Happy 50th Birthday UCC!

Thanks for coming, everyone!

A picture of the 50th Anniversary Dinner

UCC held it's 50th Anniversary dinner on the 21st of September, 2024. It was a great time, with > 60 attendees from various generations and eras of the club.

Photos and speeches

Currently only on motsugo: /services/50th-Photos.zip

Video Interviews

We had numerous video interviews throughout the night. Recordings can be found here: https://meetings.ucc.asn.au/presentation/ac3f68e4be27ca3353bee4c6c809259f012ea9da-1726916690191/video/webcams.webm

Auction

We auctioned off 5 items:

  • Glorious GMMK Pro keyboard (75%, fully assembled). Starting bid $50, Sold for $250 To Oscar
  • 25th Anniversary T-shirt. Starting bid $25, Sold for $65 To Julia White
  • 50th exclusive mouse pad. Starting bid $30, Sold for $115 To Malcolm Evans
  • A perfect replica pasito can stolen by the pasito bandito. Starting bid $0.01, Sold for $75 To Andrew Adamson
  • Extended TLA. Starting bid $5, Sold for $225 to Cormac Sharkey [BIRD]

Guestbook messages

  • Happy birthday UCC, and may you reign another 50 years - Anonymous
  • Thank you for bringing us together another 0x32 years - Patrick Hew
  • UCC is my tribe. I hope it's yours, too. xxx ooo :) - Sophie Divliaev [SD:]
  • Best club ever. You're welcome!! - Theodore [CHZ] Sam Spencer
  • 50 more years! Much love. - Yves Miguel Reyes
  • Buy more Blade Centers - [SEB]
  • Pasito was delicious! A++ Would drink again - [BOB]
  • I LOVE UCC <3 - Ariel Carter [KKZ]
  • University Cheese Connoisseurs - Anthony Do [ZPH]

Other guestbook entries

  • Grace Fowler
  • Lorenzo Iannuzzi
  • Teik Oh
  • Andrew Williams
  • Timothy Chapman
  • John Hodge
  • Lara Frcej
  • James Arcus
  • Alexander Knowles
  • Indulis Bernsteins
  • Alex Dawson
  • Shay Telfer
  • Peter Lewis
  • Michael Deegan
  • Frames White
  • Oscar Hermoso
  • Alexander Harrison
  • Rufus Garton Smith
  • Mark Tearle
  • Grahame Bowland
  • Zack Wong
  • Rod Swift
  • Joe Thorpe
  • Cormac Sharkey
  • Roy Xu
  • Phil Sutherland
  • David Adam
  • Gearoid O'Donovan
  • Malcolm Evans
  • Grace Adamson
  • James French
  • Jack Langolant
  • James Osborne
  • Diarmuid O'Connor
  • James Bromberger
  • Glenn Butcher
  • Adrian Smith
  • James Cox
  • Dylan Hicks
  • Rhys Bevilaqua
  • Julie Ardley
  • Jeremy Ardley
  • Bruce Armstrom
  • Simon Matthews
  • Bryce O'Connor
  • Michael-Hao Yang
  • Lauren Pudney

Where are they now?

Here are a few places UCC members have ended up in -- provided graciously to mark this event.

Julian Elischer '77-'82 (treasurer one of those years) Current Software engineer for Google. Working from home in Perth after a few years in MountainView, California. Looking at retiring (do the math)

Peter N Lewis

"I've been a member of UCC since 1986 - as a Life Member, I remain a member, so that makes 38 years.

After Uni, I worked for Curtin University for about five years and then founded my company, Stairways Software, which has been making Mac software ever since."

David Chinnery

"I spent a lot of time at the UCC from 1992 to 1998. I very much enjoyed early ASCII games like Hunt and Nethack. With a whole bunch of text terminals setup, we got a bunch of mudders to join the UCC. Learning to love UNIX running on old VAX servers, and overcoming silliness such as using my last name backwards as a password and getting p0wned by John McKenna for it, I eventually was given root access. I really gained a foundation in computing from the club, which I still use today when compiling commercial EDA software on Linux, using screen, toggling text windows and programming in vim. There are amazing people at the club. It was a wonderful learning experience with much camaraderie, with the old guard helping n00bs eventually reach 1337 (elite) status and help run the UCC while we were there.

UCC is one of UWA's oldest clubs, celebrating our 50th anniversary this year. We are a open and welcoming club, dedicated to all kinds of computing, such as; a inviting computer lounge, a project space, a place to learn new and old technologies as well as make life long friends."

Andrew Williams

"I've been a member continuously since I started at UWA in 1986 - joined on O-Day, and my TLA is AJW.

I'm working at Curtin University, part of a team that runs a big radio telescope up in the Murchison, and spend most of my days writing code in Python.

One memory of UCC - watching Dave Emrich (DAV) strippig the insulation from a telephone cord with his teeth, while it was still plugged into the wall. He jumped a bit, said something like "Ouch, it's ringing!" as he spat out the cord, and quickly finished wiring up the plug in time to aswer the phone."

James Cox, [RME]~Coxy, UWA 2002-2005

Currently Solution Architect at Capgemini Member of UCC since 2002 Fun memory: forming the "LAN Party" with other UCCans and running for student guild president in 2004.

Sophie Divliaev [SD:]

I joined UCC in 1993 when I was a third year Science student because I was intrigued by how interesting UCC looked. (I had already joined Unigames and UniSFA two years earlier.) I was also keen on getting email access, something that was not readily available on campus back then.

UCC would be the club that had the biggest impact on my life, both socially, and for my career path. The friends I made over 30 years ago are more important to me than ever today. Even the mundane stuff we did was fun; like doing clean ups, inventory and restocking the Coke machine. I'll never forget how one time, we somehow managed to get 6 of us to squeeze into my Hyundai Excel hatchback to go do a Coke run!

But there was another benefit, too. UCC and the UCCans I got to know, saved me from long-term unemployment. There weren't the same career options in Microbiology in WA back in the 1990s, like there is today. UCC helped me to pivot and start a career in IT as a sysadmin and tech writer. The UCCans more senior to me helped me secure my first few jobs. I owe them a great deal and I'm incredibly grateful to them for believing in me.

I married fellow UCCan Glenn Butcher [BCF] in 2006 in Hawai'i and we spent 15 years living in Adelaide and Sydney, before returning to Perth in 2021.

Currently, I am considering my options after several years spent raising my kids and helping my parents. I have recommenced tech writing (but with more of a scientific bent this time) by doing due diligence for FundWA, as well as blogging.

Here's to another 50 years!

Below are the events ran in preparation for the big night.

Events

In preparation for our 50th anniversary event later in the year, we are doing a couple of special events throughout the year!

Nostalgia Box

Date & Time:

Saturday 16th March 11.30am

Location:

The Nostalgia Box, 69 Plaistowe Mews, West Perth WA 6005

Description:

  • The Nostalgia Box is Perth's video games museum, featuring the vast history of gaming from its humble beginnings in the 70's, all the way up to the late 2000's. Revisit your childhood or learn where your favourite games started out!

  • We are having a party here this Saturday (16th of March) from 11.30am.

  • For a price of $30pp, you get 2 hours to take a self-guided tour around the museum, have unlimited free plays on many of the consoles in the museum.

  • You don't have to purchase tickets ahead of time, just come and join us on the day!

  • We hope to see you there!

  • thenostalgiabox

LAN

Date & Time:

Semester 1 holidays

Location:

TBA

Description:

Sit Down Dinner

Date & Time:

Saturday 21st September, time TBA

Location:

TBA

Description:

  • This year marks 50 whole years (that's 32 for you hexadecimal nerds) since UCC came into this realm! To celebrate, we've decided to throw a fanciful sit down dinner for all of you computer-touchers to come down and enjoy!
  • We bring to you our save the date announcement, so mark your calendars for the 21st of September, since we're gonna be having a blast remembering how we danced the night away! We're still confirming the venue, so make sure to check your inboxes for a full invitation!

Fundraising Goals

To celebrate our 50th anniverary, it would be awesome if we could upgrade some of our old and failing technology like the Loveday server or some of the clubroom PCs.

$500: Getting a minifridge

$2000: Upgrading the Loveday server

$4000: Upgrade 1 clubroom PC

$6000: Upgrading 2 clubroom PCs

$8000: Upgrading 3 clubroom PCs

$10000: Upgrading 4 clubroom PCs

$25000: Enclose the server racks in airconditoning

Merchandising

Committee and members of UCC have come up with some merchandising creations, such as stickers and t-shirt designs.

T-Shirt Design Competition

  • We're thrilled to kick off the new semester with an exciting event: our T-Shirt Designing Competition 🎨

  • Starting Monday 26/02 until week 3 Wednesday (13/03) UCC will be accepting designs for our newest UCC T-shirt! The design and colour is entirely up to you, we will try to accommodate whatever you create (this can include designs on the sleeves, back, and/or front)! The only thing to keep in mind is that the design should fit a plain T-shirt such as the one attached. Multiple submissions are allowed!

  • After this time, the committee will look through the submissions and ensure only appropriate 🤨 designs are selected for voting. More information on voting will be released closer to the due date of submission, but in short: every dollar you spend in the clubroom (either through the vending machines, or through donations) gives you a vote that can be spent on any design you like!

  • Please submit your designs in our discord committee channel or to [email protected]! We can't wait to see what our incredibly talented members create!!

UCC Polo T-Shirts

  • Committee would like to spruce up our polo shirts with an updated version! The updated version will switch out the white logo embrodiery with gold embroidery.
  • Polo shirts will be available later in the semester.

Stickers

  • Along with our T-Shirt Design Competition, we will be selling stickers later in the semester!
  • Some submissions are a pixel art image of our coke machine, as well as a pixel art version of our machine room doors. If you have a sticker design related to anything UCC please submit your design in our discord committee channel or to [email protected].