What's in it for the other person?

If you look at everything from this perspective, you can get anything you want in life.

I used to think the bubble was a bad thing.  The huge number of people who called themselves an entrepreneur.  The over-inflation of entrepreneurs in the world.  The many incremental projects that are being created.  I thought they give the profession 'entrepreneur' a bad name.

But now I think it's a good thing.

The demand for and from entrepreneurs has led to an increase in programmes and support structures for entrepreneurs, an increase in funding opportunities and more education on what it takes to be a successful entrepreneur - all over the world.  So the infrastructure support system has improved.

With more entrepreneurs in the game, there is more competition amongst products.  So the technology being created is better as a result of the competition.

Finally, as in any field, those who are most passionate and have the most drive and tenacity for their work, will ultimately prevail.

So it doesn't matter if there's heaps of other people trying to start up companies now.  That shouldn't affect you.  Just put your head down, do the hard work, and you will prevail.

When I started Robogals, I thought going to schools and teaching girls robotics should get more to choose physics, chemistry and advanced maths; then in turn engineering at a tertiary level.

After running Robogals for two years, I realised that I never would have been a beneficiary of a program like Robogals, being from Cairns, a remote regional city that was 2.5 hours by plane from the nearest city of over 1 million residents.  I realised city kids have a plethora of extra-curricula choices, whereas rural and regional kids hardly have any.

So I started the Robogals Rural and Regional programme, where our chapters pack up a car full of volunteers, robots and laptops; go to a rural and regional area, and teach as many girls as they can in a week.

After running that for half a year, I realised that we were still not reaching kids in my hometown of Cairns, and that it would be very costly for us to do so.  So I started the Robogals Science Challenge, where kids from all over the country could do a science experiment at home with a mentor, film a 4-minute video and submit it online to win some great prizes.  We had some Cairns girls enter that.

Six months later, I travelled for 6 weeks visiting 15 organisations in 4 countries to find strategies for getting girls into engineering, and I found even more ideas for tackling the lack of girls in engineering issue.

Your work is never done.  There's always more to do and more to learn.  But you start by taking the first step, and continue by learning along the way.

When I was growing up, I read voraciously - for hours and hours a day.  When I was in year 7, my mum even went to my parent-teacher interview and complained to my teacher that the only thing I did all day was read!  And so my mum was always telling me to stop reading in the car at night, reading lying down and reading in dim lighting, because she said it would ruin my eyesight.

One of my biggest concerns for my and future generations is the impact of technology on our eyes.  Backlit computer screens, television, mobile phones, Google glass, tablets, etc.

They all invite us to stare fixedly on a small area for long periods of time.  We're told to give our eyes a break for a few minutes every 30-40 minutes, but I don't actually know anyone who does that.

Last year, from a combination of working and not sleeping enough, I've felt my own eyesight deteriorate.

Which is why I think it's important for us to think of our other bodily functions and senses.  Dogs are colour-blind, but have acute smell and hearing:  perhaps we could come up with an output that uses those senses?  More auditory output devices perhaps?

Otherwise, I think it's just our own personal responsibilities to cherish our eyesight by seeing that the computer is just a tool to use, rather than a device that can cater to all our whims.

Let's save our eyes by not marrying them to a screen all day, so they can continue to enjoy the beautiful natural world around us.

When I was in my final year of high school, my family couldn't afford to send me to university, so I looked for scholarships that would enable me to go.

Trawling through websites, I found:

• A $9000/ year scholarship to study civil engineering, which also included all university tuition and return flights home every year that would require you to do 12 weeks of work experience at the company every year, then work there for another 4 years afterwards.
• Scholarships of $6000/ year at a water facility with an internship and work contract afterwards.
• $2000/ year scholarships that would require you to join and be active in the organisation.  An exclusive scholarship - meaning you couldn't get any other.
• $8000/ year scholarships where you would have to work in a mine 10 weeks of every year.

I never got any of these, because I never applied.  They weren't aligned with the kind of engineering I wanted to do, the way I wanted to spend my university life, and what I wanted to do after university.

One scholarship that I did receive was for full tuition to finish my undergraduate degree and my masters in an accelerated programme of electrical engineering in 4 years.

That seemed like a lot of work and studying to me.

I decided that wasn't how I wanted to spend my university years.  I wanted to do more than just study and learn more than what I could from books.  So I turned that down too.

And I went to Melbourne University to study Mechatronics Engineering and Computer Science, with no scholarship and not enough money to live for a year.

In my first month, I found the Paterson Scholarship, applied and became the inaugural recipient of the perpetual scholarship.

Don't just follow the waters where they may take you.  Choose a path and things will pop up along the way that help you get to your destination.