Elliott Hill

As a programmer, problem-solving is a daily reality, but my history of problem-solving doesn’t stop at my work. Since I was young I’ve always enjoyed puzzles and puzzle games, some of my favourites include Portal, The Witness, and The Talos Principle. I also always have a Rubiks Cube on my desk and enjoy physical puzzles similar to it to fiddle with and explore in my spare time.

An example of a tricky problem in my professional career that I solved with a novel solution was while I was working at Steel Minions creating mobile VR applications using Unity. My job was to get PlayStation assets running on mobile, a difficult task. Due to the limitations of mobile VR having a single 360-degree point of view, there was no need to have any full scene with their complete 3D objects. Instead, I used a reflection node to render a 360-degree view of each scene and only rendered the 3D models of objects that were close enough to the camera to cause perspective distortion. This drastically reduced the number of resources required to run the applications and they now run smoothly with zero performance issues and no noticeable reduction in quality.

I have great written and verbal communication skills for both basic and complex ideas. While at University I set up the Philosophy Society where I held regular discussion groups with each discussion starting with a short talk where I’d give an overview of the ideas we were discussing. This was great practice for when I participated in the Conservative Societies annual Port and Policy event where my speech about Theresa May’s disastrous Brexit deal was awarded best speech.

I’m also great at communicating technical knowledge of my work; once I’ve finished something challenging, doing a technical write-up is something I’ve found enjoyable and something that I excel at. I’m often complimented about the clarity and comprehensiveness of my entries in the company’s technical wiki.

Here’s a list of different video production tools and techniques I have experience with:

• Adobe Premiere Pro – Premiere Pro was the software of choice for editing courses, podcasts, talks, and promotional materials while working at Objective Standard Insitute.
• vMix – vMix is software used to create live-streaming productions. I used vMix to help produce dozens of podcast episodes while working at Objective Standard Institute. I was easily able to learn the software to create a fun, fluid, and dynamic set for a more engaging and visually appealing show.
• Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Illustrator – Although not tools specifically for video production, proficiency with these has been a must when developing assets to use within videos or animations as well as for making thumbnails when posting to social media platforms such as YouTube.
• Vegas Pro – Vegas Pro was the software of choice when I was young to edit the video game-related content that I posted to YouTube. This included vlog-style content talking about the latest gaming news, gameplay content of the latest games, and roleplay series where I created a story within the game.
• Adobe After Effects – I used After Effects while at Objective Standard Insitute to develop short animations to promote our ideas. For the Love of Christmas is one example.
• Adobe Character Animator – While at Objective Standard Institute I started the creation of an animated series. To that end, I learned Character Animator to puppeteer the characters of the show. Unfortunately, this show was canceled due to my departure from OSI.
• Adobe Audition – Audition is what I used to edit the audio of the podcasts at Objective Standard Insitute ready for release to all the major podcasting platforms. To release the shows we used a platform called Libsyn.

While working for The Objective Standard, I took the lead on the rebuild of our website. I started by going around the team and asking them what functionality they think would be good to include in the rebuild. I took their feedback and created a priority list with a well-defined minimal viable product where we’d launch the site and then continue to make additions. Afterwards, I continued to manage the rebuild team by assigning and prioritising tasks and helping with testing and development.

During University, because I was the founder of the Philosophy Society, I was invited to partake in a leadership course which helped me gain valuable knowledge about inspiring others to follow your lead.

I’m a very punctual person and always on-time to my business meetings. I do my best to keep my environment orderly and my files and code well structured.

During my time at University and the Philosophy Society, I did a good job at organising events for speakers that visited from around the country and from the US, as well as fortnightly discussions and socials.

After my first year of University, I decided to research different ideas relating to current political trends and discovered a lot about the ideas that influenced me. I didn’t satisfy staying on the topic of politics and, by the summer after my second year of University, I was regularly reading varying philosophers to broaden my understanding of the world and life in general.

During my final year of University, I set up the Philosophy Society at Hallam where I held regular talks and conducted discussions on varying philosophers and ideas.

After University I decided to continue exploring my interest in Philosophy by working for The Objective Standard and, later, Objective Standard Institute. During my time there I was published multiple times and my review of Heroes, Legends, Champions: Why Heroism Matters by Andrew Bernstein was printed in the Fall 2020 quarterly journal.

To this day I continue to read regularly about Philosophy and current affairs to keep myself informed, my mind sharp, and continue to learn about how to live life to the fullest.