Then a similar question came to me: what are the core skills of an OR practitioner? I already researched and mentioned a few of these in my previous article on my graduate study experience. I’d like to list down some of these skills which must be continuously honed in order to become an OR pro:

1. Core OR knowledge
   this includes the different OR methods and techniques, e.g. linear and integer programming, simulation, statistics; equally important are modeling and problem solving skills.
2. Other technical skills
   these include skills which are transferable to fields outside OR, e.g. programming, database, web technology
3. Communication skills, both written and oral
4. Project management skills for successfully conducting an OR project from start to finish

Skill #1 and #2 are the targets of my graduate study while project management, I believe, needs to be learned through actual work experience.

On developing communication skills

That leaves me with the need to build good written and oral communication skills. Relating to OR practice, the first one would be needed, for example, in project proposals and documentations while the latter would be needed in client discussions and OR solution presentations. Clearly, these skills need to be continually developed.

With this blog, I’ve found the perfect vehicle to hone my written communication skills. In order to generate value, I need to learn how to write well and clearly explain my thoughts, even if in basic, non-technical format. Due to my previous work experience, I learned to subscribe to the adage “If you can’t explain it in simple terms, you probably don’t really understand it very well.” Although I intend to blog sometimes using technical terms (i.e. I’m actually excited to learn how to write equations and OR formulations using Latex for WordPress), I also want to write non-technical articles which are hopefully informative to a broader range of readers.

Oral communication skill is equally, if not more, important. Due to the nature of my work, I’m not able to hone this as well as the other skills. Still, there is hope, and all I need is the courage and commitment to work on this particular skill. I already found one such organization which helps to accomplish this goal: Toastmasters International. A few years ago, I actually attended one meeting of a Toastmasters club near our place, and although I was welcomed warmly, I never returned again! I was intimidated, these are people who are very competent in the way they speak and project themselves. There’s no way I can be at ease with that group.

That was my sentiment during that time. But I’ve realized right now that if I want to become competent in my field, I need to learn the art of speaking. Hopefully, I can summon the courage to join such club within the next two years.

Continuous improvement

I’ve mentioned 4 groups of skills which need to be honed by the aspiring OR practitioner. These are just some of the important skills, there are also soft skills to be developed such as interpersonal, networking and the ability to work in a team. Clearly, it takes significant investments of time to become a pro. But as Steve Pavlina said in his article, if you really are dedicated to your chosen field, then you’ll strive to do whatever it takes to get better. As for me, I hope I would slowly mature from being a novice to an OR professional someday.

Thus, as an extracurricular activity, I volunteered for the Philippine Emerging Startups Open (PESO), a local organization which hosts a technology business plan competition. I did only minor tasks but the experience was still worth the effort. In the culmination night for the year 2006, the competition finalists, venture capitalists, the media and supporters of technology entrepreneurship converged. In that event, I was fortunate to have met Peter Valdes, considered to be one of the 10 most inspiring Filipino technology entrepreneurs. I summoned my courage to introduce myself to him. And it was set. I would work for him as a research intern for his company Vinta Systems.

A.I. buzzwords

It was the summer of last year when I started my internship for him. I didn’t have a summer class, thus, I could concentrate on his tasks which I find quite interesting. We seemed to share a common interest in operations research and artificial intelligence, though the latter was a relatively new concept to me. It was during this internship that I learned some A.I. concepts such as neural networks, support vector machines and particle swarm optimization (PSO). I was introduced to the intuitive and fast-converging advantages of heuristic techniques, although they may only lead to suboptimal solutions. I concluded that these serve as good complement to classical optimization techniques, e.g.  when the latter takes too long to converge to an optimal solution.

A little of Python, a little of R

Aside from A.I. concepts, I also got to practice some programming skills. I admit that one of my worst mistakes in college was to neglect my Java programming skill. Thus, in my first job, I ended up doing mostly Excel and MySQL database programming, instead of doing hard-core programming. But then, I eventually realized that it seemed a little more fun just to do prototyping, primarily due to its interactive nature. And it was just the case during my Vinta internship.

My first prototyping task was to code the PSO algorithm in Mathematica. Then I came across Python, seemingly a much better environment for prototyping purposes. What we did in our research experiments is to come up with an idea, and implement that idea in Python. I believe the test cycle is faster compared to creating a similar design in C++ or Java. I also got to learn a little of R, an environment for statistical computing. I find it harder compared to Mathematica and Python, because both programming and statistics knowledge are required. Fortunately, I’m still able to code a few useful scripts such as a comparison of statistical and A.I. techniques on a test data.

Some difficulties

My internship at Vinta Systems is truly a learning experience. I should have known about it during my college years. Still, it’s not without its difficulties.

The A.I. and statistics concepts introduced was relatively new to me. It was quite a challenge to absorb them. If there’s one thing I realized from attempting to understand these concepts, it’s that a good book is indispensable. Luckily, I can just borrow books from the Ateneo Rizal Library and the U.P. Library. Another challenge I had to deal with was working mostly alone on the tasks. Sir Peter was there occasionally to supervise me, but he also had to attend to other responsibilities in the company. Realizing this problem, we tried looking for other researchers, but got little response. I knew our research would be dealt with faster if at least two heads were consistently working on it.

Final words

A few months ago, I decided to stop my research internship for Vinta, as I had to concentrate soon on my studies and my master’s thesis. If I had just more time and someone to work with, I would have continued on our research. Still, this is a type of company I look forward to working for after obtaining my master’s degree. In fact, it’s the kind of firm I’d like to build myself someday.

Recently, the June 2008 edition of the Operations Research of the Philippines (ORSP) Newsletter was delivered to me via mail. I wasn’t able to attend the last Technical Forum of the ORSP so I was quite interested to read the newsletter. Among other things, it talked about real-world applications of OR and experiences of OR consultants. There’s also an announcement of a Technical Forum next month which focuses on OR education. As an OR graduate student, this is something I look forward to attending.

After reading the newsletter, I wondered if it also has an online version similar to OR/MS Today, so that more people could read it. I soon discovered that the official ORSP website is down and still being redesigned. I then decided to ask the ORSP through Ms. Carol Gica, the ORSP Secretariat, if I could host, at least temporarily, the latest edition of the newsletter. I’m fortunate because I was given the permission to do so. The newsletter is now available in the downloads section of this blog.