Agile knowledge, I enrolled in an ICAgile Certified Professional course and obtained the certification for that course.
I started working for one of the most trustworthy digital agencies in Australia, Clickify. They not only deliver outstanding results for their clients, but the culture among their team members is phenomenal. It’s surprising how a distributed team can achieve that level of engagement among their staff.
2018 – 2020
I implemented Jira Software, Jira Service Desk and Confluence at StocksDigital and Clickify. I saw their impact first hand and decided to make it my career. In August 2018 I joined GLiNTECH as their first Melbourne full-time consultant. GLiNTECH is a Platinum Partner of Atlassian and won multiple prices globally.
As a part of continuous improvement, I attended in ITSM Mastery Class facilitated by Atlassian. Over the two days, we learned how to better help clients to discover their real problems and differentiate them from symptoms.
Client engagement is always fun. Meeting smart people and work with them to bring more value for the business by improving Tools, Process and People. I should declare that Process and People are my favourite parts. I believe when we get them right, the Tool aspect can be more standard.
