In my professional career spanning roughly a decade, I have been a developer, product manager and a co-founder at small startups.<p>While I have not made a truckload of money, I have made enough to afford a decent living. More importantly I have realized that accumulating more barely moves my happiness-meter.<p>So I'm looking into areas that I have always loved but haven't really contributed to. Wildlife conservation, oceans and general ecology. And TBH I am clueless where to start looking. Do I get an internship at a research lab, work at a zoo, document flora and fauna?<p>I have recently started course material that is used for master programmes in universities, but that is to build a fudamental understanding of the space.
Any advice/feedback/links would be really appreciated.<p>From the professional career, I have these skills that I think maybe relevant:
- Image processing
- Natural language processing
- Neural networks, ML etc (would rate self 3/5)
- Web dev<p>I also have love for maps and outdoors if that matters.<p>Thank you in advance.
I can think of several things off the top of my head:<p>- go work for a group <i>like</i> WWF
- work on "outdoors" apps (hunting, hiking, trail-riding, etc)
- build website(s)/app(s) that help conservation groups, folks interested in wildlife, etc find places to sight-see, get involved in local activities, etc
- work for a group that does educational outreach (eg your local cooperative extension office)<p>I bet some of the other smarter folks hereon can suggest another 100 or more ways you could "help wildlife conservation and ecology with tech" :)
I'm interested in developing a product to increase farm animals quality of life. Does this resonate with you? I develop PCBs for IOT type stuff. ML could translate into detecting sick animals, falling, coughing, eating habits, etc. ML is not my strong point.