The Apicta awards attracts hundreds of companies, from all over the asian region. Each year companies from all over the Asian region come to display their products, give presentations and undergo a gruelling judging process. And this year (drumroll please…) three of our companies won the Apicta Awards! Shock and awe aside, this is the best news of the year! TPS, Pixsense and Kraysis have won the coveted awards and are among the best in Asia. (Pixsense also won last time) Congrats to the winners and the industry as a whole, we must be doing -alot- right to have gotten here….. picture below and on-the-scene coverage on Jehan’s Blog here.

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The P@SHA ICT Awards, (for pictures/wrap up of the amazing event, go here) , are known for picking out some of the best tech talent in the county. This year, among others, Kraysis was also given the honor of being an ICT award winner in the “Best Startup” category.  They have been chosen as part of the team to represent Pakistan in the regional awards in Indonesia this week.

The LUMS spinoff specializes in the niche market of Software Quality Assurance service delivery and caters to several global and local industry customers.  We have been watching Kraysis and have covered it before here and here.

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Henry Blodget (Silicon Alley Insider) and Michael Arrington(Tech crunch) both have reported that Facebook’s CFO is in Dubai looking to talk to investors about getting their dollars. Does that mean the 270 million  USD that Microsoft invested in facebook(for a measly 1.6%) is going or gone? For a Silicon Vallery star, going to Dubai would not be the first choice, so this indicates that US VCs are not interested in sending more dollars Facebook’s way.

Why not? Virtual gifts, to me, are the most obscene way to make a quick buck, esp at $1 a jpeg!!!  But then again, I think that pitch was made $ 500 million ago to the current investors.  Now that’s too much even for virtual gifts and lucrative online advertising all in the same package. So what is Facebook’s real valuation? Less than 15 billion USD that Microsoft though it would be, I suppose. Facebook’s current projected revenues of $265 million/year would sound very tempting if it were not, despite all that inflow,  losing money. Which it undeniably is. So when do we see a virtual gifts go from $1 to $3? ;) 

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The US Presidential election will come to a conclusion tomorrow. Will Obama win? Will Mcain throw a suprise? Will votes be “lost” then “found” like they often have done in the past in our country?  

Either way, it will be a gripping finale, and one that will be historical if Obama wins. So, thats what i’ve been watching for the past few days,and thanks to the wondeful web (2.0) we all have a front seat via the awesome Yahoo! dashboard :

http://news.yahoo.com/election/2008/dashboard;_ylt=AnzTbGb5uKoY4YQg3peC4L5snwcF

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techlahore reports that Aisha Steel will be the latest user of SAP’s financials, project management and supply chain modules. Siemens will be implementing the project. Full details on techlahore’s blog below:

http://techlahore.wordpress.com/2008/10/25/siemens-pakistans-sap-business-going-great-guns/

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The marriot bomb blast also severely damaged neighbouring ETC’s infrastructure. This is where the Islamabad software park is and several companies have been severely affected. Two Inbox staff also lost their lives due to the roof caving in on ETC offices.  Companies/Call centers: Please provide whatever help you can.  Lost business is already becoming a reality. While we help the victims and recover from this tragic event we must pitch in and help the companies that have been affected. Some companies are already back up while others are recovering their data and starting operations.

In the picture here, the building on the left is the ETC/Software tech park. PSEB and P@SHA are on the scene and helping. Please contact Jehan Ara if you can help.

Another thought: Since we do live near a warzone (Afganistan) and such attacks are still probable, the associations could band together and build a disaster recovery center or designate certain volunteer company offices as DR sites for affected business in the future.

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.,..have I been working on top secret projects? hmmm who knows. I’m back now though…time to post!

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…this is the third year I’ve decided not to write about or cover ITCN. What should that tell you? Alot, actually

If it looked like a telecom show last year, I bet this year it would have looked like a telecom+ISP show, if evolution theory holds…but I think there are much better, more focused, less marketing and more substance and networking oriented events out there now. Go to those. Like the P@SHA Job Fair, SI sessions or an IBM Sponsored technology event.

http://www.ittazee.com/2007/08/08/its-that-time-of-year-again/

http://www.ittazee.com/2006/09/21/have-you-noticedi-didnt-write-about-itcn/

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Sometimes things just fall into place. I dont know what the “magic” ingredient was this time, but this year’s P@SHA job fair was possibly one of the most involved job fairs i have been to in the last 2-3 years.  I think two things that would stand out were (1) great venue and (2) most of the kids who showed up not only came to drop their resumes but to attend the workshops that were happening. It felt more like am Austin or Bay Area technology event than a simple job fair. There was networking, job hunting, knowledge building, all rolled into one.

Apparently I am not the only one impresed…There was coverage on atleast 8 different TV channels and Netxpress has also given a thumbs up and has posted tons of pictures here:

http://netxpress.com.pk/2008/07/20/photographs-from-pashas-career-expo-2008/

The Next stop for the event is Pindi On August 2nd. Should also be interesting given that from what I’m seeing in the industry, the Islamabed and Pindi are the new destination for outsourcing firms… while Karachi can be more akin to “Silicon Alley” in New york, Islamabad /LHR/RWP is looking more and more like “Silicon Hills” In austin or a small silicon valley….

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A big thank you for everyone who attended the P@SHA job fair event and the SiG presentations. The slides from the  UI design talk I facilitated are reproduced below:

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