Another excellent HAIL Seminar today, this time from Liesl Capper, founder and until recently CEO of Sydney based web-search company Mooter Search.

Liesl’s talk wandered across a lot of ground, from touching on definitions of both artificial and human intelligence, through to why personalisation is really important for web searching, and what traits are most useful to use when trying to determine reliable features with which to reason about personalising information.

Over lunch, we found out more about Liesl’s background and uncovered her great passion and enthusiasm for, well, just about everything! She’s already successfully started at least 3 businesses (including Mooter), and now that she’s no longer in a hands-on role at Mooter, is considering her options for starting her next business.

I’m hopeful that our paths may cross again in the future, as Liesl expressed interest in perhaps working in a few areas that are certainly on the radar at CSIRO. Similarly, I know that Liesl has a few contacts who would be very interested in our knowledge and expertise in information delivery (including one largish search company who shall for the moment remain nameless).

I think Liesl is one of those energetic people who could really inspire herself (and others) to great things. Even within the few hours she spent with us today, it was clear to me that she has something of a tireless energy about her and that she’s very positive and sure about achieving whatever goals she sets for herself. I’m quite sure that’s exactly the kind of drive that has helped Liesl to business success.