Peter Barnum
Toastmasters CC #1: My life in two acts

Mr. Toastmaster.  Fellow members and guests.

I was born and raised in Oak Park, which is a suburb of Chicago.  From an
 early age, I have had three main interests.  The first is to build and 
 create, the second to understand the world.  The third is that I really 
 like to work with animals, especially floppy eared dogs.

Let’s start talking about last one first.  I was fifteen, and my mom 
informed me that it was time to go out and get a real job.  I remember 
thinking, “well, let’s see, there’s McDonalds.  The stationary store is 
looking for a security guard.  Or perhaps a little manual labor will do 
me good.”  Nothing seemed remotely interesting.  But then I ran across an 
ad in the help-wanted section.  A veterinary hospital was looking for an 
assistant!  I got an interview for the next day.  I showed up and tried 
to look responsible, eager, and earnest.  Failure.  But it made me 
realize that such jobs were available, and over the next few weeks, I 
visited a dozen veterinarians, groomers, and kennels.  The vet at one of 
these, John Brancel, told me that they didn’t need anyone right then, but 
they would let me know.  A few days later, I got a call and a job.  I 
spend three years there, with newborn puppies and ancient hounds.  I saw 
and did more than I could have imagined.  It was a small office, and I 
was involved in all aspects of the work.  Some days I assisted in the 
operating room, other days I answered the phones, but my favorite part 
was interacting with people and their pets.  I got to know the 
interesting personalities of our clients, both the two and four legged 
kinds.  

Although it was a great experience, after I went away to college, I never 
really worked with animals in the same way again.  It’s a wonderful 
feeling to see a golden retriever jump around after a lifesaving surgery, 
but there were hard times too.  Although I still volunteer at the animal 
shelter, I now focus on another of my interests.

My first experience in real-world science and technology was a class I 
took sophomore year in college.  The course was called Undergraduate 
Problem Seminar, and it was designed to teach students how to do research 
in artificial intelligence.  This was also the first time I met the 
professor, Randal Nelson.  He split the class into small groups, 
assigning a semester-long “impossible problem” to each.  To my group, he 
opened up the vision lab, and challenged us to create a system to detect 
people eating in the lab, using an array of cameras.  His approach was 
similar to teaching someone to swim by throwing them in the deep end of 
the pool.  No-one in my group had ever done computer vision before, but 
we were all excited and motivated to try.  We worked long hours, mostly 
without progress, but we learned how to work on an unsolved problem.  And 
by the end of the semester, we had a gesture recognition algorithm that 
could, at least sometimes, tell when someone was taking a swig of Coke or 
a bite of a sandwich.  Our solution didn’t have much in common with the 
state of the art, but the process has motivated me to make computer 
vision my life’s work.  There are a lot of universities and companies 
working on various aspects of computer vision, from image enhancement to 
object recognition.  I looked at a lot of places, but after visiting the 
CMU campus in march, I decided to go there.  So for the next few years, 
I’m going to be over at CMU, working on a Robotics PhD.

This first part of my story ends right here in Pittsburgh.  I wanted to 
learn how to prepare and present interesting talks, which led me to 
Toastmasters, which led me here before you today.  As for creating, 
understanding, and working with animals, I’ve made good progress on the 
first and third.  I’m still working on understanding; I’ll let you know 
how it goes.

Thank you.