It’s truly inspirational to hear him speak

Sometimes one listens to a speech for the third or fourth time and it still has a very strong impact. This address that Apple CEO Steve Jobs made at the Stanford University Commencement is one such speech. I don’t know how many people have listened to it before, how much they’ve learnt from it. I just thought that at the end of the year, we needed some inspiration and who better to provide it than Jobs.

I wanted to highlight the three main points that he made in the speech (for those who are too lazy to go through the entire video clip). These are all parts of quotes from Steve’s address.

CONNECTING THE DOTS

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out? After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life.  The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

FIND OUT WHAT YOU LOVE – DON’T LOSE FAITH – DON’T SETTLE

I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the Valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

YOUR TIME IS LIMITED SO DON’T WASTE IT LIVING SOMEONE ELSE’S LIFE

“If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Experience-sharing session on Entrepreneurship

The Entrepreneurship Seminar was put together very quickly by P@SHA and MITEFP because we wanted to capitalize on the presence of Idris Kothari and Faraz Hoodbhoy in Karachi.

Idris is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and an active part of OPEN (Organisation of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America) and TiE (The Indus Entrepreneur). Faraz has years of experience in Silicon Valley having worked at Microsoft, NextBrick and Clickmarks and one of the Founders of PixSense. Our third panelist was Azhar Rizvi who has been a senior IT professional in Pakistan for two decades having worked with Unisys, NCR and THKS. Azhar is the current CEO of the Tech Angels Network.

Idris spent a bit of time telling us what he was presently involved in at Vertical Systems Inc which provides turnkey technology solutions for the hospitality industry. He also shared with us that the worldwide Call Center for this operation was based in Islamabad and he was totally satisfied with its operations.

Faraz took us through his PixSense experience, how/why PixSense had come into being, carefully pointing out for the benefit of the attendees the challenges that he and Adnan had faced especially in the early years. There were lessons to be learnt from what he said – what worked, what didn’t, the frustrations, the challenges, the highs, the lows.

Some of the key points that I picked up from the panelists, that I am sharing here, were the following:

1. Have family and friends that you can borrow from at the outset because you will need initial capital for the first 6 – 9 months simply to survive.

2. One cannot be an entrepreneur part-time. It has to be a full time occupation.

3. If you are married, you must ensure that your spouse is loving and understanding enough to put up with you working long hour days, seven days a week and travelling if need be.

4. Be sure you love what you are doing – otherwise you won’t be able to sustain it. So if you wake up one morning hating what you do, and this feeling persists for several days, then you are obviously not following your heart and it is best to quit.

5. Be strong enough for 77 out of 80 VC rejections (in the case of Faraz) and more in the case of Idris. Learn from them, don’t consider them failures – eventually you’ll get there.

6. Don’t let the external noise keep you from hearing the voice in your head and in your heart.

7. Find some good mentors who will guide you and be your sounding board, who will be brutal when they need to be so that you may continue on the road to achieving your goal, your dream.

8. A 100-page business plan is certainly not required but do put a lot of thought into your business model, into how you are going monetize your product, how you are going to build your team, how you are going to eat and live sustain your business. The more detail you are able to put on a couple of sheets of paper, the more likelihood that you will have actually thought it all through. This could be 3 Excel sheets, a two page document or a Mind Map.

9. The sooner you find your first customer, the better. If your first customer will be your guinea pig, you can afford to give him the product at cost. This will ensure that the product is workable and tested, and you will have a ready reference site to use for marketing to other customers.

10. Identify a problem/ a pain point for a potential customer, and then find a solution for that pain. Just developing something that you think is cool but for which there is no identified market, will result in failure and heartbreak.

There was some discussion surrounding Raghib Hussain who is  known to both Idris and Faraz. For those who haven’t heard of Raghib, he got his BS from NED University Karachi, and an MS degree in Computer Engineering from San Jose State University.

He was recruited by Idris as Design Engineer for VPNet, an enterprise security company.  At VPNet, he was a key contributor to the design of the first commercial IPSec based VPN (Virtual Private Network) gateway. In his early days at VPNet, Idris told the young Raghib that in 5 years he should be aiming to get to stage where he could replace Idris and in 10 years he should be able to hire Idris.

Well, the young man certainly took what Idris said to heart. He went on to work at Cadence Design Systems and Cisco Systems and he is currently the Vice President of Software Engineering & CTO of Cavium Networks which he co-founded. Cavium is a very successful company and is listed on Nasdaq. They have experience in developing high performance processors at DEC/Compaq and Sun. Cavium Networks software team has extensive experience in bringing to market leading security products at companies like Cisco, SonicWALL, VPNet & Nortel. Raghib has 19 pending or issued patents in the field of networking and security.

All in all it was a great knowledge-sharing session. Everyone left feeling that more such events should take place so as to enable a transfer of ideas.

Do you want to be featured on “In the Line of Wire?”

Although this started off as a personal blog, and will continue to contain my personal reactions, photos, images, thoughts and comments about anything that interests me, I do realize that because of my current position at P@SHA, a number of people who visit my blog (the silent ones as well as the vocal ones) have some expectations.

I like writing posts about all sorts of things – about my travel, about people I meet or things I read about,and gadgets that interest me. Highlighting the innovations, the products, the successes and initiatives taking place in the local industry, is something I really enjoy doing, especially when it concerns young people/companies.  Sometimes I come across these myself. At other times someone brings them to my attention.

Recently I have heard murmurs that some people feel they have done something really amazing but I haven’t talked about it. To them I have only one thing to say:

Hey I would love to hear from you. Tell me what you’ve done, show me a demo, come and see me and if what you have created excites me, I will most certainly blog about it.

But do please remember that this is my personal blog and I would like to retain the freedom to write about whatever interests me. Try not to hold that against me.

Additionally, of course there is the P@SHA blog which has specifically been set up to highlight the Pakistan ICT industry. Send us your news, photos and videos and we will put them up if they are considered newsworthy.

What is the PixSense Must-Clone Award?

What is going on here? Why is Hasan photocopying his face/head while Faraz and other colleagues look on?

Well, the story is that PixSense has instituted a monthly Employee Peer Recognition Award this month to recognize the contributions of the employee who exemplifies the best of PixSense and exhibits the work ethic that PixSense most desires to “clone”.

Since they haven’t fully succeeded in building a 3D cloning machine, they have decided, for the moment, to use the currently available state of the art technology – i.e. a photocopying machine!

This month’s recipient is Hasan Abid, one of the Technology Leads in their QA team, for his unrelenting dedication and support in getting one of the marquee European operators up and running before the Christmas holiday break.

The award was presented by PixSense’s department heads, Ahmed Ayub – Project Management & Ops, Syed Muhammed Shoaib – QA, Mirza Aleem Baig – Mobile Engineering, & Mustafa Sultan – Server Engineering.

Talking about the Award, FS Nooruddin, PixSense’s Vice President  of Engineering, said “Our team is made up of some of the best and brightest minds in Pakistan and we drive our team really hard. The PixSense Must-Clone award is one that means a lot because it’s a peer-recognition award that recognizes that, even amongst our already stellar team, some people’s contributions and performance stands out above and beyond the rest. We’re delighted to institute this recognition program and thrilled with the performance of our first recipient, Hasan Abid.”

I too can think of a few people I would like to clone. It would make life a lot easier. Good initiative guys! I guess it is one solution to the continuing struggle to find the best and the brightest, and to retain them. Keep us in the loop regarding future winners. We would love to project them. There is so much talent in this country. Let’s talk about it.

ICT being used by more and more people

On Christmas Day I met a couple of friends for lunch and we were discussing how technology is being used by more and more people in Pakistan – and increasingly amongst low literate and low income groups. The digital divide does of course still exist but some of the  lines are beginning to blur as more people have access to, and are adopting, information and communication technologies with excitement and ease. We still have a long way to go but at least we are on the way. Zakintosh has related a few examples and has gone as far as to say that the “ICT revolution” is finally here.

It would seem that this is indeed true.  One of the young men I was having lunch with told me about his housekeeper who had access to an old PC. The housekeeper had saved some money and got hold of a cheap digital camera with which he has been taking pictures of family and friends. He then discovered how to connect the camera to the PC upload the pictures and put them up on Flickr for family elsewhere to access. Wow.

It is worth remembering that many low-income Pakistanis are working elsewhere in the world and have so far depended on phone calls or letters or audio tapes to keep in touch with near and dear ones. Photos of children as they grow up have been rare either because of the expense or due to a lack of printing facilities in towns and villages. This certainly is an easy way to be in closer touch with family. Now if only we could have cheaper broadband access across a larger part of the country, we’d find more people using webcams to communicate and participate in family events over long distances, whenever they are unable to be physically present.

There is a young man working for me who has had very little education. He is honest and hardworking but has had only a couple of years of schooling. Since joining us, he has learnt to use office productivity software and scanning and image enhancement software. But more than that, it brings a smile to my face when I see him using Instant Messenger, Facebook and email. He uses Roman english on email as well as on SMS and does it quite well. If we could have Twitter, Facebook and SMS in Urdu, Punjabi, Balochi and Pushto, the adoption of ICT would grow at an even faster rate.

The other friend who was with us at lunch told us that his domestic helper has been spotted playing BlackJack and Solitaire on an old PC. And why not? Once they have access to technology and have got over the initial hesitance of using ICT, there is nothing they do in the “real world” that they cannot do in the virtual one. Oh okay perhaps I exaggerate. Perhaps there are a few things one cannot do online

The spread of electronic media to the majority of households as well as the increased use of mobile phones by all sectors of society has not only made communication easier, it has also meant that different strata of society and now not only viewing and assimilating, but are actively participating in disucssions on all aspects of our lives. This will I hope lead to more empowerment and better understanding (I hate the word tolerance – why has it been taken as a positive word?).

Eartha Kitt – a show business career spanning 6 decades – dies at 81

Eartha Kit died yesterday at the age of 81 after a battle with colon cancer. Born to an African American mother and a white father whom she never knew, Eartha suffered from poverty and abuse for most of her early life. It was by chance that she entered show business as she responded to a dare from friends and auditioned for a part in a dance performance.

So it was in the late 40s that Eartha started her career as a dancer and then went on to be one of the first multi-tasking women in show business, achieving success in a number of mediums – dance, song, film, television, broadway. A seductive woman with a come-hither voice, Eartha Kitt won the hearts of millions. Orson Welles referred to her in the fifties as one of the most exciting women alive.

She spoke four languages and sang in seven. Her greatest hit was “Santa Baby”. I remember listening to it hundreds of times. This number was later also sung by Janet Jackson, Madonna, Kylie Minogue and others. Other numbers that I particularly enjoyed, and that turned out to be her signature tunes, were “C’est Si Bon”, “Love for Sale” and “Old Fashioned Girl”.

The tough life she had led made Eartha a bit hard and certainly very blunt. She suffered because of this bluntness when she was invited to the White House for a luncheon in the late sixties. Lady Bird Johnson, the first lady, asked her about the Vietnam War and Eartha responded: “You send the best of this country off to be shot and maimed. No wonder the kids rebel and take pot.” It was claimed that the first lady broke into tears and this led to a subsequent negative campaign being launched against Eartha Kitt by the CIA, resulting in her getting no work and being exiled to Europe for almost a decade. She was finally invited back to the White House by President Jimmy Carter.

Eartha won several Tony Awards and Grammys throughout her career. She has also written 3 autobiographies. Through her talent, Eartha Kitt brought so much pleasure to the lives of so many. May she rest in peace.

Harold Pinter dead at 78

Harold Pinter, the British playwright and Nobel laureate, died on Christmas Eve at the age of 78  after a long battle with cancer. His plays were considered amongst the finest in the last half century. “The Caretaker” and “The Homecoming” were amongst his best works.

Pinter, who won the Nobel prize for literature in 2005, vehemently opposed the Iraq war comparing the Bush administration to the Nazis and referring to Tony Blair as a “mass murderer.”

In 1958 Harold Pinter wrote the following:

“There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.”

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

But it is his speech to the House of Commons in January 2003 that won the admiration of all peace-loving people in the world. I am reproducing it below.

House of Commons Speech – Tuesday 21st January 2003

One of the more nauseating images of the year 2002 is that of our Prime Minister kneeling in the church on Christmas Day praying for peace on earth and good will towards all men while simultaneously preparing to assist in the murder of thousands of totally innocent people in Iraq.I’ve been taken to task recently by the American Ambassador to Britain for calling the US Administration a blood thirsty wild animal. All I can say is: take a look at Donald Rumsfeld’s face and the case is made. I believe that not only is this contemplated act criminal, malevolent and barbaric, it also contains within itself a palpable joy in destruction. Power, as has often been remarked, is the great aphrodisiac, and so, it would seem, is the death of others. The Americans have the ostensible support of the ‘international community’ through various sure-fire modes of intimidation; bullying, bribery, blackmail and bullshit. The ‘international community’ becomes a degraded entity bludgeoned into the service of a brutal military force out of control. The most despicable position is that of course of this country which pretends to stand shoulder to shoulder with its great ally while in fact being more of a whipped dog than anyone else. We are demeaned, undermined and dishonoured by our government’s contemptible subservience to the United States. The planned war can only bring about the collapse of what remains of the Iraqi infrastructure, widespread death, mutilation and disease, an estimated one million refugees and escalation of violence throughout the world, but it will still masquerade as a ‘moral crusade’, a ‘just war’, a war waged by ‘freedom loving democracies’, to bring ‘democracy’ to Iraq. The stink of the hypocrisy is suffocating. This is in reality a simple tale of invasion of sovereign territory, military occupation and control of oil. We have a clear obligation, which is to resist. Harold Pinter

May he rest in peace!

Here come the coal carolers

Merry Christmas everyone!

Seminar on Entrepreneurship on Dec 29 in Karachi

P@SHA & MITEFP are hosting a seminar on Entrepreneurship & Technologies for the Hospitality/Travel Industry with Idris Kothari, Faraz Hoodbhoy and Azhar Rizvi on December 29th, 2008 from 5:30-8:30pm, at the Avari Hotel Karachi.

The program will start with tea/coffee and snacks at 5 pm, followed by the following sessions:

5:30 – 6:00 pm   Idris Kothari
Technologies for the Hospitality/Travel Industry

6:00 – 6:30 pm   Faraz Hoodbhoy
The PixSense Experience

6:30 – 7:30 pm   Idris K, Faraz H, Azhar Rizvi
Do’s & Dont’s of a Startup – Idea to Production, How to Build a team, Angel/VC Funding vs Bootstrapping

7:30 – 8:30 pm   Networking

Kindly email secretariat@pasha.org.pk and confirm your attendance. Your name, designation and company/university should be stated together with your email address. There is no participation fee.

Idris Kothari

Co-founder of Vertical Systems, Inc., that was founded to bring the very latest technological advantages to lodging businesses and leisure travelers, Previously, Co-founder of VP Net which operated in the Computer Networking industry. Also co-founded Semi-Custom Logic, Inc., a company providing system and ASIC design services, and VIA Technology. He holds a MS degree in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology, USA and BS in Electrical Engineering from NED University.

“A true Silicon Valley Success story Entrepreneur, he is up early on new ideas, and is a “get the job done” personality. If you work with him in any capacity as an employee, a partner, a client, a VC, or even as a friend you just can’t lose with Idris. Responsive, positive, creative, and up front, a true win win individual.

Faraz Hoodbhoy

Faraz is currently Founder, Executive VP, & CTO of Pixsense, he most recently served as Vice President of Business Development at NextBrick Solutions, Ltd., and was responsible for its Enterprise Search practice. Prior to that as Director Technical Sales at Clickmarks, Inc., Faraz developed key relationships around Clickmarks´ mobile integration platform with carriers in North and South America. As Director Global Solutions at Unisys Corporation, he created and implemented technology strategy for Unisys´ mobile and wireless field-force solutions offerings. At Cap-Gemini Ernst and Young, Faraz was part of the Center for Business Innovation where his research focus was on corporate performance measurement. Faraz started his career at Microsoft on the team responsible for building the XML 1.0 standard. He is co-author of the book, “Applied XML – A Toolkit for Programmers” and holds a BS in Industrial and Management Engineering from Rensselaer.

Azhar Rizvi

Azhar Rizvi is the CEO of Tech Angels Network (TAN) the first Angel network of Pakistan, Director of Cambridge Advisors Network (CAN), an organization that provides business Advisory and technical consultancy and Vice Chairman of MIT Enterprise Forum of Pakistan (MITEFP) that aims to build the Entrepreneurial Eco-System in Pakistan. He has been associated with the Information technology industry for almost two decades. During this period he has served at prestigious Multinational Organizations including NCR, AT&T and Unisys in Pakistan. He is the founding Director of THKS Technology Group. Mr. Rizvi is an MBA from the University of Houston and M.Com from University of Karachi.

Karaoke at the ASOCIO ICT Summit Gala Dinner

When we were told that each country will have to sing a song during a karaoke session at the ASOCIO Gala Dinner in Hong Kong, I was wondering what to do since I was the only delegate from Pakistan this year because the event was clashing with Eid ul Azha – I was in a state of panic to say the least since the only time I dare to sing is when I am alone in the car driving and singing along to whatever music I have playing on my CD player. Thank God for the Australians who came to my rescue – thanks Kelly, Lisa and Ian. We formed a group comprising of Australia, New Zealand and Pakistan. Here you see us performing “Stand by Me” – gosh we were bad, although it was so late in the evening that no-one else thought so And you must admit we do look as if we had fun.

In sharp contrast you had Lucas Lim, the Secretary General of ASOCIO (on the right in this photo). He is such a good singer that he could choose singing as a profession if ASOCIO ever fired him, or if he decided he had had enough of dealing with the likes of us

The Japanese enjoy their Karaoke. They even had one person on their team who danced around while the others sang.

The Singaporean team put on a great performance too. All in all, everyone enjoyed themselves and left with fond memories of the great time they had in Hong Kong.

They are rarely seen together

People often complain that Rabia Garib and Salaina Haroon are never found in the same place. So this is a rare photo – here they are trying to tempt poor little me with a Flip camera. Now is that nice? They know I am a gadget freak. Should they show me something like this and sing praises of how great it is.

A surprise visitor

I was sitting in my office the other day sifting through lots of material – had a number of deadlines to meet – when there was a knock on the door and a young woman in a burqa walked in. She asked if I was Jehan Ara. I pleaded guilty to the charge. She said she needed to discuss something with me. I must admit to being a bit irritated because I was short on time and there was so much to do. I asked her why she hadn’t phoned and set up a time to meet. Wrong question obviously because she told me off in no uncertain terms. Said she had been trying for weeks but my mobile was turned off. I explained that I had been out of the country. Now apparently I was on the backfoot

Anyway, I didn’t want to chase her away because she did look extremely worried so I told her to take a seat and tell me what it was I could help her with. She said she had a Masters in Computer Science from the Karachi University, had expertise in Oracle and had worked in a local software company for about a year and a half until their project was complete which is when they showed her the door.

She was now looking for a job and wanted my help and advice. I told her I would check with some Oracle shops to see if they were hiring. With the financial sector hit so badly I wasn’t sure if in the short term people were hiring as much as they had been earlier.

Then she asked some very strange questions which I answered very frankly but it worried me that this was the perception amongst young women who were looking for work in the IT sector. She said that she had heard that IT companies did not want to hire women. I said that was not true and that in fact the percentage of women in the IT sector had trebled in the last few years according to research conducted by P@SHA.

She looked at me a little quizzically and then asked if it was true that companies didn’t want to hire women wearing hijab or burqa. I told her to step out the door and look at the team outside. There were several women – all dressed differently – one in shalwar kameez, one in a hijab. I told her that some companies might prefer women who interacted with customers to be dressed a little more progressively but even that was not the norm. It was their brain power and expertise that companies were looking for. Since she was a programmer, I told her that her programming capabilities and her ability to work with the team and deliver on time and on budget was what was important to IT firms, not how she dressed.

She then asked, “Do you think it is because I am slightly older and I started working after taking a little time off, that I am having trouble landing a job?” I looked at her. She must have been in her late 20’s or at the most in her early thirties. I smiled and told her that I didn’t think she was over the hill – that there were many more years before she would be considered too old to be productive in an IT organization.

She then talked about the government and its lack of focus on providing a nurturing environment for young people and for their development. I let her talk and listened. It was really all I could do to help her. I promised I would check with the Oracle development houses and get back to her if there were any vacancies.

She left feeling better than when she had arrived, a little less burdened, a little more hopeful that life was not all doom and gloom for women in the workforce. How many more young people are out there who just need to talk to someone, who just need an outlet, who need some advice and guidance. What can we do to help them, to give them a fair hearing if nothing else?

Adil Najam at T2F

It had been a long day of meetings and phone calls and putting together of documentation for my upcoming trip to Lahore and Islamabad. When the clock ticked 6:40 pm, I suddenly remembered that I had wanted to be at T2F to listen to Adil Najam of Pakistaniat speak at 7 pm. It was raining. The traffic was pretty bad. Should I or shouldn’t I make a dash for it? I packed up my stuff, headed for the car but it wasn’t until I actually had to make a decision to either turn right or left, that I took the right  turn and headed for T2F.

I was 10 minutes late (which isn’t like me at all) but was told that he had just started. I caused a wee bit of a stir (much to my utter embarrassment) as I settled in to listen to the great man speak . There were some familiar faces in the audience – Zak, Nuzhat, Jamash, Sabizak, Riaz, Mimi, Sabeen, Saira, some others – young and old. Surprisingly missing were people like Teeth Maestro, Inspirex and Rabia Garib (who says she forgot – IMAGINE THAT!)

As I listened to Adil Najam and watched him present animatedly, with total conviction, I was glad I had made the effort.

Dr. Adil Najam holds the Frederick S. Pardee Chair in Global Public Policy at Boston University. He also serves as the Director of the Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future and a Professor of International Relations and of Geography and Environment. He served as a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC); work for which the IPCC was awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize along with Al Gore.

Prof. Najam has also taught at MIT, University of Massachusetts and at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts Univeristy. He has written over 100 scholarly papers, serves on the editorial boards of many scholarly journals and has several books to his credit including Pakistanis in America: Portrait of a Giving Community; Envisioning a Sustainable Development Agenda for Trade and Environment and Civic Entrepreneurship.

He is a past winner of MIT’s Goodwin Medal for Effective Teaching, the Fletcher School Paddock Teaching Award, and the Stein Rokan Award of the International Political Science Association, the ARNOVA Emerging Scholar Award, and the Pakistan Television Medal for Outstanding Achievement. He is a frequent commentator on global policy issues in the international media and is the founder of the blog Pakistaniat.com.

A lucid speaker, Dr. Najam spoke eloquently about his perception of what the world had become – a place where poverty prevailed, where violence had seeped into everyday language and behaviour, where the word democracy meant different things to different people both in the East and in the West.

Why, he asked, was it assumed that if a person was not educated, he was not capable of making a decision regarding whom he wanted to vote in as a leader and what exactly he expected the leader or the party in power to do for him? Another question he asked was: “Was the world ready to accept the verdict of a democracy even if that verdict meant that a ruler they did not approve of, would come into power?  Legitimate questions.

He also spoke about religion and how it had been used and abused by various groups to achieve their own objectives. It was those who were silent amongst us, who didn’t get up and speak against fundamentalism perpetrated in the name of various religions, violence of all sorts initiated by different governments, who were equally to blame for the situation the world found itself in today, he said.

Then of course he turned to Pakistan and its burgeoning democracy and he insisted that if we were to become a functioning democracy we needed to be patient and let the civilian government serve out their term (no matter how bad or ineffective we may think they were) so that they could be accountable for the positive or negative change they had brought about.

One of the things that I didn’t quite agree with was his contention that we got the leaders we deserved and that part of the reason consecutive governments had been so corrupt and ineffective was because they knew that they had only a few months/years in power – and so they tried to make as much for themselves as possible. If they knew they had 5 years, would they be less likely to be corrupt? I don’t think so.

He said Pakistanis are, on the one hand, in denial about what is wrong with this country and the things that need to be done to fix it. On the other hand, they tend to be too hard on themselves – for example he thinks we have a very vibrant civil society that has continued to evolve and it is something we should be proud of. There are decisions that we can influence by being vocal, by writing to our government and our parliaments, by using the new media to garner support – basically to have our voices heard.

Dr. Najam also spoke about how he started pakistaniat.com with 3 other individuals whom he has never met, and how it evolved from an online presence into area for discourse with an impressive number of visitors – pakistanis and non-pakistanis alike.

The Q&A was quite intense – all in all an interesting evening that raised a lot of questions and perhaps answered some.

Such a sweet thought – thanks Sadia!

I have always said there is an added advantage to hiring women (other than the fact that they are bright, efficient, dedicated and take pride in whatever they do) – nothing against the men who work with us  – they are terrific too BUT would any of them have thought of making sure that when I returned to my office after having been away for several weeks, there was a lovely bouquet waiting for me? Come on – be honest! To be fair, I do know a couple of men who would have thought of such a gesture but they are the exception rather than the rule, right?

Of course I must admit that a Nandos chocolate cake would have had me beaming too   but I would have had to share that. Thank you Sadia. That was a very sweet thought. And Mustafa, don’t worry, I thought your smile was as welcoming as the bouquet. I am lucky to be working with such a wonderful team. Now stop smiling and get back to work both of you! The slave driver is back.

So cool!

Something else I swiped from my brother. I love sushi and a sushi flash drive was just impossible to resist.