- Good morning, everyone.
My name is Miguel Ramalho,
and today I bring you a less technical talk all right,
this is a disclaimer,
I'm gonna give you a talk that's much wider,
because I figured I wanna do something different
and also because we'll have a lot of time to get
our hands dirty along the next few days.
So do not expect any of these in my talk,
Let's just skip it.
This is me, a brief presentation,
I'm a master's students,
I'm in the first of two years
of a master's degree in Portugal.
That's Portugal we are known for Cristiano Ronaldo
and other things.
But we are, we also have a growing quantum community.
So, what I'm going to talk to you about today
is my experience in learning computing, quantum computing.
I didn't do this through university degree,
I did this on my own.
And I want to share with you the troubles I had,
the lessons I learned,
and some takeaways that you'll see at the end.
So it all started in 2018 more or less a year ago,
I was already interested in quantum computing,
but I didn't know a lot about it.
And the first I would say, the sparkle that ignited
my interest was a TedX talk by Professor Koen Bertels.
He's from Delft University perhaps you've heard of him.
And it really got me interested in the topic.
And so I decided to start investing on it.
I first started Professor Vazirani scores
on BerkeleyX probably some of you
have also done this course.
And then I just, I had a few opportunities at my university,
like lectures have invited speakers.
I read some books, surveys, forums,
I started getting the gist of it.
And also of course, like many of you, I don't doubt
I started hacking around qiskit
and this was also a mark like milestone,
because I felt like I could have feedback
and I'm from a background in computer science.
So, feedback for us is very important
and qiskit was essentially a good opportunity to have that.
And so, last summer I was at an event
in my University, University of Porto,
and Professor Koen Bertels actually was there
to give a talk.
And so I eventually had a chance to engage with conversation
with him and I asked him,
if it would make sense for me to make my Erasmus
for one semester in Delft,
and then try and apply for the thesis
on the second semester, this is how my course is designed.
So, it would be total of one year.
And his answer left me well,
I couldn't answer he just said, "No."
But you're there with expectations
and someone tells you no.
And then he said, "Well, you see we've tried
and it doesn't work.
If you want to invest in your quantum education,
you need to take a leap.
This is a cliff, you have to jump
and we will be there to catch you
but you have to give everything."
And this really stuck
and so I eventually learned about IBM's contest.
It was already a bit late for a few of them.
And so I decided to go for the teach me quantum.
Actually, it made the most sense,
given what you've just heard.
I had a lot of different sources of information.
But I felt that I needed a place
where I could have for instance, learned about qiskit
and quantum mechanics at the same time.
And that was liking
so this happens,
this was my project for the teach me quantum.
I'm not going to go very deep into details.
It's available online,
it's actually open source.
So the idea behind it is to have something
that teachers all over the world
can go their fork and make their own
and then they can adapt it to their students.
And essentially, it just goes from the basics
and always tries to and I always try to give exercises
like using the tools we've already seen,
and giving people a chance to have this feel
like I wanted to have had,
about what it is to feel what you're learning.
And this well, it went well.
So taking a leap was worth it.
Okay, and so now I wanna leave you with a few remarks
to think about.
The first one is all or nothing.
And this is the one I've already explained more thoroughly.
If we are here, and as I think all of you are,
you are here for a reason you want to invest in this field.
And if it makes sense to you to be here,
and it makes sense to put all of you into this.
And this is the first thing that I learned about,
this area and of course this is not just
For quantum computing, but like Professor Koen said,
"You have to take the leap."
And then another thing, this is also extrapolated
from what I told you,
you can turn your problems for instance,
you're using qiskit at home and you find a bug
or you find the imprecision a typo, anything.
The good thing about open source
is that you're already turning problems into solutions.
You go to qiskit, you fork it, you make a pull request
and you solve those problems.
And this, I think, sometimes is something
that we don't do on a larger scale
because we have a problem and we solve it for ourselves
but what if we can just solve it for everyone
at the same time
this is the way of progress.
And lastly, this is actually a challenge
I wanna leave you with.
We are a growing community.
I would say that critical mass is at our doorstep.
So, it's our responsibility to let it in.
We're not I think there yet,
so, we have a community that is growing.
And it will continue growing I'm sure.
But one thing that we can take away
is take today's technical standing,
we have our main limitation is building quantum computers.
We already have the algorithms,
we just need bedrooms machines,
how could for instance, IBM's labs,
try to get the community to help them solving
their problems, their daily problems,
that would of course have an impact
on building quantum computers.
Instead of just doing that in house,
you know what I mean?
You have to try to make use
of this freelancing quantum community.
Okay, and now I just wanna leave you again
with a final remark.
This is something I brought from Portugal.
It's not from Cristiano Ronaldo, okay.
And it's from Portuguese poets.
And what he said at a certain point was,
"Put all that you are into everything that you do."
And this is the message I bring
and the message I want to leave you with.
His name is actually Fernando Pessoa
it's roughly translated okay.
And so that's it.
I look forward to meeting you over the next few days
and thank you.
(audience applauding)