Condolences to the Bhutto Family

Condolences to the Bhutto family. May they have the strength and perseverance to pass through this tumultuous time.

I may not share some people’s views but no one should go out like that.

I hope sanity prevails and destruction in mourning ends. We seem more like wild animals rather than a nation created on ideology. TIP stands for This Is Pakistan but we have outdone ourselves

I SEE ICICT WOES – DAY 2

So on Sunday instead of snuggling in nice warm blankies we make towards the campus they have painted dirty dark pink (I claim the color as Dink. For it being dirty, dark, and the campus dean and director being Danishmand.) well, the roll call again, and we attend to it. Sitting through one boring lecture after another. By now the body is used to the seat so sleep comes naturally. Morning tea doesn’t do much. Reports of fines run amok and then slowly vanish as the day moves along. Akhter Kamal spoke about how people could go to Australia and study instead of his designated topic. He could have chosen how to help the power shortage problem in Pakistan but apparently nabbing students for Australia was a better alternative. The humor that had the audi in laugh in the opening ceremony was a bit dry too. The only speaker who made an impact was Naeem Zamindar from Mobilink. The Venture Capitalist on the lookout for potentially great start up. He talked about his life , his journey, the mobilink story and how we can just change the face of web in Pakistan with web apps. Made me think for a while. He talked of people coming out of LUMS and launching startups that he’s funding. Why don’t we have something from IBA… Cause they aren’t teaching us to think free. The education here is doing more to restrict growth to a set path rather than taking risks and making a worthwhile change out in the real world.

Then we had the guest of honor to close the ceremony. Sindh Caretaker Minister for Information Technology, Environment, Alternative Energy, Mines and Mineral Development Jam Karam Ali. My apologies but the minister could not link up two sentences in English let alone talk about ICICT and how conferences like these are really going to help us as a nation or even inspire. He kept on talking how he would be available to answer any questions through out his speech and how students can approach him and ask him questions and how willing he is to answer the questions put forward and that it is a very good conference and how Information technology is critical for the progress and prosperity of any nation[The News], nothing else. I wonder what the speechwriter wrote . And after finishing his speech and the awards being handed out I just saw him rushing out without answering any questions. Talk about going back on your word as soon as you say it.

The conference ended. And guest left. Students were told they would have to sit through another roll call which was a bluff and they called it as soon as guests were out of sight and at the pleas of MOCs that students have been through enough. Skip the roll call.

 

So the so called delusionally successful international conference came to an end. We don’t have any fat ladies singing to mark the end. That’s sad too.

I SEE ICICIT WOES – DAY 1

So finally, like the most delayed conference , that too the second one , they managed to put together something. HEC funded it if they had agreed to hold it in the teeny tiny campus. So the auditorium(audi) with its broken chairs was decked up for the event with the back drop and was filled with students who didnt want to be at campus cause they had done their share of spending time on campus thru the whole semester. but the lingering threat of Rs.5000 got those who couldnt exempt themselves from the event to be there, just enough people to fill up the audi to a respectable capacity. We were suppposed to show up at 7.45 so that the roll call could start. 359 students roll call. can you imagine, roll call for an international information and communications technologies conference?

anyways. the conference starts , a few minutes late, which is acceptable by any standards. we have the speakers do their usual round. Big D says weird unbelievable statements. Anyways after the initial ceremony we move on to an assigned classroom. around twenty students. in one classroom listening to a speaker from UK , if i remember correctly talking about mobile ip and then about communications in space. both interesting topics. then lunch in the basketball court. when we came back to the class to listen to someone from FAST NU presented on SRSS document. The importance of correctness and completeness, which i believe didnt add much value. then someone from Allama Iqbal Open University on interoperability between different networks. anyways after she left and the next speaker couldnt make it we had our fun. got into a little trouble for that but i guess a little fun cant hurt anyone Workshops were held in CEE , while two more presentations were taking place in Room One and the audi. I overheard an attendee of the workshop saying it was totally worthless. i would not doubt that.

the management of the event was not upto the mark. Small complains which should have been handled at a lower level went up bringing down a lot of threats of fines being imposed. talk about stick approach to handling the event.

We werent allowed to use the cell phone, or even hold it during the conference’s duration. it got confiscated if found using

We werent allowed to read anything during the conference.

We werent allowed to sleep during the conference, but that was more cause the seats were so bad they gave us back aches.

anyways, so we had around three to four roll calls during the day. which pretty much made it look so beyond forced attendance. The target audience for the conference was so mismatched that we really didnt learn anything of value from the conference. I dont know what this conference accomplished other that the fact that IBA hosted a almost irrelevant so called international conference on Information and communication technology [A more relevant conference on Finance was scrapped by the director the semester before last because apparently he was resigning so he couldnt chair the conference and the scrapping came at the very last moment too ]. The other reason would be that it was a platform for people to just get the paper published. i wonder what happened to quality control or did they not get enough papers to actually enforce quality control.

we didn’t even get any giveaways for the conference. no Schedule , no pens, no folders, no nothing. no proof of attending the conference either except a card that says , ” Student ICICT 2007″ and the roll call sheets.

they tell us to get there on sunday at eight. insaneness i say.

The difference between Administering and Managing an IS

IS stands for information systems. In cavemen terms Computers that handle all information and optimize your business. Someone needs to overlook these systems as you use them in your business, usually called the CIO (chief information officer).

In the start – Management Information Systems Course(MIS), introducing the management information system and other types of systems.

In the middle – Information System Administration Course (ISA), telling you how to administer an information system to a certain extent. It even has a lab attached to it.

Towards the end – Information System Management Course (ISM), telling you how to manage an information system.
Now according to Thesaurus.com administration means management. So does the course add value in any sense, even in the name bit… No, seriously doesn’t. I would list it as one of the courses that had negative value addition. It seems like they ran out of ideas for an MIS course so they just merged two courses, taking the name of MIS , and scrambling it to ISM and taking the course outline of ISA and just going over it roughly. Even the book is called “Management Information Systems”.

Moral of the story: Courses that don’t add value should not be included.

INVESTMENT BANKING PAPER STARTS AT 8 INSTEAD OF 6

Mobin Khalili defied all sense and sensibility today when he ordered the paper of investment banking to be delayed till the teacher Mr. Sameen Ghani shows up. The papers remained sealed till the teacher came, two hours late. Never before has this happen that a paper has been delayed for any reason other than the paper not being there. Mr. Khalili’s instructions were being relayed by his ever faithful peon.

Has the top business school of Karachi gone to the peons ?

If you want to meet the dean and director you have to talk to his peon, he doesnt even have a secretary for crying out loud. If you want to see the controller of examinations you have to talk to his peon.

we can handle the paper being long and half in french, but this insanity of delaying a paper just because the teacher is not there is beyond comprehension. the teacher wasn’t giving the paper, the students were.

Is there a new rule we arent aware of, that says that the concerned teacher has to be present for the paper to begin??

insanity and peons rule.

FIRST TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF FINALS

well they come every semester but never this bad.

First Paper- Dec 03, 07            1000 hours till 1300 hours

Second Paper- Dec 03, 07        1800 hours till 2030 hours

Third Paper- Dec 04, 07           1000 hours till 1300 hours 

so in effect 8 1/2 hours of writing and writing and writing so bad that hands ached till a day after. i call this a blatant violation of human rights if nothing else. It is the height of it.

MIDTERMS AFTERMATH

What happened after both the mid terms ended?

I was flooded with six submissions for six courses. It was hectic. i was not studying. i was making one project after another, co-ordinating with no less than eight people for four projects. and heading two projects on my own and giving four presentations. and the month just went by in a flurry. i didnt manage to study anything that was being taught. and believe me not much was taught.

and the last submission was four days before the finals start. and the finals..

Director’s Post

They are advertising in the DAWN again for the director’s post.

is Big D leaving?  only God and he knows.

i hope he does

BITS update

The vice-president resigned on Nov. 28, 2007

The treasurer accumulated 7th absence in Entrepreneurial Management, so he is effectively disqualified. No official notice yet though.

and BITS managed to hold a second event. A night match. Welcome is nowhere in sight though