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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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8:19 am
Can you please share the course outline of SQA course. I always wonder what is taught in these classes and are they worth it of one’s money or are they just pep talk ?
3:59 pm
@mansoor, actually there are a few local trends
a. depreciation of rupee against dollar (71 right now) or against euro (almost 108+). Also companies have been able to charge their clients more – while staying as competitive as rest of the world. This effectively means that for an 80 person company, you would see a jump in almost Rs. 500k – 1.0 million in revenues per month – depending on their rates,no additional effort involved. You should discount for the rise in fuel prices but then outsourcing businesses aren’t really dependent on traveling too much. This jump has translated into bigger offices, more hiring, and better salaries.
b. increase in demand all over the world
c. local power crises
d. expats getting involved in their own setups
Because of (a), the earnings have increased so companies have a lot more cash now, i.e., companies that are doing good.
Since demand has overall increased, primarily because India has gotten expensive (depreciation of dollar against indian rupee) without the corresponding increase in quality so people are looking for alternative destinations.
Because of local power crises, the smaller software houses that would be ready to work at really low rates can no longer afford to stay in business or are finding it really hard to stay in business as they have to get UPS, generators etc. which is not easy for every bootstrap shop. This should have a relative less impact on the overall situation though.
Expats are investing locally, opening up small shops to earn some extra cash – which in some cases start to do well to replace their day jobs. Some are also starting work on their small little ideas, to see how it goes.
Also there has been another episode of the 2000-bubble, more commonly known as “web 2.0″. There are a lot of new products being built and most of it is outsourced.
Regarding which areas should we grow into – I am not sure. Right now our exports are so tiny that it doesn’t really matter if we choose a specialty or not. I guess, the aim right now is “growing” companies on the momentum and making sure that the companies are big and stable enough to handle the slowdown whenever it might come (though I don’t see any signs of any slow-down).
My 2 cents…
5:33 pm
obi: you can take a look at http://www.businessbeam.com/sqa.html for a course outline we offer. however, i’d also like to add that for effective training, these topics have to be augmented by a lot of hands on discussions+workshops otherwise its just a one-way transfer of knowledge which doesn’t benefit anyone.
ali: beautifully summed up the current scenario. that’s my perspective as well. For quite a few companies here, revenue’s have taken a giant upwards leap and i’m also happy to see that quite a few companies are also investing the same back into their people instead of just pocketing it. We need such forward thinkers and institution builders to make the industry a viable one.
4:09 pm
Hi,
I agree with both of you? Even though the conditions are worse then before in case of power and telecommunication( internet disorders ) but still some companies are generating more money. Like the company I work in as Software Engineer is also genrating a much more mone then a year or two before.
And this year we are in the process of converting our salary into dollars beacuse company do all his business in dollars so is the profit. We get a percentage of the amount paid by our client which now will be converted to dollars so our salary will falucuate according to rupees state but also there is a lowest value cap in case dollar drops very low which seems impossible
In this senerio an average employee with salary 30K per month will have atleast 35 to 4K advantage per month if dollar is at 70 Rs.
It is just an example that companies feels much secure now and are willing to share this with there employee.