State of Telecom Industry in Pakistan

Inauguration speeches range from interesting to boring to inspirational. Here’s one that’s worth sharing – read the transcript here. Note the “healthy disregard for the impossible”, the optimism and the strong impact his father had on him. We rarely appreciate the extent of sacrifice our parents make for us and how valuable that is in our lives.

You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and… I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web — he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

On how to stay on track when starting out:

We almost didn’t start Google because my co-founder Sergey and I were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program. You are probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! That is about how we felt after we maxed out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. That was the first hardware for Google. Parents and friends: more credit cards always help. What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!

Here’s the video – with partial audio.

CONNECT Conference website has detailed information including program details in pdf. It would be great if any attendee of this conference can share their experiences with blog readers. PTA Chairman is keynote speaker. Other speakers and topics include PTCL EVP Zaman Gulzar (Managed Services), Wateen CEO Tariq Malik (Wireless Broadband), Mutlinet COO Arif Hussain (IT Business Environment), Motorola country manager Rao Amir (Digital Divide). From the IT side, PSEB MD Talib Baloch, P@sha President Jehan Ara (I hope she will twitter from the live event) and Microsoft country manager Kamal Ahmed are among the speakers. Konnect Holden is sponsoring the event.

CONNECT has established itself as an exclusive B2B event of ICT industry keeping in view the growing needs of IT and Telecom sector. CONNECT 2009 will reinforce its position as a unique opportunity for its participants to display and demonstrate wide array of latest technologies and business solutions to maximise market presence, establish new contacts and strengthen existing businesses in a highly interactive environment.

Researchers at FAST National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, Islamabad Campus have reached the finals of the World Summit Youth Award (WSA) 2009. Their project “Remote Patient Monitoring with focus on antenatal care” has been shortlisted as the top 3 projects among 612 projects submitted from 102 countries.  Congratulations to the research group and FAST Islamabad. The project is in part funded by National ICT R & D Fund, a good validation for their efforts over the years to promote grassroots research in Pakistan. See the Youth Summit Awards website for more information.

Here is the team list:

Ajay Kumar Tanwani (Research Engineer)
Mudaser Ahmed (Research Engineer)
Sajjad Athar (Research Engineer)
Humayun Irshad (Research Engineer)
Muhammad Kamran (Research Associate)
Jawad Masood (Research Student)
Asad Mehmud (Research Student)
Jamal Afridi (Research Student)
Irfan Khan (Research Student)

Also posted at: In the line of Wire.

The digital world of today is full of opportunities. There are a number of things you need to know and do before you start. Naeem Zafar, CEO of 3 Silicon Valley startups & faculty member at the University of California, Berkeley, offers a great resource for entrepreneurs, an eBook called 7 Steps to Successful Startup: Simple Lessons Before You Quit Your Day Job!

The great thing is that you can get this eBook free from his website startup-advisor.com.  It is also available as a Kindle download.

This eBook asks a few basic but tough questions that are absolutely critical for your success. By thinking through and preparing answers to these questions, you will significantly increase your chances of success in business. Much of the success depends on how well prepared and organized you are. Resources like this eBook give you a structured way to do that.

Here’s one of the interesting dilemmas Naeem faced.

In one of my startups, we invented the world’s first silicon fingerprint sensor chip. This tiny device can now be seen on many laptops; users touch it (or swipe their finger across it) to log in to their machines. We found out the hard way that a complex supply chain was involved in buying this product and incorporating it into a laptop. It was not at all clear to whom we should sell this device. We were approaching banks and online retailers offering them a secure way to transact business online, all to no avail.

We did not realize that these companies do not buy fingerprint sensors from startups—they buy secure transaction solution from a company like IBM or EDS, who then buys authentication solutions from a security solutions provider, who in turn buys from a biometrics authentication company. We needed to be selling to such a biometrics solution provider.