A conversation with Sabeen Mahmud, Director of PeaceNiche

Sabeen Mahmud, COO of Beyond Information Technology Solutions and Director of PeaceNiche, dropped in on the set of ITLoW last week even though  she is quite busy these days with the launch preparations for T2F version 2.0. It gave us a chance to have a conversation. We discussed a whole range of topics, went down memory lane for a bit, had coffee and ended up with a Bounty (the chocolate that is) or two.

One of things that many of you may not know about Sabeen is that if her O Levels Computer Science  teacher had had any influence on her, Sabeen would not be doing what she has been doing for the last 16 years. The computer science teacher had told her that technology was not the right field of study for her, that she was not good at it and would never amount to anything. Well, the lady couldn’t have been more off the mark!

From the age of 16, Sabeen has been using technology for Desktop Publishing, Marketing, Multimedia Development, Interactive training, Content development and much much more. And what’s more, she is extremely good at it. What do you have to say for yourself now Madam CS teacher?

In this episode of “In the Line of Wire” Sabeen talks about “falling in love with the Mac”, about how she ran Mac Hardware and Software Sales, Maintenance and Support at “Solutions  Unlimited”, her experience as a New Media Architect at Enabling Technologies, setting up BITS with Zak, and finally visualizing and creating T2F – a space for culture, discourse and creativity.

Much of what Sabeen has achieved has been due to her passion and her need to get it right. The fact that she started working while still at college, had a lot to do with her career choices once she left college. By this time she had a clear idea which path to tread. This is something that is absolutely essential if youngsters are to avoid selecting careers which bore them to tears, or which they are not cut out for. Hence career guidance, and relevant internship and apprenticeship programs are an absolute must.

Cross disciplinary interaction between design, technology and business students cannot be emphasized enough if we are to produce graduates who are well-rounded human beings and not just coders, designers, project managers or business development executives.

In my conversation with Sabeen, she also talks about how she has used technology effectively to create and promote the T2F brand without spending a cent (or should that be paisa). With the popularity of social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google, etc. there are even more things to consider when you are designing and developing your campaigns. T2F only used online media to market and promote itself – and they have been very effective. Sabeen shares some of the simple things that she did to make it happen in this episode of ITLoW. Don’t miss it!