Ivan Oliveira joined ITC a few years back as e-learning specialist and particularly enjoys the freedom he has been given to make his job interesting and meaningful.
How did you end up where you are now?
"I am from Brazil, where I graduated from film school in 2003. I worked in the video production industry until 2009, then moved to the Netherlands where I started my own video production company. In 2013 I started offering e-learning courses in video production to the Brazilian market. The company was very successful for a while – we passed the mark of 5,000 paying customers during its four years of existence – but as a result of the ups and downs of the Brazilian economy there was a lack of stability. One month we thought we were going to be millionaires, the next we feared bankruptcy. In 2017 my partner and I decided to close the company and I went back to video production. Then one day I saw this vacancy at ITC that appealed to me, and successfully applied."
What was expected of you in your new job?
"At the beginning my position was supposed to be primarily about technical issues. However, I managed to solve those issues quite quickly and have since moved towards more challenging tasks. In a way I have been shaping my own position here, with plenty of space to do the things that I think are important. Today my job is very multifaceted, from working on international educational projects in Africa, Asia and South America to writing software for speeding up the process of preventing copyright infringements at the UT. The software development is something I did on my own initiative. My software was originally intended for ITC but is now being used all across the UT. It turned out to save a lot of people a lot of time. Something I am also excited about is that recently I was given the freedom and opportunity to start a project of my own which brings me back to my film maker roots. The project concerns a YouTube channel where we will share bits of our staff expertise with the general public. I am currently putting a lot of effort into this project since I believe it will be a game changer for ITC and might inspire other faculties to follow our example.”
Apart from being given all that space, do you feel that your talent development has been actively supported?
"I certainly appreciate how I was given the opportunity to work on projects and tasks which demanded very diverse expertise from me. I find that rewarding, but it does make it difficult to figure out into which direction I want to grow. Personally, I would like to deepen my knowledge about things that I'm involved with on a daily basis, such as computer science and programming, and education in general. Unfortunately, the Covid situation has kept me too busy to take the necessary steps."
How do you see your job evolving in the future?
"For now I am still in between operations and supervision. I kind of like that, because on one hand, the technical part is fast paced and instantly rewarding in terms of feedback, on the other hand, it's nice to be challenged by the necessity of making plans for the long term. That being said, the bureaucracy in the academic environment can sometimes be a little frustrating. In my earlier work in film production and e-learning I was used to getting things done without losing time, now I work in projects where we often have to wait a long time for things to happen – for example, for steering groups to make up their minds – before being able to proceed. Still, I think I have a wonderful job here. Most importantly, I'm surrounded by very nice people. Everybody is incredibly friendly and helpful. I have worked in many different environments and nothing comes close. Furthermore, I think it's great to have the opportunity to meet all those smart people that I would never meet otherwise. Their enthusiasm and the projects they are working on are a great inspiration, as well as an incentive for me to keep developing my own talents."