WomenTechmakers

This year GDG Karachi come with another big event named “WomenTechmakers”. This event was scheduled on March 8, 2014 (Women’s day); but due to the unavailability of some speakers, it was rescheduled on March 22, 2014 at the Bahria University, Karachi.
The event started by recitation of the Holy Quran by Talha Yaseen. After him, the welcome speech was given by Nazia Nowroz (Organizer of GDG Karachi). Then Faraz Baig (Organizer of GDG Karachi) grasped the attention of the audience. He discussed about Google Student Ambassador program, how to apply and what are the key aspects that will make your application selected by the panel.

This was followed by Google Hangout session with Ma’am Maryam (Google SanFrancisco). She explained about various new aspects of Google technology related to business and SEO.

After that, the most energetic session of the event started which was given by Ma’am Muneeba Farooq. Her topic was related to women’s place in professional and personal life. She share experiences and interacted with the audience and asked their opinions. I personally liked her session the most. After the lunch break, Ma’am Maryam Naim (Founder fo BusinessLots) gave a session on Google AdSense and AdMobs. She shared statistics with the audience and told that there are 12.477 Billion Google searches per month. She told us that one is paid on number of clicks he gets on his Google Ads. She also told that Google don’t allow Plagiarism and one needs to create unique content in order to earn from Google. She also urged the audience to carefully read all the Google AdSense rules before signing up, and also not to click on your own ads else Google will ban you.

The last speaking session of the day was given by young, but energetic lady, Miss Syeda Areej Kamaal. She shared with the audience her success story, how from an ordinary university student, she became P@SHA award winner, and then her journey continues to APICTA 2012. The last part of the event was Panel Discussion with the audience. The panel included Ma’am Jehan Ara (President of P@SHA), Mr. Saad Khan (CEO of Symbios.pk), Khalid Amin (Director General Of Bahria University), Ma’am Fawzia Salahuddin (Director Projects at Alchemy Technologies), and Sir Jawwad Ahmed Farid (Founder and CEO at Finance Training Videos and Founder at Alchemy Technologies).

During the event, the audience enjoyed by taking pictures with the frame that says: “I am a Women in Tech” and “Girls knows everything”. You can see the smiling faces at WomenTechmakers album at G+.
I enjoyed the event, and also learnt a lot. The Google AdSense session by Maryam Naim was very fruitful and I am looking forward for more of these sessions in Karachi.

Meet up with Freelancer

For those who don’t know what freelance is, a freelancer, freelance worker, or freelance is a person who is self-employed and is not committed to a particular employer long-term.

GDG Karachi arranged another short session on December 28, 2013 at SZABIST university regarding freelancing. The speaker of the session was Mr. Umar Farooq, Software Engineer at Freelance.com. This two hour session was full of handy information regarding freelancing. The speaker also removed audience’s confusion regarding trust factor between the employer and the freelancer. He also gave examples of few people who were initially freelancers and now they have their own group working as a start-up in Pakistan. He also shared with the audience the facts and figures collected by Freelance.com which showed that approximately 50% of the freelancers are from Pakistan.

The session was short but very informative. In the end, the audience asked their queries to the speaker and he answered them with practical examples.

Android Workshop at KITE

Karachi Institute of Technology and Entrepreneurship -Professional Development Centre (KITE – PDC) was established with a mission ‘to create a mass of well-rounded citizens with a “can-do” attitude who thrive in multidimensional local and global societies. It ensures that students, fresh graduates and young professionals have a platform to develop and hone their technical and professional skills in an environment which enables interaction with both academia and industry. KITE-PDC’s primary objective is to help provide better employment and self-employment opportunities and bridge the growing divide between the employers and potential employees.
CEO of Grappetite, Gertjan van Laar is a trainer at KITE – PDC. He has given various sessions to the students at KITE-PDC which includes Search Engine Optimization, Cloud Computing, etc. Mr. Amjad Muhammad, Operations Manager at Grappetite has also given lecture to the students on Man-Machine Interface.
In continuation of the training, two Software Engineers at Grappetite, Noor ul Ain Ali and Asna Shahid were also given opportunity to conduct workshop on Android Apps Development.

First session for the workshop was held on April 5, 2013. I (Noor ul Ain Ali) gave a brief explanation about Android, why it is so popular amongst all other mobile OS, GooglePlay, Google Developer Console and Activity Life Cycle. The difficult part of the workshop was of Asna. She explained some basic widgets of Android and also made few simple apps. The presentation of the workshop can be seen here. KITE-PDC have also written about this workshop on there official website. In the end of the session, students were given very simple assignments related to Android Apps.
Second session for the workshop was held on April 12, 2013. This session emphasized to judge how much the students have absorbed the last session. In order to accomplish this, 10 simple tasks were given to the students to test them. Most of the students completed it easily.
Third android session was held on May 3, 2014. This session was conducted by me, Asna and Sir Gertjan Van Laar. Gertjan explained enhanced concepts of OOP to the students. In the later half, a simple animation app was given to all students and the code was explained to them. Then they were asked to extend the functionality of the animation. The students really enjoyed the session. Some tasks were also given to them as assignment.

In the nutshell, it was a nice and fruitful experience (for both the students and the trainers). I would personally like to thank Grappetite and KITE-PDC for providing us with this opportunity.

Halaat-o-meter

Halaat-o-meter is one of the most discussed topic of the month! Millions of people, not only from Pakistan but throughout the world like the idea.

Halaat-o-meter is actually a web-based app. The idea is fairly simple, but yet new and innovative. Anyone can see the current halaat of the city using this web app, and they can post also using their facebook profile.

This idea is introduced and implemented by Grappetite, a flourishing software house based in Karachi, Pakistan.

This app has got overwhelming positive response from the crowd of Pakistan. Some renowned websites, like mediapoondi.com have also posted about it. It is also featured at Al-Jazeera Media Network. The Stream (a web community with its own daily show on Al Jazeera English) have also mentioned Halaat-o-meter on their facebook page.