So here is a “small” review of the talent show that took place last night. I liked the setting “yet again”. The social events team really did wonders with the place they call the “back ground”. The lights, the graffiti back drop and not to mention the chairs in circles with an “angeethi” in the middle.

The evening started off with a Traditional dance of The Philippines done by 4 ladies clad in white. The dance was “interesting”, not much going on, a little sway here, a little sway there. Then again, I guess it’s the cultural divide that forces us to laugh at everything that isn’t “us”.

After the dance, the delegations lined up to show the judges who were seated in front of the stage how much talent they actually had. There were people who did rap over backing tracks, a rather annoying mimic of “the shrimp” from Shark Tale done by the delegate of Iraq. Later I could hear/see her making fun of every act that did come on stage. Rather annoying if you ask me, considering that she herself did the corniest/lamest act. Interestingly enough, the delegation of India did an “improvised” song which had acoustic guitars ( The Gmaj and the Cmaj chords used heavily) and interesting lyrics. Yes, the only thing they sang was “ho ho marasi ho ho ho”. But then again, improvisation is interesting every time. The female delegate from China sat and beautifully sang “Saiyyan” by Kailash Kher. Very hard song to sing, specially without the help of any instruments. Good job done by China.

After China was done, the delegate of Japan came on stage to show the crowd exactly how much flex he has. And yes, he had lots of it (which is why I couldn’t get a picture :P ). Good job done by Japan as well. After Japan left the stage, the delegate of Israel along with his Misri Tabla came on stage to do some percussion work. Nice try, but timing issues, consistency issues and monotonous beats, but it DOES take guts to go on stage with just one instrument so good job done by the delegate of Israel as well. The North Korean delegate went on stage with his white warlock guitar and did some shred and a rather interesting version of “eruption” by Van Halen. I think the cold took it’s toll and one could easily tell he was feeling uncomfortable playing.

Other than the acts mentioned above, none of the acts were that good to be reviewed or maybe it was just me but it was the same boring rap/karaoke/rap again/dance/karaoke over and over again. I left early but it was an event that did go well. Again I’d like to stress on the point that these kids DID work with a lot of effort and commitment :)

Yesterday’s event was a nice one.

If you don’t know, I’m talking about the Blogger meetup session.

It was live-blogged over here. And it covers the crux of the event, so I will just put in my two cents and my takeaway points.

I don’t remember the names of the people from IEEE Bahria university, but they did a marvelous job handling the event. Three cheers for them.

Badar, the country representative of Google gave a pretty informative introduction to blogging for newbies and introduced how blogging can be used as a means to make both ends meet. He introduced a couple of case-studies from Pakistan which were pretty interesting to hear about. Those including pinkwool.com, sizlopedia.com, paperpk.com and some more.

There were six panelist speakers.

1) Atif from Brightspyre
2) Shehzad from bytesforall
3) Nadir from Naqsha.net
4) Faheem from paperpk.com
5) Saad from Sizlopedia.com
6) Me from right here :)

It was a very inspiring talk.

My take-away point was that all of the people took their passion and gathered the right kind of audience and then made money though it. The way everyone was talking about their projects made an aura in the atmosphere that was pretty much addictive.

Atif from Brightspyre proudly presented the fact that those guys used HR as a SAAS(Software AS A Service), probably the first in the globe to be doing that. And they very successfully are deployed at many clients. Shehzad from Bytesforall was pretty much eloquent about the wrongdoings that have been happening w.r.t the blockage of blogs in Pakistan. Nadir told about how much facilitative their website is, check out their site – you’ll be thrilled.

I was very much excited to hear from Fahim of paperpk.com and Saad from sizlopedia.com, because both of them are earning (masha’Allah) a lot from their online presence through programs like Google adsense.

Google sponsored give-away gifts for the audience and the panelist (Yo, I got a brand-new ferrari-red colored Google mug as well, hehe) Red bull gave away free Red bulls to keep us awake during the session, and Wateen provided the wireless connectivity during the event.

The event was a very entertaining one and more soever, an educative one in a peer-to-peer Socratic kind of a way. As the saying goes that when one teaches, two learn. I was extremely thrilled to meet some bloggers who I probably would never have had the chance to meet if it wasn’t for this beautiful world of blogging.

I hope that such events continue in the future and that by next time we have much more real-time case-studies.

Hey, I almost forgot.

CIO Magazine was one of the organizers as well.

Three cheers for them too.

If I’ve missed up someone, my memory is to be blamed, not my sincerity.

Thanks!

Update:

there are pics available as well!

I just returned from this meet up.

It was fun, will blog my take-away points soon.

Stay tuned!!!

For those of you who don’t know what an MUN or a Model United Nation conference is, it is basically a conference where committee sessions of the United Nations are simulated in real time. Institutions send teams who are designated different countries and each participant or delegate is assigned a different committee. Heated debates, political inclination, diplomacy of all the things are checked, marked, evaluated and resolutions are made to a set of different problems that are to be discussed. What an MUN does is that it enables individuals to nurture their debating skills, their diplomatic skills, and their conflict resolution skills which contributes heavily in the future.

Today happened to be the first day of the 1st Convent Model United Nations, venue being The Islamabad Convent School (ICS). As is tradition, the first day is the opening ceremony and the Global Village. The opening ceremony took place in the school Library which was quite spacious for a library. I was expecting a plethora of long boring speeches and bland crammed scripts, but came out to be the exact opposite. There was a welcome speech, the Principals message and a word from the sponsors Islamabad Tubular Society, University College of Islamabad and Cherat Cement. I don’t remember what people came up and said but the Principal said something that I really liked “An individual makes up a family, a family a community, a community a society, a society a country, a country the whole world “. After the Secretary General declared the event open, most of the delegates rushed outdoors to the tent where they were to set up their Global Village stalls

I sneaked out to grab a bite and I’m sure what happened between the time the opening ceremony ended to the time I made way to the Global Village area wasn’t much that was missed. So let’s just get straight to the Global Village.

There were 33 countries in all or so I was told. I did speak to most of them but some were average, some weren’t interested and some were rude (I have no idea why though *shrug*). So the following countries, in my view stood out:-

North Korea:-

The delegates of North Korea were an independent team though all of them were students of West Minister College Islamabad. I got to talk to Jahangir and Rabia. I specially enjoyed talking to Rabia because she had a very unique perspective regarding the war against terror, global economy, nuclear arsenal and her vision if she was to be the premier. Jahangir was a nice fellow who explained how Korean music used the harp and harmonic scales. In my view, this team would do good if they stick to their thought process and originality.

Germany:-

The delegates of Germany were from The Saint Mary’s academy, Lalazar Rawalpindi. Their stall was interesting and had loads of car magazines, two bottles of “celebration drinks” put to portray beer and a guitar and a football. They looked confused and a little unprepared but I guess first times at MUN’s are always like that, though it was interesting to see a paper poster which had the NAZI sign and the “Hail Hitler” slogan on it. When asked whether they were pro Nazi, or anti Nazi, they had nothing to say. Moreover them not knowing that Hitler was actually born in Austria and not in Germany was disappointing.

China:-

The Chinese stall was a rather interesting stall. With the ladies dressed in traditional Chinese dresses with small Chinese fans in their hand. They looked nice and they were of the opinion that China savours on their labour and should be categorized as a “developed” country rather than a “developing” country and that the west doesn’t want them to be on top. Interesting views, oh and they had traditional Chinese food as well. Who doesn’t love a good dose of Chowmein and chop soy?

Iraq:-

I didn’t talk much to the delegates from Iraq but they were nice young girls who had a point of view about anything that I asked them. I talked to Urwat from the delegation and she was well spoken and very kind in answering all my questions regarding Iraqi culture, food, and heritage. They also had kebabs and some sort of rice as food items.

Ethiopia:-

The Ethiopian team consisted of budding accountants from the University College of Islamabad. The team consisted of Asmat Fayaz, Ibrahim Marghoob and Daniyal Khan Hoti. They had a nice lively stall and a lot of food to go with it. Asmat who looked like she was interested in writing said “war itself is terrorism” when asked about her views on the on going war against terror. Goes to show that all accountants “aren’t always that boring :)

Afghanistan:-

The Afghani stall was rather interesting. It had two girls dressed up in traditional pukhtoon topis and beards made with markers apparently portraying the Taliban. The delegation of Afghanistan were from Headstart and the little conversation that I did have with them, was enlightening. It was rather pleasing to see that two of them came up to me and asked me if I could get their view across. I obviously said sure and asked them what it was, they i.e Maham Faisal and Iman Hazir were blatantly against the war and said that the only way that the world could see peace was via peace and tolerance itself. Kudos to these young individuals.

Along the way I talked to lots of other country delegates as well. I would distinctly like to mention that the delegates from the United Kingdom were offensive, rude and ill-mannered but then again, teens are supposed to be like that. The delegates of France were nice as were the delegates from South Africa, Bangladesh, Canada and Egypt.

Credits to Miss Zainab Zakeer, who happens to be a student of O2 and also the Social event director for managing the first social event with a lot of responsibility and devotion along with her team, noteworthy mentions being Rahima Zia.

A lot of pictures were taken but due to poor light, the cold, a trembling hand and a point and shoot, most of them came out blurry so they had to be deleted, let’s hope that tomorrow will be a good day with respect to pictures. For all those who I mentioned without a picture, my apologies =)

Au revoir!

There’s this meet-up planned tomorrow.

Register & Come…

After a deep sleep, valour of Muntazir Zaidi is awakening the Muslim world. It’s time to honour our real heroes who’re not our celebrity leaders but ordinary people like most of us.

Muntazir Zaidi, the Iraqi Journalist by throwing his shoes at Bush, has written a new chapter of courage and resistance in these depressed times.

To pay tributes to Muntazir Zaidi a tree will be planted on his name by the citizens of Islamabad at Car Parking of Savour Foods, Blue Area, Islamabad, 2:00 p.m. (sharp) Thursday, 18 December 2008.

Come one – come all.

Whooops … missed by good 40 minutes :s

I went to the Usability CEO speak-up session arranged at the brand new, glorious campus of NUST.

First of all – I want to say that I have the exact opposite of a Photographic memory. Infact, the movie memento is based on my life (just kidding), so – don’t take my account of the event too religiously.

To err is human, to forgive divine.

First of all, the attendance of the speakers was not 100 percent.

Osama Hashmi of Green&White fame, Murad Akhtar of TinTash and Atif Mumtaz of Brightspyre did not come.

Frankly, I went because I really wanted to meet Osama as the two technical blogs from Pakistan that I absolutely adore are his Green&White and the Tech Lahore. Obviously there are many others like Mohtashim’s IT blog but the choice of these two blogs is a strictly biased selection totally thrashing any merit of any sort.

Haris Khan, the CEO of Zigron was the host and the moderator of the talk. And like any host of any good talk show, he did a splendid and a marvelous job. He never let the talk go astray in either the pits of boredom or to the heights of excitement. I would say attaboy, well done.

The talk was a well diversified talk show kind of a thing. Babar Khan, the Country Manager of iKonami went on an extra mile to tell how his company invested in making the product they have for hospitals in the Uk easy to use for disabled people. Faizan Buzdar, the dude from Scrybe quite interestingly told of his affiliation with the Islamabad-Lahore Motorway project from his GIKI days and how there were flaws in some areas with regards to usability from a users perspective. He also seemed pretty nostalgic about his days at Elixir when he spoke very high of the Usability practices at Elixir.

That reminds me that most of the audience were the employees of iKonami and Elixir technologies.

Dr. Khalid Latif gave the academic perspective of usability and gave specific examples of functional vs non-functional requirements in usability. He talked about how usability differed in different products. He said that how regression is a more important thing in mission critical systems and how aesthetics are a more important aspect of an entertainment related web site.

An employee from elixir technologies pointed out the fact that how different kind of viewers should be catered to when making color schemes for a web site, like different color combinations that can not be distinguished from each other by color blind people. At that point in time, an employee of iKonami technologies who was in the audience too mentioned the fact that these kind of requirements are specially catered to in the medical support system by them.

Dr. Arshad Sahab, who is a personal mentor of mine since university days very wisely pointed out the paradox that like ethics, it’s extremely difficult for the right kind of people to be found for teaching usability. Since most of the people who are academically qualified to teach such subjects do not practice the concepts themselves. He also pointed out the fact that usability can’t be totally taught right out of text books, it should be an amalgam of textbook stuff with the latest findings and practices that are freshly cooked out of the oven.

The crux of the matter is that albeit it was not totally the kind of a talk I went to attend and Helvetica is definitely not the kind of film I would chose to show in a Usability talk, but nevertheless it was a treat to be there. The event was gourmet material. And was indeed very aesthetically arranged in one of the very beautiful classes of the newly made campus of NUST-SEECS.

The Chinese saying goes like “A thousand mile journey starts with a single step”. And I absolutely loved the amalgam of industry-academia in this talk.

Three cheers to the organizers, the participants and the audience.

I hope such events continue in the future!!!

Post made originally on December 28, 2006. Re-published :)

__________

This Sunday I made a trip to the “Mandi Maweshia” also known as Bakra Mandi that is being placed in H-11 this year – yes you are right the same ground where last year earthquake affectees were placed.

I don’t know if it’s large place that’s making the number of sacrificial animals lesser than every year or what … but I guess it’s enough to cater the needs of Islooittes.

Just step in the locality and a very familiar “Goaty smell” or as I normally say “the feeling of Bakriat” is what you’ll feel. Don’t worry move on. To be honest, this was the first time after so many years that I actually stepped inside the bakra mandi … face to face with all bakras and dunbas and gayays. So it was interesting too and incidentally I was the only girl in whole Bakra mandi at that time taking portraits of bakras aka goats and stylish “phedoos” aka sheep with utmost tries to stay as far as possible.

Few tips for newbie who may go out to look for animals just for fun with their parents, or maybe friends …. Few terms that are associated with Goats are:

Kheera: It’s the animal that is of 1.5 – 2 years old.

Donda: This animal is of 2+ age and usually have 4 teeth in front.

Choga: This is of around 4 years of age and is considered a bit older with not very good quality meat.

Please correct me if I’m wrong or any additions to this “knowledge-base”

The range of goats (sorry we didn’t asked for Bulls or camel :>) would go from 7K to 20+ for an average to a very good piece. Do take tips on your way to buying a sacrificial animal for differentiating between a healthy and sick animal … and do look thoroughly if the animal is hurt from somewhere.
(more…)

Quite some time since the technology sector in Islamabad witnessed some events like Startup Insiders. Worry not. A similar interactive-session on the newest hype in software industry … Usability is here.

If it describes your sufferings … probably you wantto know what CEOs of Islamabad are saying ;-)

Green & White tells more:

“Usability – Why should you care?” is the theme of a unique, interactive event similar to the Startup Insiders ones of old that Zigron and Green & White are holding at NUST this Tuesday, Dec 2, 2008 from 5pm to 8pm.

The importance of having user experience design skills are being felt by companies in the entire industry today as they see the world evolve and explode into an abundance of software systems.

There are a number of IT companies within Islamabad who are already transitioning their processes and teams into a usability-focused disciplines, whose products are valued and heralded because of their attention to HCI, and whose teams must be a deep mix of fantastic engineers who also happen to have great aesthetic taste.

Who is coming?

Haris Khan, CEO, Zigron, makers of daremycompany.com and pingmycompany.com - their firm differentiates their services on usability

Osama A. Hashmi, CEO, CDF Software and founder of Green&White - their product has been largely lauded for its uniquely usable way of solving an age-old problem

Babar Khan – Country Manager, iKonami - ikonami’s flagship product “AT-Work” is the worlds largest single SAAS installation at the worlds fourth largest employer, and the company promotes the idea of “Common Sense Usability”

Kubair Shirazee, CEO, iKonami

Atif Mumtaz, co-founder, or Faisal Chohan, CEO Brightspyre – their products were accepted by the biggest blogs in the world and praised for their simplicity of use in comparison to competitors.

Faizan Buzdar, CEO, Scrybe – Look at this – enough said.

Murad Akhtar, CEO, TinTash – their company focuses on casual game development

Dr. Khalid Latif, Assistant Professor, NUST – His PhD and research focus is on semantic web and focuses on usability within his advanced courses at NUST.

What More:

Yup … they are screening HELVETICA too. As if you want to miss it now !

Register:

Yourself now. Visit Zigron’s web-presence for details.

ps: Thanks to Osama for writing it so well at his blog that I had to do not much ;-)

They are coming … ;)

Waiting to go to Bakra mandi :o)

Image Courtesy: Daily Aajkal