About this episode
Ryan Williams shares his journey from a music career to becoming a lead security engineer in cybersecurity.
In the back office of his father’s telecommunications business, something in five-year-old Ryan Williams initialized. Programming in BASIC on a Commodore 64, he typed endless lines of code from a magazine, waiting three hours for a Mandelbrot set to render pixel by pixel across the screen. He was disappointed with the result, but the process had already taken hold. Years later, Williams was setting up a Formula One driver’s party when his phone rang. Pack it down. COVID wiped out his entire music career, his production company, and $40K in a single moment. Everything he’d built over two decades as a touring DJ and musician terminated without warning. By eleven, he was hacking payphones with McDonald’s straws and engaging in underground BBSs after answering questions about death metal. But music became his focus, taking him from classical orchestras to rock bands to DJ tours across Australia and overseas. It was a life of little responsibility and constant motion, until March 2020 forced a hard stop. At rock bottom, Williams enrolled in a cybersecurity course at a local TAFE college. He quickly realized he was ahead of his classmates, but that wouldn’t be enough among 12,000…
People in this episode
Host: Chris Glanden
Guest: Ryan Williams
Topics covered
- cybersecurity
- music career
- programming
- AI
- personal journey
Keywords
- cybersecurity
- music
- programming
- AI models
- BASIC
- DJ
- Mandelbrot set
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Applied Computing Technologies, Smart Security Solutions, TAFE
Places: Victoria
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