Category: Events

Can you imagine losing your home?

Imagine you have a home … the home of your dreams. The home you have built with years of toil … blood, and sweat.
Imagine sharing it with your family … wife, kids, parents.
Now
Imagine losing it all in the blink of an eye to the roaring stream of water!! 

Imagine you have a home ... the home of your dreams. The home you have built with years of toil ... blood, and sweat. 

Imagine sharing it with your family ... wife, kids, parents. 

...

Now imagine losing it all in the blink of an eye to the roaring stream of water!!

It is undeniable that our world is going through a climate crisis. Decades of unsustainable environmental practices and misaligned priorities have created a horrific scenario. This monstrosity appears at an ever-increasing rate in the form of famine, floods, and extreme temperatures.

Sadly, this time it hits close to my home. Pakistan, my home country, is the fifth largest country in the world, with a population of 220 million (approx). It has witnessed an unprecedented monsoon season, resulting in massive floods across its vast rural plains. According to government sources, almost 33 million people are directly affected, and it has killed more than 1000 people. The flood mainly hit the rural parts of the country, which lack health and infrastructure services. In addition, there is a looming food crisis as the agricultural land has been devastated. 

Yet Another tragic humanitarian crisis created by humans!

Recently, a friend of mine lost his home because of these floods and had to relocate, leaving behind everything. Unfortunately, there are many stories like that. They are also not unique to Pakistan. Last year, we faced flooding in British Columbia, Canada (my adopted home). Iran, South Africa, and many more. Same template, different premises … Similar distress, many sufferers! 

It is a terrifying moment for all of us. As a result, there is a great need to re-evaluate our individual and collective actions. We have to put our environment first, just like we put our home or our families first.

In these dark hours, it is all the more important to keep hope alive. A hope that we may find a way to coexist with our surroundings and somehow figure out a way to undo centuries of vendetta again our mother nature. 

If you like to help with the relief work, you can donate to support efforts to relocate families from remote areas and provide them with food rations and medicines. Following are some of the trusted charities that you can consider:

Connecting people in Style … CSS

Why Tech communities are important? Is your organization socially connected?

Quick Question, “Do you know why Open Source / Inner Source projects are more successful and evolve at a higher rate?”

Well! there are many reasons for it, but none more important or crucial as “Community”.

The community is the set of people which have common understanding, aspirations, and concerns. From social work to social awareness, communities have been integral to the development, improvement, and sustenance of human societies.

Using the same definition, we can infer by virtue of “what’s true in the real world is true in the virtual world”. Communities or to be specific Tech Communities are integral to development, improvement, and sustenance of projects. The main reason we use a particular tool or technology has a lot to do with the number of people backing it. We frequently come across the statements which mention “number of stars” or “forks” on GITHUB, amount of documentation, tutorials available etc. All these factors are crucial to the success of a project.

Long story short, “Tech communities are important”

More so, there is a social aspect of the communities. When people are part of the group, they start to build relationships and bonds. This process not only strengthens the fabric of the unit but also accelerate learning and exchange of ideas. The idea to bring people of a community always results in innovation, creativity … spark

Continuing the traditions of social connectivity, on 29th Nov Autodesk Singapore hosted Singapore CSS meetup group. The idea is to bring Web experts and enthusiasts on a single platform and let the 2-way communication kicks in. From financial institutes to design studios, from college students to tech company; we got a crowd of over 40 people from all walks of life.

We also got an opportunity to showcase some of the awesome stuff we are doing at Autodesk. We propagate the message that Autodesk is one of the great places to work for and we value innovation and creativity. All in all, I had a great time meeting new and old friends and learning new things.

To know more about the event, see the official page. Following are some of the pictures from the event 🙂

Maker Faire in Town

Maker Faire held in Singapore on 22 and 23rd July, 2017 at Science Center. The venue was smartly chosen to 1) attract young people and 2) to take advantage of the science month happening at the same venue.

All in all, it was a great event with lots of participation from various fields and sectors. You could see kids showcasing there class science projects to college and university students showing great research work.

There was a good presence of companies and institutes which provides training regarding basic electronics, IOT and 3D printing.

Ones to watch

These are the projects / products that caught my attention and in my opinion have the potential to be the next big thing.

– Omni Helmet

– Soft wearable robotics by NUS EI Lab

Overall trend

Looking at the exhibits, there was a strong trend of 3D printing and Arduino DIY projects. 3D printing were not only used as a tool for rapid prototyping but were also used for bespoken or customised products.

Happy to see a very health adoption rate of Autodesk projects and services. Many exhibits used Autodesk products in some form (like TinkerCAD or Fusion360).

Football Madness hits Karachi

Football…. Karachi…. hmm doesn’t add up.

Well… you are wrong!! It not only adds up, it multiplies (by double or perhaps four times).

You guys think, I am crazy but wait until I am done.

Cricket is the absolute King when it comes to games in Pakistan (consider it like a mango in the fruit kingdom). With recent Champions Trophy win, the cricket fever is at an all time high. Despite the dominance of cricket, it’s interesting to know that football has always enjoyed a niche following in the metropolitan city. It is still the most popular and beloved game in the borough of Lyari. Football is trending up with kids and teens, mainly because of a profound influence of European Leagues. To conclude:

If Cricket drives the movement and emotions of the nation, then Football is the undercurrent.

I witnessed the effect of this subsurface current on 8th July, 2017. Leisure Leagues organised an exhibition match of “Ronaldinho and Friends”. I was lucky to be in Karachi and decided to go to a match. Apart from long queues and dismal condition of Hockey Stadium (oh yes, it was played in Hockey Stadium…get over it), it went pretty well. All the negativity disappeared in thin air once Ronaldinho came to the pitch. He went to every corner of the pitch to acknowledge the crowd. Honestly, how can you not love this man… he is just …. an amazing human being. I got goosebumps when the whole stadium was cheering “Dinho….Dinho”…. I wonder what it’s liked when Ronaldinho played in Nou Camp.

See this link for an obscure video of Ronaldinho on pitch (sorry for bad quality).

Wait there is more… there was a cool laser show before the match (for some reason they invited Ragga Boys for performance….still don’t know who they are and why the hell they were there).

In the bigger scheme of things, this might be an insignificant event, but for people who WERE THERE, it might become a memory to cherish for a long time.

Some more pics….Thanks Shahmeer and Sadaan for the videos and pics

 

 

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P.S: I skipped relative’s shaadi to watch this match. Worth all the topis 😀

Voxxed Days ~ HTTP/2

Talk @ Voxxed Days Singapre, on HTTP2 and how it can be used to create high performance web / mobile applications.

Since last few months, I am experimenting with emerging tools and technologies in web genre. Lot is happening and the stuff coming is very exciting. When an opportunity comes to talk at Voxxed Days platform, I thought why not to share some of the things I am researching these days.

So, it begins. I decided to bring HTTP/2 to the event. Yesterday (on 2nd June), I had a great time presenting my work at the conference. The event was well organised by Alan Menant, Michael Isvy and the team.

Special Thanks to Sendil Kumar for lending me his Mac Charger 🙂 and Kris Howard for tweeting about the talk.

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I will share the details of the talk once the video is published. Stay tuned!!

 

Commentary on the future of Agile

The events, characters and firms depicted in the blog are NOT ficticious. Any similarity to actual persons or to actual event, is NOT purely coincidental.

Day 3 of Agile Connect 2016. The jam-packed, multi-tracked event was coming to an end. It’s been an amazing event so far. People from around the world participating, sharing knowledge and socialising.

But!! Things were about to go a notch higher!

Nuno Rafael Gomes and crew setup an open space in second half of Day 3. It provided a good opportunity for people to come together and informally talk about a topic of choice. It became really interesting when Carlos Palminha started the conversation about “The future of Agile”. This topic sounded ridiculously simple at first. We pulled his legs to come up with this topic, he smiled meaningfully (probably saying in his mind that you guys don’t know what you are getting in to).

He was right. It was a fire starter. It opened a pandora box. It was fascinating to see how a seemingly trivial question can have so many facets and perspectives.

And so the fireworks began.

Autur Margonari took the first stab.

Agile will become traditional

Compact and well articulated. Agile will be the new norm. In future, we will see more and more fields applying Agile principals. Strong indication comes from the work Willy Wijnands (a chemistry teacher by profession) is doing. He is using Agile principals in the class room environment. The results are encouraging.

The discussion became more intense. No one was leaning on the chair anymore, hand gestures became more prominent and frequent. Discussion moved (unintentionally) towards Scrum. Edwin Hanegraaf was quick to clear the difference.

Agile is a mindset, a principal. Scrum is just one of its implementations

Implementation(s) will or may be different but the true essence of Agile will get the Global acceptance. Another person from the group reminded everyone that “its about being Agile” rather than “doing agile”. This statement got the nod from everyone.

I was enjoying this conversation and wanted to spice it up (a bit). I shared my opinion on the future of Agile, in the context of global economy and politics.

Agile, in future will not be a choice, it would be a necessity for sustainability, growth and survival.

The global problems like limited natural resources, environment, famine, political unrest and chaos needs quick and innovative solutions. We need an ability to pivot and respond to change as it is happening. Agile is the best bet for it. This perspective moved the discussion to a broader scale. Questions like does the current support and training infrastructure ready for such a massive adoption? What will be the role of Scrum Alliance or Agile Alliance or any other non-profits in that transition.

While immersed in the discussion, organisers give us the time-out indication (we exceeded the time-limit). We had to stop, as there were other topics to discuss and then olive oil testing session 🙂

It was one of many events of an eventful conference. I thoroughly enjoyed participating in it, meeting new friends and enjoy a lovely city of Porto.

Obrigado!

Reference:

Agile Connect 2016, Portugal

Its official now, I will be presenting @ Agile Connect 2016 in Porto, Portugal.

Check out the link about for my details of the topic. I will share my Portugal escapades later on 😀

Takecare

 

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