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General
When a 19th century romantic French writer by the name of Victor Hugo said “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come” he obviously could not envision Pakistani bureaucracy. Not only can it reduce an idea to nothing more than its meager skeletal remains squirming in its own vile, it too often does.
Come 2004, the IT bubble is about to burst in a military run, democratic, American influenced politically independent subcontinent country by the name of Pakistan. It is here in our story that along comes an idea. It is a simple idea yet revolutionary in every way, the idea to prepare this country for the…
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Events General
The past whole week I was really excited about going to the exhibition on 5th and 6th at expo center Lahore since the theme read “home expo and super car expo”. I was counting on seeing some innovative home solutions, fancy cars and a lot of appliances for both. As I entered the arena, an ear piercing heavy bike engine race greeted me. Oh wow nice, we have bikes here too… and lots of them, but let’s see if we have the actual products that are expected.
First cars!! Honda Launched its new City Aspire at the event. This attracted a lot of young crowd who wanted to check it…
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General
NOTE: This is a sponsored post
Football. The most popular sport in the world. That may be hard to believe, we being a die-hard cricket nation, but there are many amongst us who get their blood pumping whenever our favorite team kicks some balls (pun intended). There’s excitement in the air, and the airwaves for that matter, when Spanish rivals Real Madrid and Barcelona are about to have a face-off on the field. Manchester United or Chelsea? The answer could incite either jeers or cheers, depending on who you’re surrounded by. It feels like you belong to an exclusive club really, not to mention how convenient it is to…
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Coffee Session General
There are two main things that are currently causing out growth in ICT to stall. One is the lack of original ideas, so most of the entrepreneurs either copy what is already around internationally or locally (same ideas of online shopping, online bidding) we still have not hit the jackpot with someone creating some thing like instagram or drawsomething and being acquired by one of the big names.
The second issue always lamented by entrepreneurs is lack of any funding sources in Pakistan. Over the years we have seen efforts being made to create funds which would help but what ended happening that most of these funds either did…
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Coffee Session General
We all know about the 7 layers of the OSI model. This is the framework by which computer networks are defined. Starting with the physical layer, going through the transport layer and finally culminating in the application layer where end user applications reside. I believe that this should be redefined to include and additional layer – the Social Layer. From the current vantage point, the Social Layer lies right above the Application layer – hence it is served by the Application layer.
The 90s witnessed a boom in what is now referred to as web 1.0. This consisted of static applications hosted over the web. Static applications meant that…
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General Mobile Apps Software & I.T.
Pakistani IT industry has been progressing rapidly over the last few years. It is heartening to see that the industry players are innovating and working in different areas to establish their expertise.
Recently, TenPearls, one of the leading IT companies of Pakistan, launched “Carumba!”, a 3D car racing game for iPhone and iPad. Carumba! has been designed and developed by TenPearls’ innovation labs. Launched as a free game, Carumba! allows users to earn coins during the race, and redeem them to unlock other cars and tracks or to get additional nitro boosts. It has also been integrated with Apple’s Game Center.
The game has received very good response from…
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Events General
‘Rethinking Pakistan’ [and my expression goes LOL and I will explain why] was the theme of the conference which took place at margalla hills Islamabad on March 31st 2011 organized by TEDx, lets just summarize here what TEDx is; before we further dig into the “theme” and happenings of this conference.
TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) and ’x’ denotes the independently organized events under the TED umbrella, mission is “Ideas worth spreading” and this events basically brings together individuals, communities and organizations with the opportunity to excite dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level (geographically). The programs combine live presenters, performers and pre-recorded talks from some of the most brilliant…
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Announcements Events General
ICT R&D Fund aims to provide graduating students a chance to really make their final projects counts. I have always felt that students in their final year some times product excellent products which due to lack of any infrastructure and proper guidance plus funding just go in the Universities Libraries.
Seems ICT R & D fund is giving these students a chance to take their projects to the next level by acquiring funding, if you are a final year student doing a project all you need is to get this form filled and submitted through your head of department .
Last date for submission for forms is 31st…
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Coffee Session General
I wanted to discuss the Thiel Fellowship and sort of run the idea among our readership to figure out if it was justified or not. Bay Area hedge fund manager Peter Thiel started a Fellowship program in his name about a year ago trying to capitalize not on start ups, but the smart kids who may actually come up with the next billion dollar idea.
Let there be no mistake. Innovation solves problems. Bankers, lawyers and hot shot executives are good for only one thing: managing an existing infrastructure. It is the innovators who turn existing ideas on to their heads and enable breakthroughs. Considering the point above, it…
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12:21 am
Thanks Osama. We at P@SHA appreciate your support. After 3 years of successful P@SHA Job Fairs, we have upgraded the event and made it the P@SHA Career Expo. In addition to matchmaking company posts with the right candidates, our intent is to give young people an entire career experience in the area of ICT. We want them to understand that the ICT industry is a diverse animal consisting of companies of different kinds – software product companies, software service companies, IT consulting companies, BPO firms, Call Centres,System Integrators,Networking companies, Security firms, Transcription companies, Animation companies, New Media firms, etc etc. This year we are running Career Tracks on most of these segments to tell young people what career progression there is in each sector – in the technology, business and management domains.
We are as usual running sessions on Communication Skills and Interviewing Techniques and are putting together Expert Panels. These panels will have an interactive discussion amongst themselves and with the young people on subjects like the disconnect between the quality of HR being produced by universities as compared with what the industry require.
Counsellors from major companies in the sector will be available throughout the day to provide advise to the fresh graduates and young professionals.
We are very excited about the growth of this event. The first one is being held in Karachi this Saturday at the Expo Centre. Companies have supported us fully by booking booths and volunteering their services. Workjunction.com has very actively supported the event.
The next one will be in Islamabad on June 23. Brightspyre and Green & White are working actively with us and exhibitors have started booking their booths.
The Lahore one will be at the PC on June 30. Bookings have already begun and here too we will be actively supported by Green & White as well as the University of Central Punjab – Zaeem Yaqoob Khan has been a very active P@SHA supporter whenever we have held an event in Lahore. His team of Ambassadaors are very professional and passionate.
In Karachi kids from CBM, MAJU and KU are gearing up for the event on Saturday. Promises to be a great one. The road banners are up, the ads are running in the press and word is spreading like wild-fire on blogs and websites.
Thanks to everyone. This is something that we all need – to put in our efforts towards capacity building. Together we can do anything!!! As you can see, I am all hyped up.
12:53 pm
Zaeem Yaqoob. he is one of the most passionate persons i have come across (Me too from UCP ) who works selflessly for benefit of newer generation. Seriously there is a big shortage of such individuals in out industry I wish there were more.
1:05 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more. I wish others will take the lead from him and work selflessly for the industry as well as the country. Maybe we can clone Zaeem
9:39 am
The Karachi PASHA job fair was very poor. Very few companies and people came to the event, it was very disappointing. PASHA should do better job marketing and organizing, its bad for reputation of the leading IT organization to do bad job. I hope Islamabad and Lahore will be better.
But Islamabad event was post-poned “until further notice” last day. This is very unprofessional without notice. I don’t think green and white should back this effort if it is going to be done in such lazy manner. Proper attendance and professional attitude is must. Organization needs to be good.
2:33 pm
Ahmad
I am going to be biased because I am an organizer of the event and a PASHA CEC member. Here are the honest facts:
a) There were 20 plus companies across Hall 4 of the Expo center in Karachi.
b) There were 2000 plus attendees. Turnout was light compared to Rozee and the event last year but Etlize, Systems, IBM, MIXIT, PIX Sense, TRG, Avanza, TPS, Erwin, Virtual Women Network and Access group’s stalls had steady traffic through out the day.
c) The workshop that we ran on interviewing techniques had great turnout and the counselling and interview rooms were occupied nonstop post 1 pm.
We did the PASHA Job fair last year as a firm as well as this year and are fairly happy with our results. We plan to be back next year again.
I personally believe that this is the only focused event of its kind that showcases the technology industry in Pakistan for the benefit of technology employees.
I told you, I am biased.
4:11 am
Jawwad, Jehan: I keep noticing in companies / leaders over and over and over from the critical analysis we do at G&W, and I’m afraid I’ll have to point this out here again.
IF your CUSTOMER / CONSUMER is criticizing you regarding your PRODUCT, then why does it make sense to simply become biased, defend and deny?
It is as if you’re seeing violence and bloodshed on the streets of Karachi, and you say “Well, I love Karachi, Karachi is great, and I’m biased, so I will just shut off this TV”. That wont stop the actual effects from happening.
Remember, you should worry about the people who are NOT telling you how badly they felt about the event. However, the voice who IS telling you is telling you exactly what they would need to see from you (given their expectation of your product) in order to love you and spread the good word virally.
In this case, I feel that Ahmed may have expected something that he didn’t see, and does have an objective perspective of the event (i.e. isn’t just holding a light opinion) — this platform is the best way to do a cheap focus group to find out what these expectations were.