Go see Taare Zameen Par and help a specially abled child

The School of Leadership is showing Taare Zameen Par on the big screen on Saturday 24th May 2008.

They are selling the tickets for this on Lootmaar. All the money raised will go towards the enablement of specially abled children, and for each ticket sold, 1 ticket will be given to a specially abled child so he/she can watch the movie too.

He changed our lives!

Vint Cerf was at WCIT 2008 in Kuala Lumpur as Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist of Google but most of the world know him better as the Father of the Internet. Sitting there listening to him yesterday, I couldn’t help but reflect on my first experience with the Internet - how I had stayed up several days and nights to use this brand new technology that enabled me to roam around the world discovering information that had been very difficult to access until then; easily communicate with people all around the world exchanging ideas, sharing experiences and making friends. It is difficult to remember how I managed to do anything before the Internet came into my life.

It blew my mind to sit there and listen to this great man talk about his vision for the Internet for 2035 - how he expected the internet would grow, what devices would be like, where convergence and innovation would take place, where and how barriers would come down. He talked for 45 minutes but the time just flew and the mind was totally engaged. The possibilities that he eluded to became real and one hoped one would be around to see it all happen.

I just had to go and shake his hand and talk to him if I could. Like John Gage he was totally approachable and very easy to talk to.  Being in the company of such minds, one felt overwhelmed and yet inspired.

Wow what a guy!

I hadn’t known that John Gage of NetDev, Schools Online and Sun Microsystems fame was going to be in KL for this conference so when I found out I made sure I would be in the first two rows and wide awake to listen to what he had to say. He was on a panel termed “The Great Debate” and some of the subjects discussed included privacy, cyber security, cyber terrorism (or cyber threat which was what they preferred to term it), the all-pervasiveness of technology, energy and environmental issues, the digital divide, etc etc. It was so wonderful listening to him.

Answering a question as to why it was that all great ideas (like Google, YouTube, the iPod, etc) had all come out of Silicon Valley and there wasn’t one that had come out of Asia, Dr. Gage said we should look at the people who had been behind these ideas, and not the country - there were Asians who had always been part of the core teams. It is just that the Silicon Valley presented them with the opportunities, the environment and the nurturing that was needed for this to happen. The US Government had put oodles of money into Research initiatives at Stanford, MIT and Harvard over a number of years and had invested in education for years and years before it began to bear fruit.

I must try and write down everything that the panel discussed but for now I am so excited that I actually met John Gage. Yup as the debate ended and they tried to rush him away, I slipped backstage and introduced myself - being small has its advantages :-). You know what amazes me about people like John Gage is that they are so approachable, so down-to-earth, so happy to talk, totally not full of themselves. When he heard that I was from Pakistan, and the kind of exciting things we were trying to make happen, he said he really wanted to do something in Pakistan and we should talk. He gave me his card and told me to start an email dialogue with him so that we could discuss this further. I told him there were a lot of young people who would be so inspired and motivated to meet and talk with him. He wanted to sit down and chat but the hosts had plans for him and dragged him away. But not before I had this picture taken with him. How could I resist?