Our IoT Heroes: Nicholas Cornish - Front-end Developer

What were your main reasons and motivations to join us?

This is quite simple to explain. After my studies and graduation as BA in Multimedia & IT, I gained some years of professional experience in e-commerce companies and digital agencies. There I specialized in front-end development with Vue.js. This is exactly what Azena was looking for at that time and I was keen to join a new dynamic company. So it was a natural thing to join. Now I am two years with Azena, and it's been one of my best career decisions yet.

Azena enabled IoT cameras are designed to be not only smart but super-easy to use.

What are the central values in your working environment?

When I joined, I had just become a father. At Azena, it was no problem at all to be both a Dad and an employee. Work-life balance is not just something we talk about here, it's something we really live at Azena. Furthermore, it's great to see how teams manage themselves, almost without any formal hierarchy, guided only by a shared strong vision. This results in a kind of cooperation and mutual trust that I had not experienced before.

Family life and an inspiring job with plenty of room for personal growth is not a contradiction at Azena - in fact, it's quite the opposite.

What superhero power can you draw on when you need it?

From a technical point of view, as a front-end developer you are a kind of “exotic” member of a team of full-stack developers, working at the interface between the backend and the user. Here, my ability to communicate at eye level helps me as I have a deep understanding of both worlds. In addition, as a native Australian, I bring a lot of openness and humor to the team, which helps keep the good vibes going, especially when things get rough.

What are the most interesting topics you are currently working on here and what are the most difficult tasks to solve?

Currently I’m working on a UI library to provide standard components not only for the App Store, but for the entire front-end of the Azena ecosystem. Technically, it is about customizing Vue.js and Vuetify, both visually and functionally, to make the our user interfaces  as simple and appealing as possible for users, even as it continues to grow and becomes more complex. One challenge is to adapt team collaboration and communication to the increasing complexity of the product, which we actually manage very well across our teams.

What do you see as the main trends in IoT in a business context and from your perspective as UI-Developer?

There is no doubt that IoT is growing and will change many industries. Depending on the industry and region in the world, this is not happening at the same pace. History shows that technological quantum leaps never happened overnight. A lot of convincing and education needs to be done to get people to understand the superior benefits AI Video Analytics can offer them. As a front-end developer, I do my best to drive adoption by making the user experience with Azena-enabled cameras as attractive and simple as possible.

Nik, thank you very much for the chat!