From computers to mountain summits: Mining software guru shares inspirational tales from globe-spanning career.

• Author: McKinley, Karen
• Position: SUDBURY

One wouldn't think a computer science degree and a career in technical support would lead to climbing mountains and flying planes over Africa or shooting rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) in Mongolia.

For Robert Patterson, it did.

And he was happy to talk about how obtaining a degree from Laurentian University led to all that and the founding of his current business, Minalytix, a mining software company, during a Nov. 16 talk hosted by the Sudbury chapter of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum.

While his lighthearted talk spanned his entire life, peppered with many self-deprecating stories, the message was clear: do a job well, never stop learning and have some fun with your life.

"I never thought my degree would take me around the world and I'd be doing all these things, but it did. Your degree does not limit what you will do with your life," Patterson said.

Describing himself as tech support and an entrepreneur, he passed on many tips as he took the audience, made up mostly of mining and engineering students, for a tour of his life, from his parents enrolling him in violin and French classes (and making him stick it out) to him choosing his career path, which he said boiled down to staying in Sudbury, going to Laurentian, and choosing between kinesiology, engineering or computer sciences.

"This was 1999, and I thought, 'Computers aren't going away, so I think I can get a job in this,'" he said.

"You've got to do what you love, but make sure it's going to pay the bills as you start down your adult career."

While still in school, he took a coop with Eloquip, which was the first piece of advice he passed on to students: if an internship comes their way, take it.

"It's real-world experience, figuring out what I was going to do for the next 30 years of my life, and it was a paid internship," he said.

"When I graduated I didn't have any student debt, so you really should consider it."

Patterson's next co-op placement was with Century Systems Technologies. The firm created software to collect and store drill hole sample information, a different experience for him.

His first job was installing anti-virus software before moving on to developing software.

Patterson used that time to find mentors to look up to.

"Find someone to help you through your life. That will make everything a lot easier."

Upon graduation, he went to work for Century as a technical support specialist.

"On one end, the customer is yelling at you saying...