R O N I Nammar yasir’s personal blog

I wonder if a futurist in the past ever predicted the affiliation of an average consumer with its brands. We have seen how the followers of one religion disagreeing with the beliefs of another or fan of one sports team ridiculing the fans of another or the public reaction on the policies of their governments or representatives. But what’s new or different is the end user’s reaction on technology releases, their sacred association with certain brands and how they love to whine about their technological allergies in public. Shouldn’t be a matter preference?

With this question in mind I attended Microsoft’s blogger meet up last week at Microsoft Innovation Centre in Karachi. I always learn something new and fascinating whenever I got the opportunity to attend Microsoft organized events. My admiration is not limited to MS product releases but the community work that Microsoft is doing in Pakistan to promote computer literacy (Microsoft innovation for All), bridge the gap between Urdu and English literates (Urdu version of MS products) is commendable.

I got to the event early enough to land myself a seat in the front row. I was handed over a cool t-shirt (Covering live events have its fair share of perks!) which said: I blog, therefore I am! As soon as I tweeted about the shirt, series of tweets overflowed my (tweetdeck) inbox requesting for the t-shirt.

The entire seats in the FAST University City campus, auditorium got filled with technology loving bloggers. The first half of the event consisted of the presentation demo on Windows 7. MVP Zafar ul Islam highlighted different features of this most talked about Operating System, how it’s better, faster, reliable and convenient for all users (easy plug and play). Win 7 the product was developed keeping into consideration the needs of the end user and the feedback they received from their previous OS releases (Windows Vista). No wonder the tagline for Win7 goes like: I am a PC and Windows 7 was my idea!

Highlights:

· Most interesting part for the bloggers was the Live demo of Microsoft Live Mesh (Beta) using any mobile device (HTC Touch Diamond 2 Windows Phone in this case). The downloaded images were then animated using Windows Live Movie Maker and uploaded on facebook and Windows Live writer. That all within 5 minutes!

· But the demo that really moved me was “Microsoft Office Communication Server (OCS) 2007 R2”. Looking at the growing business need, OCS is going to be one house hold name.

· Naveed Bajwa, DPE Lead, Microsoft Pakistan shared many ongoing and upcoming initiatives from Microsoft for Pakistani academia and developer Community.

· Jibran Jamshed, Microsoft Pakistan technology consultant answered many pointing question as he was demoing IE8. It was funny to watch the love hate relation of the participants with this web browser.

Out of all the product releases and initiatives being taken by Microsoft the need for a platform where all these action are highlighted is definitely needed at local level. Until than all of this will remain unnoticeable and MS will remain underrated.

Photo Credits: S.M Khan, Zafar ul Islam

Popularity: 34% [?]

Circling the underground music scene for the past few years, I came across T2F (The Second Floor), a project by PeaceNiche (a not-for-profit social entrepreneurship organization), determined to revive the coffee-house culture, that gave voice to such progressive writers  and poets like  Sa’adat Hassan Manto and Ahmed Nadeem Qasmi in early Pakistani literary history, but seemed to have faded with time. From the fifteenth century coffee houses of Damascus and Cairo, the coffee house phenomenon has had its share of ups, downs, revelations, bans and revolts. But as long as people choose to think, the cycle will go on. Bringing live music to coffee houses can be credited to the 60’s American political/folk musicians like Dylan, which served as a great idea for young musicians to find small audiences in intimate settings.

T2F reminds me of the 90’s hit show “Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”, where young Afro-Americans found home at coffee houses for raw expression to vent out decades of suppressed emotions, rather than taking it to the streets. And we can’t help but relate to that, considering the rapidly deteriorating socio-economic/political conditions in our own country.

The recent Open Mic event was another example of how much nurturing the artistic side of our society needs and how these artists go widely un-noticed due to a lack of similar platforms. We keep cursing the music industry for having lost it’s stature within the international music scene, and for musicians who can’t play their own songs live, let alone improvise… but watching these young musicians pour their hearts out that night helped me regain some hope.

The multi-talented comedian-cum-musician host Saad Haroon made sure that there was never a dull moment, keeping in place the rhythm of the whole event, and keeping the audience occupied while each group went through sound check. His Meera jokes, of course, sent the roof flying off with roars and laughter.

The highlight of the evening, for me, was when Sax player Miqdaad Mohammad played “Hey Soul Sister” with a little help from ADP (Aunty Disco Project) member, Ali. His melodic saxophone notes complemented with a strong vocal style made a perfect combination that helped lift the audience’s spirits. Another noticeable act was the duo “Saada Khushboo” that played their own unique blend of acoustic blues and upbeat percussion’s.

The Viccaji sisters, with their soft tones, had their own individual flavors to bring to the audience and their harmonic chemistry was definitely applaudable. An un-announced pop-in by Haniya from “Zeb and Haniya” was also a pleasant surprise. The closing band ‘Bell’ played around with their improvised instrumentals and got multiple encore requests before the night could end. And last, but not the least, hats off to Omar Bilal (better known as OBA) from ADP for bringing together all these people in one room.

A little over 10 pm, the gig seemed to have ended too soon, even with more than a dozen acts. But that’s just one of the perks, unfamiliar to us Karachiites, of actually starting on time (:

- Contributed by Saqib Ahmed

Photo Credits: Jamash

Video Credits: Jehan Ara

Popularity: 41% [?]