Let’s Meet Mike — A BadVR Q&A
As true BadVR followers know, our favorite way to introduce a new addition to the team always begins with a Q&A, and today is no exception!
Say hello to, Mike Quinn — BadVR’s newest Jr. Software Engineer! He’s skilled in code, problem-solving, and innovation, to name a few — and we just know he will be a perfect addition to our ever-growing team of incredible talent!
Mike joins the team with some absolute stand-out experience and we’re so excited to have him join us, but before we jump in, don’t forget to follow our journey as a female-founded tech company on Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and even YouTube — ok, thanks — now back to the show. Welcome to the team, Mike!
What do you do here at BadVR?
Currently, I’m working on quality assurance and engineering for the Augmented Reality Operations Center and SeeSignal products. Which just means I spend half my day trying to break things, and the other half trying to make them work. I’ve always loved solving logic problems from puzzles to code. So mixing solving problems with finding problems is a fun spot to be in.
How did you get started working in tech?
It was actually two of my cooks that got me into tech. In my previous career, I used to manage restaurants, school kitchens, and event staff. Back in 2018 I was managing a seafood restaurant where I had two cooks, Pat and Steve, who were in the software engineering program at the New England Institute of Technology. I made a deal with them, I’d give them longer breaks in the day as long as they would teach me programming during the breaks. So that went on for a couple of months before they convinced me to apply to the program as well. I ended up receiving my associate’s degree in software engineering with honors in 2020 and then began teaching myself how to develop within the Unity engine. Through networking with other Unity developers, I actually met Ethan Martin who suggested that I should check out BadVR. And now we’re here.
Who is the most influential person in your world?
It’s probably a three-way tie between Jon Stewart, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Brian Cox. For years I used to stay up to watch Jon Stewart on the Daily Show try to make sense of and make fun of the news and US politics. Jon Stewart taught me to be skeptical, to ask questions, and to stand up for people as he did for the 9/11 first responders who had their health benefits taken away. Neil deGrasse Tyson taught me that science doesn’t care how you feel. It sounds like a joke, but sometimes when I’m programming or trying to solve a problem I get sidetracked because I feel like something should work when it doesn’t. Separating facts from feelings was an important lesson for me. Brian Cox is an English physicist and a professor at the University of Manchester. His books and lectures taught me to be passionate about what you do and to put everything into it.
Tell us something you’ve learned already working here.
To be quick and open-minded. Working for a startup has a very different feel than working for a company with established products and use cases. It’s not enough to just think, ‘Okay this product does this one thing well.’ You have to always be thinking, ‘How can I make this product approachable and useful to every industry.’ It’s a very different feel from working in large companies where you can kind of just fade into the background.
You have 24 hours to spend 1 million dollars — how do you do it?
I would buy a house. That’s definitely the first thing I would do. Then I’d probably donate the rest to the Pine Street Inn, which is a large homeless shelter in Boston where I’ve served food for. They do amazing work in the Boston area.
What do you think is the next big thing in tech?
I think the next huge thing will be commercially available quantum computing. Science fiction stories have never been so close to reality as today. In the short term though, I truly believe that the work being done at BadVR will be amazing in the field. Augmented reality is so close to being the norm that I think it will be revolutionary the way computers were during the 80s, 90s, and 2000s.
How can you see BadVR making an impact in the world?
BadVR is working on augmented and virtual reality solutions to 2D problems. With some time and work, BadVR’s products could help save time, money, and especially lives. If you take firefighters, for example, the best way to train a firefighter on how to fight a fire is to light a building on fire. That’s kind of crazy and dangerous. I’m not even saying to fully stop those types of training, but what if you could supplement just half of those training sessions with virtual or augmented reality training? You could increase training without increasing the risk of accidental injury or death. And that’s just firefighters. What about army medics, SWAT teams, and unfortunately in the US mass shooter scenarios? And that is just the application of training. I think BadVR is definitely something to keep an eye out for.
If your life was a movie, what’s it called and who plays you, the lead?
I’d love to have Brendan Fraser play me. Partly just because I want to see more Brendan Fraser movies. I guess I’d call it “The Road” because I spent so much of my life working small jobs and traveling.
How do you explain the beauty of #dataviz to someone who isn’t techy?
I would argue that data visualization is the non-techy way to handle the problem. Data isn’t just numbers. There are connections between data that can be incredibly complex. I said I previously worked in food service. We saved data on everything. How many customers come in, at what time, on what day, of what week, what do they order, and how big are the groups that come in? It’s so much data that we would know how many people ate on Wednesday when Christmas was on the following Thursday. The amount of data we had was so much, but to interpret it, we used Excel. It would take multiple people over an hour to come up with a plan. With data visualization, seeing patterns could be as easy as literally seeing the patterns.
What’s been the best part about what you do at BadVR?
The best part is just being a part of it. These projects that I’m working on for BadVR are challenging the way we solve problems and the way we look at data. It’s really rewarding to be a part of the process and to be a part of the solution.
Thank you for letting us get to know you a bit better, Mike! We’re excited to have you join the #BadFam and look forward to seeing all the value you bring in action! Can’t get enough of Mike and all that he’s doing here at BadVR?
Stay connected and check out the link below:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-quinn-a3634a165/
Ready For More?
If you’re excited about VR/AR, the future of immersive data and data analytics, or if you want to learn more about BadVR and try our demo, reach out today! We’d love to chat with you!
Find us here: Twitter — Instagram — Facebook — LinkedIn — YouTube
The Author
David Lane is a California native, lover of all animals, and car enthusiast. David’s accomplishments resonate with his passion for digital marketing and storytelling.
