Adelaide University Internship Experience - Todd Guanhua Tao
Welcome Todd!
Todd Guanhua Tao joined our SAcommunity Data Analytics Team and SAcommunity Website Rebuild Team for his University of Adelaide SET (Sciences, Engineering and Technology) Internship for his Masters of Computing and Innovation Semester 2, 2024: 13 August 2024 - 18 November 2024.
He is completing a 280 hour internship onsite with SAcommunity at the Connecting Up Office, Infoxchange for 3 days (22.5 hours) a week for ~14 weeks around his classes. Total Hours 201 Joined 13 August 2024 Last Check-in 11 October 2024
Personal Biography
Todd Guanhua Tao is in his penultimate year of the Master of Computing and Innovation program at the University of Adelaide. He has an interdisciplinary background in Landscape Architecture, having graduated from a multifaceted design firm as a senior landscape architect and project manager. Many of his projects have been praised by local residents once implemented. He chose to pursue a degree in Computing and Innovation after encountering smart city projects, where extensive data-driven charts and reports were utilized during the early design stages to support decision-making.
He joined the Connecting Up Data Analytics Team and the SAcommunity Website Redevelopment Team to follow his passionate goal of acquiring skills in Data Analytics and Full Stack Development. Todd aims to gain a deep understanding of Data Analytics tools such as Power BI and Google Analytics, while also refining transferable skills like project management and design from his previous experience.
Todd plans to explore a career combining programming and landscape design, with the aim of leveraging data-driven insights, innovative software, and web projects to enhance the design process and improve societal well-being.
Community Services in Councils Project
Todd has selected the Outback Communities Authority for his Power BI council reports, a small database of approximately 53 community services operating in the area for the financial years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, 2023-2024 and his completed reports will be found >>here.
Todd has selected the Outback Communities Authority for his Power BI council reports, a small database of approximately 53 community services operating in the area for the financial years 2021-2022 and 2022-2023, 2023-2024 and his completed reports will be found >>here.
Work experience - Internal and External Events, Connections and Networks
Volunteers and interns are encouraged to attend monthly SAcommunity Team meetings, Connecting Up staff meetings, as well as quarterly all-staff Infoxchange Town Hall meetings to understand more about the organisation as a whole.
Organisation-wide news, events and projects are communicated through the staff channels, with weekly CEO Updates from David Spriggs. Informal 'Lunch and Learn' educational sessions and meetings create connections with staff and stakeholders. Whilst peer-to-peer training or capacity building and telephone techniques training allow for networking with other volunteers.
Interns are also given opportunities to attend Data Catalyst Network and ADIA stakeholder and partner events as they arise.
Relevant meetings Todd has attended include:
Connecting Up monthly All-staff meeting held 10 Sep 2024
Career Development
Activity One: Connecting Up (CU) meetings
As a mandatory part of career development, Todd will attend the monthly Connecting Up staff meetings. From this event, volunteers and interns gain a deeper understanding of the working environment in the real world. They will grow rapidly in three key areas: gaining insight into the organization’s purpose and task assignments, learning how to extract key information from meetings, and learning how to quickly integrate into a team.
Specifically, during the meetings, Head of Connecting Up, Pankaj Chhalotre, first summarizes the core tasks and their status from the previous stage. This allows interns to better understand the organization’s objectives and the team’s current main tasks, helping them clarify their own development goals. In the staff meetings, every full-time employee provides a detailed work summary, which is an efficient and direct way for interns to familiarize themselves with team members.
Innovation at Infoxchange on 25 September 2024
Activity Two: Lunch & Learn - Innovation at Infoxchange on 25 September 2024
Jo Davies, Chief Operating Officer at Infoxchange, was the speaker of this webinar, where she discussed the importance of innovation. The webinar focused on defining innovation within the IX organization and its role in employee engagement feedback. Jo particularly emphasized that innovation is not only a core company value but also a principle that runs through all aspects of the company's work. The discussion aimed to help participants understand the true meaning of innovation and explore how to foster innovation within the organization.
Jo Davies shared her definition of innovation, stressing that it is not merely an expression of creativity but a process of turning ideas into concrete actions. She outlined several types of innovation, including incremental and disruptive innovation, providing examples such as Airbnb and Netflix to illustrate these concepts. Additionally, she explored how collaboration and process innovation can boost efficiency, ultimately helping to achieve organizational objectives.
Key takeaways from Todd:
Through this webinar, firstly, I gained a deep understanding that innovation is not just about coming up with new ideas, but more importantly, about putting those ideas into practice to create tangible value. Secondly, Jo Davies emphasized that innovation is an ongoing process that requires us to continually adapt to the evolving needs of the market. Thirdly, the most important takeaway is that I now understand that IX's innovation is divided into three phases.
The Three Horizon Model shows that in the current phase, we focus on product and service innovation, such as client management and managed IT services. In the near term, we plan to focus on innovations like the data warehouse and AI applications. In the future, IX will prioritize innovations related to the Digital Future Fund. This gives me a clearer understanding of Infoxchange's developmental goals at different stages. This webinar made me reflect on areas in my daily work where I can apply innovation to optimize processes and eliminate "human duct tape fixes."
Data Catalyst Network Webinar with The Smith Family on 01 October 2024
Activity Three: Data Catalyst Network (DCN) September Webinar | Working with Government data - Lessons from the Learning for Life program
Anne Hampshire, Head of Research and Advocacy of The Smith Famiily conducted a discussion on working with government data. The purpose of this introduction is to share insights about working with sensitive data. The Smith Family Learning for Life program - which is designed to support children experiencing disadvantage by providing them with the necessary resources to engage with school and improve their educational outcomes.
A key aspect of the program is the use of data to provide timely and targeted support. The Smith Family has partnered with the South Australian Department for Education to gain access to key educational data in real-time for students on their program. This data includes attendance, achievement, and behaviour management incidents, which are updated daily. This allows Learning for Life team members to support students and families as issues emerge, helping to identify and address problems early on.
Key takeaways from Todd:
a. Building Strong Relationships is Essential: The discussion emphasized that successful data-sharing arrangements with government entities rely heavily on pre-existing relationships. Trust and mutual understanding between organizations and government bodies are crucial for navigating legal, logistical, and operational complexities when dealing with sensitive data.
b. Clear Value Proposition and Data Security: When working with sensitive data, especially in government partnerships, it's important to clearly define the value proposition for all parties involved. Additionally, ensuring robust data management practices, such as verifying who has access to the data and maintaining security standards, is essential for building trust and ensuring successful collaboration.
c. Consent and Trust from Stakeholders: A significant part of the discussion highlighted the importance of obtaining consent from families and stakeholders, especially when dealing with sensitive data. The high level of trust from families, as demonstrated by a 95% consent rate, shows that when stakeholders believe data will be used to benefit them directly (such as improving educational outcomes for their children), they are more likely to participate in data-sharing initiatives.
Interns Todd and Ivy with Cameron Brown (right) 17 Sep 2024
Activity Two: Mentor Meeting Program on 17 Sep 2024
Connecting Up Volunteers and Interns are provided with the opportunity to select staff members from across the wider Infoxchange organisation for an informational mentor meeting. Here they have the opportunity to ask more about staff members job roles and employment journey, and learn about their career and professional development, to gain insights and guidance that can be applied towards their own success.
Volunteers and interns both prepare 5 questions for their mentors and then are encouraged to record 5 aspects they felt were helpful for them to share on their portfolio for both them and other volunteers, and Todd shared his experience in meeting Cameron Brown, experienced 7-year Web Developer, Infoxchange.
Mentor - Cameron Brown, Web Developer
Cameron Brown is an experienced and technically focused mentor. He has served in web development at Infoxchange for nearly seven years. His experience in web development and IT has enabled Infoxchange to enhance our online customer experience and deliver products and services in new, innovative ways.
Career Insights:
The first question Todd and Ivy asked was whether self-paced and self-motivated projects from Udemy or Coursera would be useful for job applications. Cameron responded that it might be beneficial to select projects based on personal interests and that it’s not necessary to follow every episode in sequence. Doing this before entering the real world could add value.
Cameron then addressed our concern about the constantly emerging new technologies. He explained that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with everything since things change so rapidly. Instead, he advised focusing on a specific area rather than trying to cover everything in a broad field. For example, you don’t need to learn every programming language—it’s more practical to specialize, which makes staying up-to-date easier.
Experience Sharing:
When we discussed the importance of soft skills and networking, Cameron mentioned that "social relationships and knowing the right people are valued more than actual skills or talent when securing jobs these days. However, skills are definitely still important. Personally, I believe that soft skills and the ability to solve problems and research necessary technical skills are more valuable than trying to memorize or focus on specific technical skills."
Then, when asked, "If you could go back to the start of your career in web development, what do you wish you had known? What tips would you give to someone just starting out?", Cameron responded that he wouldn’t be as nervous or scared about trying to excel and get everything right from day one. He would also not be afraid to make mistakes and ask lots of questions.
Telephone Techniques 11 September 2024: Led by Volunteer David Webb
Activity Three: Telephone Techniques
Telephone techniques follow on with email and communication techniques, to assist Data Analytics Team members with understanding more about the directory and data collection methods, in data cleaning and updating their individual dataset information, and, in finally introducing and presenting their data reports to council stakeholders. There are several telephone techniques meetings, and practice is important as with the student's elevator pitches.
SAcommunity Website Rebuild Team:
Volunteer Training and Development
Digital Training & Development
Volunteers and interns have access to the Connecting Up Digital Learning Platform providing live webinars and recorded webinars, workshops and webcons presented by subject-matter experts to understand more about a range of technology topics for the not-for-profit sector.
Digital Training & Development
Volunteers and interns have access to the Connecting Up Digital Learning Platform providing live webinars and recorded webinars, workshops and webcons presented by subject-matter experts to understand more about a range of technology topics for the not-for-profit sector.
Relevant training sessions were selected, attended, summarised and assessed by Todd to look at how these sessions can enhance his internship experience have included:
Activity One: Webinar - Gain a clear understanding of your organisation's data and impact using Power BI
Marcus Harvey, the head of Infoxchange's IT consulting and services teams in Australia and New Zealand, held this webinar to provide valuable insights into the relationship between data analysis and non-profit organizations (NFPs). Marcus presented a potential pathway for NFPs to extract more insights from their data, gain a deeper understanding of their clients, and identify current service gaps, enabling them to work smarter, not harder, and achieve measurable outcomes with the clients and communities they serve.
Gain a clear understanding of your organisation's data and impact using Power BI
Key takeaways from Todd:
Firstly, from the webinar, I learned that most NFPs don’t have easy access to critical information. According to the survey conducted by Marcus, 50% of organizations reported that their systems aren’t capable of capturing information about client outcomes. Therefore, data analytics is undoubtedly an effective way to help NFPs uncover hidden insights and make more informed decisions about service provision. Secondly, if an NFP wants to begin with data analytics and visualization, clean data and the right tool selection are crucial steps. Data cleaning ensures that the dataset is accurate and reliable, which in turn guarantees the validity of any inferences and conclusions drawn. Additionally, while there are many tools available for data visualization and analysis, Power BI stands out as a more user-friendly option that is sufficient to meet the initial data analysis and visualization needs of NFPs.
Firstly, from the webinar, I learned that most NFPs don’t have easy access to critical information. According to the survey conducted by Marcus, 50% of organizations reported that their systems aren’t capable of capturing information about client outcomes. Therefore, data analytics is undoubtedly an effective way to help NFPs uncover hidden insights and make more informed decisions about service provision. Secondly, if an NFP wants to begin with data analytics and visualization, clean data and the right tool selection are crucial steps. Data cleaning ensures that the dataset is accurate and reliable, which in turn guarantees the validity of any inferences and conclusions drawn. Additionally, while there are many tools available for data visualization and analysis, Power BI stands out as a more user-friendly option that is sufficient to meet the initial data analysis and visualization needs of NFPs.
Thirdly, I realized that the choice of data and tools largely depends on the type of services provided by the NFP and its organizational goals. These are just tools, after all. The true value of data analytics and the discovery of potential insights still rely on correct human decision-making.
