Graduates from the School of Computing returned to Bradford College last week to inspire the latest generation of students.

Past students, now excelling in the industry were there to speak at the second School of Computing Student Conference.

It opened with a presentation by Robert Jeffery, technical director for air: a cloud hosting partner for public and private sector business.

He started at Bradford College as a student on the FDSc Network Infrastructure Technologies programme before gaining a first class honours on the BSc Business Computing Solutions. His talk was about how study does not finish when you leave the classroom.

Martin O’Hara, who studied with the School of Computing between 2008 and 2011, gave a talk describing his journey from pub landlord to Spectrum Storage IT Specialist with IBM.

He encouraged students to work on their ‘soft skills’ saying that they were “vitally important in the dry world of IT”.

The third returning face was Gordon Brown who works as a Senior Consultant at Infinity Works Consulting, building on his previous success with Orange Digital and EE.

The conference, in the college’s David Hockney Building attracted 70 delegates, who also heard from current students Suliman Khan and Dawood Bhungrawala, whose final year project has seen them work with the Midland Hotel in Bradford to develop a website.