Shearwater

Ivan Vanderbil

1. When did you graduate from Shearwater and what did you do after?

I graduated in 2007, after spending the year counting the days and not doing much work – that was until a week before it was due. I don’t remember my results but they weren’t great mainly because I spent most of my time doing freelance web development instead of school work.
A week after school finished I landed a job in Newcastle as the Senior Software Engineer on what soon became the leading Finance Origination Platform in Australia which is now used by over 3000 finance brokers around the country. The software and entrepreneurial bug really got into me and I haven’t looked back since.

2. How do you look back at your time here. What is a memory that stands out?

I started Shearwater in Preschoool – 1994 – on the first day it was at its current location. As I’ve always been a creative person I can’t say there were many academic moments that stood out, rather I always enjoyed the class trips, we went everywhere from Darwin, to New Zealand and China! The latter being my favourite, and what some described as a life changing trip. I think you learn more about life and yourself confronting yourself and situations than sitting over textbooks and memorizing things.

3. Are you still in touch with former class mates or teachers?

I always tried to stay in touch with some of my favourite teachers but once school finished this became hard. I catch up with Eliot (Baring) from time to time but that is about it. As far as class mates – I see a few of my old friends throughout the year, and always try to catch up when I am in town, but living in Newcastle for the last 3 years does make it hard and people move onto their own journey in life. But the connection in spirit is eternal.

4. What is it that you are currently pursuing in your life?

As I have become a rather passionate advocate for the software development practices and technologies I use, the foreseeable future will be spent working on my new business and presenting at conferences in New Zealand, America, Japan and Singapore. But ultimately I just want to continue doing what I love doing and be the best that I can be, and eventually take a more advisory role with startups working with these technologies to create the next big thing.