Life - Catalium

Road Trip Around West Washington and Oregon

In the past holiday season (Dec. 2018), my friend and I had a road trip around West WA & OR.

We spent 4 days touring around the Cascade Range, experienced heavy snow on the Stevens Pass Highway, mist in the Yakama Indian Reservation, gale in the Columbia River Valley, breeze along the Pacific Ocean Coast, thundershower in the very south end of the Olympic Peninsula.

I’m here to share pictures I took during the trip. At the end of this post, there’s a video I made with clips from the camera, the dash cam, and my phone. I hope you find it enjoyable.

What I Have Learned in This 15-Month Intensive Master of Science in Technology Innovation Program at University of Washington GIX

Why I Write This?

December 14th, 2018 was my last day on enrollment at the University of Washington’s Global Innovation eXchange Institute (GIX). I graduated from there with a Master of Science in Technology Innovation degree.

There have been some requests from grad school applicants asking me for first-hand information on the study experience at GIX. To make the information accessible for more people, I am writing this post to share my observation and reflections on the journey.

Who Am I?

To better understand my perspective, you need to know more about my background. Before coming to GIX, I had spent five years in the industry—two years at a Beijing-based startup as Product Manager and experience designer, three years as a User Experience Designer at consultancies. I have a B.Eng. in Industrial Design degree. I learned how to code in Python and develop web layout with HTML/CSS by myself before coming to GIX. To know more about me, please check my LinkedIn.

Things You Need to Know

There are two tracks at GIX so far, MSTI and Dual-Degree. Dual-Degree has components from both UW (MSTI) and Tsinghua University (MEDSIT). Dual-Degree students share the MSTI track with MSTI-only students; in addition, they need to spend half a year at Tsinghua in Beijing for further study and research. Although the MSTI part is shared, Dual-Degree students need to do some research work even while on the MSTI track. So the experience of the Dual-Degree student could be slightly different from MSTI-only students. I was an MSTI-only student, so what I share here solely applies to the MSTI-only track.

Please be advised that what I write here are subjective, other cohort students might agree or disagree with my comments. I encourage you to reach out to past graduates who have a similar background with you for feedback which would align with your track. The program is evolving, we the first cohorts have given significant feedbacks to GIX for iterations. For instance, the sequence of the course for Cohort 2 is different from ours. It is a living program, everything is going better and better.

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Niu Listed on Nasdaq

Niu Technologies listed on Nasdaq — Image credit: Niu Technologies

EDT 9:30am today in New York City, former colleagues of my previous company—Niu Technologies—started the IPO at Nasdaq.

This is another milestone my fellows have achieved. As once a part of the team for a long ride, I do know how hard they have worked to make it happen. Congratulations to all Niu fellows and early investors.

Some friends have asked if I regret to give up my stakes at Niu to come to study in the US. My answer was, “a thirst for knowledge is the desire among all desires.”

Recently, I started job searching. I’m especially good at cold-starting a new product. I can do a full set of product creation works—from business strategy analysis, product positioning, user research, ideation, concept design to detailed product experience design (both SW & HW), product development management and product launch with marketing fellows. Thanks to the education I received at the University of Washington, I have also touched the US IP and corporate laws. I’m an ideal candidate for a product designer or product manager for a new product line. Please feel free to leave me a message if you are interested to have a talk.

My 2017 — The Road of Transformation

This blog was originally written by Ryan Wu in Chinese on Dec 28, 2017: https://catalium.net/my_2017-cn/

In August 2017, I resigned from my post in Beijing as a product manager. Later, I came to the States to pursue the master degree. It was a solid year, it deserves a good summary. I’m writing the rewind at my apartment in Bellevue, WA. “Once recall the days in my secondary school time in China, then look at our living experience here in the US, it seems to be another lifetime,” said my friend who works at Microsoft HQ in Redmond.

The summary for 2016 was not written due to some reasons, but as the last two years were highly twisted and critical for me, I’ll cover 2016 in this 2017 summary.
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一名北漂产品的赴美留学路 — 2017 年度总结

English version available: https://catalium.net/my_2017-en/

今年 8 月，我辞去在北京的产品经理工作，来到美国华盛顿大学攻读硕士学位。这一年发生了很多事，非常值得记录和总结。我在美国华盛顿州贝尔维尤的公寓写下这篇回顾，用前几天一位在微软 Redmond 总部工作的中国朋友的话说，「回想起自己初中高中的日子，再看我们现在在美国经历的生活，恍如隔世」。

2016 年的总结因为一些事耽误没写，由于 16、17 这两年一脉相承，对我来讲非常关键，就在这里合并到 17 年总结里了。

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