Bloggers Meetup… again!

Close to 300 bloggers gathered in the tri-city series of Bloggers Meetups organized by Google Pakistan in collaboration with CIO Pakistan. Starting in Lahore on the 23rd of November, the event was held in Karachi on the 6th of December and in Islamabad on the 29th of December. Karachi and Islamabad got free WiMAX thanks to Wateen and support from PASHA, TIE and Bloggers.pk and RadioOneFM91 also joined as the radio partner for the Islamabad Meetup. Some of Pakistan’s most active bloggers gathered to share their experiences about using the blogosphere to promote their personal and professional opinions along with strategies and tips to increase traffic. Check out the “CIO Pakistan” group on Facebook for more details or browse through the ‘Event Updates’ link on ciopakistan.com for photographs and updates. It is worth mentioning that all three events were primarily promoted through Facebook and other new media tools to spread the awareness about the Meetups.

Politicking Online

A number of blogs have been evolving and marinating online, that are solely focusing on the political crisis in the country. Websites such as teeth.com.com/blog, pkpolitics.com (which has more than 10,000 registered members), pakspectator.com, pakistaniat.com were already there, but sites such as PakSatire.com have come up more recently and give you the ironic, nonsense insight into more of what you might be running through the head of the common man. You do have to be a little careful in that the number of politically-charged websites that have come up, since a lot are simply recycling information in order to tap into traffic streams. Try and verify the sources running the blog and also see the discussion being generated on the site.  Oh, and while we’re on the subject, we have to mention the incredible achievements of Dr. Awab Alvi (Teeth Maestro of teeth.com.pk) who was recently awarded the Brass Crescent Awards for the Best South Asian Blog. For more details, please visit brasscrescent.org Read more

Global Information Society Watch Releases GISW 2008 Country Report: Pakistan Included

The Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) is a space for collaborative monitoring of implementation of international (and national) commitments made by governments towards the creation of an inclusive information society. Since 2007, the society has been tapping into its networks around the world to collaborate on documenting the growth of Technology in civil society, and give stakeholders an idea where each country stands.

It focuses on monitoring progress made towards implementing the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) action agenda and other international and national commitments related to information and communications. It also provides analytical overviews of institutions involved in implementation. GISWatch aims to make governments and international organizations accountable for meeting the commitments they make through contributing to building a strong and sustainable global civil society policy advocacy network.

The GISW 2008 is a collection of reports generated from 38 countries. These reports have been written by authors from countries as diverse as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Mexico, Switzerland and Kazakhstan. At the same time, six regional overviews contextualize the country reports, and cover North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Africa, the countries that constituted the former Soviet Union and Pakistan.

Pakistan’s report was published through the initiatives and efforts of BytesForAll.org and was co-authored by Shahzad Ahmad, Shahida Saleem, Rabia Garib and Fouad Bajwa. The report covers an introduction to the local IT environment and industry, contexualising access, the physical access to technology and locally relevant content, applications and services.

5 Gifts for the CIO

What better way to kickstart the New Year than to get your Chief Information Officer a gift that might actually make him smile! To help your search, we thought we’d browse through the various online stores based in Pakistan, so in case you agree with any of our picks, you can go ahead and log on, plug in a code and have the item delivered right to your doorstep.

Storage and organization is always at the top of our list, which is why first up, we have the Targus Brown Leather Attaché. A leather and feature rich bag, this notebook bag adds more than just style – it is practical and functional too! Just like the CIO, the bag has some smart features such as one removable accessories pouch, a removable CD sleeve and a protective dust bag. Have plenty of space to store your business cards and those that you might collect, something to hold your mobile phone and PDA, pen loops and an inner mesh pocket to help store documents and smaller items. In addition to more space for your quite notes and files, the bag comes with an external lock to secure your assets and reduce the risk of computer theft this case provides the perfect solution. Besides, you are going to find this bag so sweet, you aren’t going to want to put it down!
Online Price Range: Rs.17,200
Manufacturer: Targus
Read more

World Usability Day: A First for Pakistan By Imran Hussain

World Usability Day (worldusabilityday.org) was celebrated in Pakistan for the first time at an event organized by the Interaction Design Center (www.ixdc.org) at the University of Management and Technology in Lahore on November 13, 2008. The event was part of a globally-coordinated effort with simultaneous events taking place in 170 cities and 45 countries across the world. Read more

Downtime in the IT Department

A little tech humour never hurt anyone. Here’s a little something our creative team thought we’d share with you - No matter how strenuous the work situation, there is always something that can help relieve pressure. And of course, because our IT professionals are so ‘into’ their work, some habits (and shortcut keys) are difficult to let go even when it comes to the real world.

Pakistani Companies BagRegional Awards!

Growth The Pakistan Software Houses Association (PASHA) hosted the 4th Annual ICT Awards on October 31, 2008 where 19 companies were recognized in various software development and associated categories. A follow up to the event took place when PASHA carried a delegation of the winning companies to the APICTA Awards to compete in the regional award ceremony. There were 134 applications competing from 11 different countries in the region. Pakistan competed in all 16 categories and bagged three winners: Pixsense, Kraysis and TPS (Pvt) Limited. Pixsense won in the category for Best Media and Entertainment Applications, Kraysis bagged the Best Startup category and TPS (Pvt) Limited won in the category for the Best in Tools and Infrastructure Applications.
APICTA and PASHA have a strategic MoU in place whereby companies who qualify in the PASHA’S Annual ICT Awards also have the opportunity to compete in the APICTA awards each year. The participation in both the awards ceremonies helps build the portfolio for all the local companies who work to build their domestic and international track records.
It is interesting to note that despite the global cash crunch, Pakistan’s IT sector is still on a 50% year on year growth track, with current exports estimated at more than US$165 million.•

How Do You Communicate?

Surveys A sample set of 95 people what their communication preference was when getting in touch with someone for a business purposes: SMS text, Cell phone Voice Call, Landline Voice Call, Email or Chat. Surprisingly, 30% of the respondents preferred SMS;  40% thought that simply calling the person was easier; only 7% found using the landline to place calls was convenient for them; 17% found emailing convenient and only 5% thought that chatting was convenient or serious enough for business dealings. Read more

Making Headlines

Chairman & CEO NetSol appointed Chairman ICT Task Force
Anyone who has ever had a conversation with Salim Ghauri will tell you that the first and last points in the discussion have to do with strengthening Pakistan, and the discussion that takes place in between explains how to achieve that. The Chairman and CEO of NetSol has been appointed as the Chairman of the Task Force on Information and Communication Technologies by the Federal Government. Mr. Ghauri will form sub-committees with a mandate to design IT sector-specific policies on short, medium and long term basis. The sub-committees have been formed on the following: IT vision, software services, hardware services, Urdu language in IT, human resource, information security and e-governance.
The two Co-Chairmen of the task force are Dr. Shaukat Hameed, Member Science & Technology Planning Commission and Ghias Khan, CEO Inbox Business Technologies.
Salim Ghauri has a prolific career and in addition to heading one of Pakistan’s most successful companies, Mr. Ghauri is also the Honorary Consul for Australia and was the recipient of CIO Pakistan’s Technology Pioneer Awards for the category of ‘Building Pakistan’s Image Abroad’ in August of 2008. On behalf of CIO, we’d like to extend our congratulations to Mr. Ghauri for his well aligned achievements!

Positively Pakistan! MAP Convention 2008

A CIO Pakistan-supported event After the successful MAP Convention  2006, the Management Association of Pakistan, in conjunction with Terrabiz, brings the 11th conference to the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi. With a great line up of speakers, the 3-day networking platform will provide a strong boost to Pakistan’slong term economic gain . CIO Pakistan is the Technology Media Partner for the event, along with an impressive array of partner organizations.

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