“Merely Humanistic”

(Especially dedicated to Ishrat Ali Awan)

There is so much I would like to utter. There are so many feelings and emotions bottling up inside my heart. There are so many actions I want to realize. Whilst I think about them more and more, the more I get indulged in emotions and sentiments. Sentiments get the better out of humans sometimes. This helps me appreciate the recurring reality that humans, no matter how strong they may appear to the naked eye, deep inside they are extremely fragile and are affected by the slightest of features they are exposed and subjected to. Over the last two months or so, a facet as such has started to establish a tiny little home inside me as well. Having gone through several ups and downs during the last couple of years, I believed I had become a stronger person both mentally and physically. It allowed me to undertake some wise and bold decisions. There have been circumstances where I have defied time and have accomplished what I wanted to accomplish. I realized the way to move forward with this was to think anything one wants can achieve can be achieved given the notion one goes after it with full heart. It seemed like things were poised to follow nature’s course. I am at entire harmony understanding this. However, now I understand it does not always have to pursue this particular path. When this instinct is translated to humans, thereby ruling out the nature aspect, there are certain secrecies that are unrevealed while multiple questions emerge that remain unanswered. Over the years, I achieved a thorough understanding of how humans behave, how a particular human should be handled, the type of profile that should be adopted with a person, so on and so forth. I thought I acquired significant knowledge about that already. Now I think to myself was I strayed? I have come to understand every human being is instilled with elements of fragility and feebleness, me included! This has compelled me to raise certain questions. What is it with humans? Are humans so hard to handle? What exactly do humans want and expect from one other? There are many questions I want to address. My sentiments get the better out of me and words start betraying me as I am subjected to this same syndrome that embraces fragility and feebleness as prominent symptoms. As I write this, I consider is it time to back off as I am incapable to translate this into words. I feel like it is a huge war I am participating in that lacks the grace to drive towards either victory or a letdown. The positive side is that it certainly helps to describe something rather than nothing.

Humans are a strange creation. They love to feel loved. It gives them an impression of feeling more important and more valued. As I understand, love creates a coalition between the entities in which love itself mediates. This should trigger a magnetizing behavior within the entities. It should, at least. But with humans, the generated effect seems to be working on the contrary side. The individual receiving love starts evading the individual giving it. Understanding human behavior is a complex task. Having said this, I speculate whether is it better to give love or to be loved. I presume a lot of resilience and candidness are required to understand these features. But the question is how exactly? Well, I think the ultimate answer to understanding this issue lies in clear communication, severe persistence and resolute determination among humans. It is the real deal and indeed is a very human attribute.

ORACLE – The Information Company

It has been nearly a month now that I attended the Oracle conference in Kista, Stockholm. Finally, I have defied time allowing myself to put into words the experience I underwent during my presence at Oracle. The conference was interesting and fruitful as it allowed me to gain knowledge about which line of action Oracle has adapted to promote their business and products in the future. Their philosophy is simple and revolves around three criteria to recruit new customers and maintaining existing customer relationships. Their approach is simplistic, yet profound and insightful. These criteria are competitiveness, efficiency and simplification with respect to other market actors. Elaborating a little more on each of these three attributes, I found out they are keen on laying the “Best” foundation in the form of competitiveness, "Minimization" of operating costs by providing efficient solutions and providing "Standardization" and consolidation via simplification. The company differentiates itself by using off-the-shelf functionality allowing custom development of differentiating functions, thereby allowing richer options to customers. Their product, the Application Server, focuses on achieving best practices using the existing Java framework. The Application Server was portrayed to be prone towards performance, reliability, scalability, flexibility and manageability. The promoters of the products referred to this as Clustering Integration Management. The product is invaluable for its acquirers as it supports uprising architectures such as cloud computing. People at Oracle think that it is critical to achieve compatibility of existing product with proposed future paradigms. Apparently, cloud computing is useful for a firm as it enables pooling of resources and their sharing as well. This enables more capabilities to its user-base which is complemented with automation. It is a fast deployment architecture that eventually leads to achieve Operational Efficiency and High Performance. This architecture does this by eliminating big programs like huge operating systems and bringing in smaller apps which is where the idea of Operational Efficiency belongs. I learned the mode the apps adopt to realize this. These apps are available in high quantity. Being relatively smaller in size, deployment becomes easier as application deployment time is zeroed down. Putting this altogether, cloud computing results even more beneficial as the cloud architecture can exist at different levels.

Coming back to the Oracle product, people at Oracle have developed the product in a way that complements existing capabilities that can be found in similar products. This feature is what they believe sets them apart as it allows leveraging and reusing existing tools. Not only this, it also exhibits an identical programming paradigm. The product has been tested for deployment at enterprise level for which a number of enterprise development strategies have been proposed. These strategies are fault tolerant and enable high speed data intensive computing, which, in turn, parallelizes tasks. This leads to both time-saving and cost-saving.

It seems Oracle has learned a lot more since they acquired Sun Microsystems. They have a clear vision as to how they will move forward with a clear strategy. Their post-Sun strategy is designated towards productivity with choice which allows its customer base to undertake more freedom. From a personal point of view, I believe companies that fall within the technological territory have started to envision futuristic methods and are keen on implementing them by closely interacting with their core customers. The technological territory is full of rivalry. With one eye placed into the future, it is likely firms are going to combine forces rather than going head-to-head to achieve excellence.

TEDXSSE4M = “CHANGE AHEAD!"

It was a great evening at Stockholm School of Economics attending the TED event, namely TEDXSSE4M, organized by the 4M (Masters in Marketing and Media Management) class on Wednesday, April 21, 2010. The entire team falls no short of praise and tribute for organizing such an outstanding event. The amount of effort that was put into the organizing was clearly perceptible. The event comprised three awesome lecture sessions, each limited to an 18 minute timeslot, a TED standard, so they say. All lectures were great. However, it was Robin Teigland, Associate Professor at SSE who stole the show. Despite the limited time in which to deliver her speech, she managed to coagulate everything she wanted to say in an incredible manner. It was one of the best short speeches I have heard. The speech revolved around Second Life (a virtual world), social media and amalgamating these to leverage the marketing world in the days to come. The lecture solidified my perceptions and beliefs so as to look more aggressively into the future. The future looks very challenging, transitive and promising at the same time. The theories presented by Robin contained innovative and radical elements in terms of how to improve a business as we look into the prospective landscape. She gave examples of certain key firms that have exercised this strategy already. The potential for marketing to reach soaring altitudes via Second Life is out there for marketers to exploit.

I, personally, enjoyed the chance to be under her supervision in the first module of the Media Management course at SSE. She is truly a great inspiration and the way she goes around things is always worth admirable words. All in all, Robin seems to be thinking excessively into the future. It has to be appreciated that her endeavors are directed towards motivating marketing opportunities in new entrepreneurial ways. The unpredictable future looks somewhat predictable now. Should we be expecting colossal change ahead?

Nature Says: “Take That!”

My scheduled departure from Stockholm to Madrid due Saturday April 17, 2010 was brought to a halt as nature demonstrated signs of intense fury and devastating rage over a small island located in North West Europe – Iceland. The island, with just under half a million residents has been subjected to severe volcanic activity during the last couple of days. The volcano has been spitting grit, lava and hot ash which not only affected locals who had to be evacuated but it maintains its course to affect other parts of the continent. Media reports suggest the volcanic magma will be cooled fairly quickly as the geographical premises of the island indicate it to be at a cold place. It seems these media statements have been brought to a test as recent updates suggest otherwise. The most important concern from a business point of view, aviation services all across Europe have been limited to the land. Planes  are enjoying the luxury to rest on ground. This may very well backlash. Why? Well, firstly, people have been left stranded on airports and can’t reach their homes.  Secondly, customer services have been flooded with claims. It can't get worse. Nature’s fury has translated into resentment of humans. As far as i am concerned, I would obviously like to share my personal thoughts and feelings on this.

I was excited to meet my loved ones after a long, long wait thinking the wait was finally going to be over. But I was wrong. I received emails from the airline intimating me the cancellation of my departure. I became bound to parameters of anger. I did not know how to react. I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I was praying deep inside my heart hoping I could fly as scheduled. But nature’s power seemed excessively immense in front of my tiny wishes. Maybe it happened for the better. Like the saying, “Everything happens for the better”. I, now, reflect on this statement. I had friends telling me that. At first, I disliked this saying coming from people who are close to me in Sweden. The entire Friday evening seemed terrible. I had cancelled a very important event I was scheduled to partake in the same day I was to travel. It was supposedly a very important part of my curriculum. Things continued adopting odd profile. I began second-guessing my course of actions. I was already stressed, extremely stressed due to a very strange happening that took place a couple of weeks ago. I was drowned in guilt, fault and resentment. My tiny little reactions to defy the consequences of this little incident didn’t pay off as I hoped. It seemed to me I had spent more time in Sweden than I was supposed to. Everything was working against me, as I thought. But nature had something positive hidden for me in this entire phenomenon. It resembled something that can be interpreted as small but withholds big and deep meaning. It is hard to profoundly describe the series of situations associated with this episode. However, I would certainly like to summarize it in a line or two. The natural disaster allowed me to settle a score with a friend that seemed to approach terminal intensity ever since the issue started urging elevated heights. A patient, tolerant and resilient attitude was illustrated on part of my friend on Saturday. It felt relieving. It gave me the sensation  like I had taken a huge weight off my shoulders. I wonder sometimes how a particular little phenomenon can bring about changes that are so meaningful and delightful. The opportunity to visualize and experience the actual spectacle was truly dazzling and priceless at that moment.

I have been hearing throughout my life that everything happens for a reason. Unknown to me, I always doubted it. However, I now realize any event is to strengthen one’s mind and faith. Over this last year or so, events characterized by such sceneries have started to happen more often in my life. I struggle to find ways to combat this. Nonetheless, I eventually do find ways around them every time I get entrapped. I have to owe it all to nature. THE POWER OF NATURE! I have managed to gain deeper insights into the values of life and appreciate happenings of all sorts which has allowed me to appreciate nature more and more. The recent volcanic eruptions in Iceland have reinforced my thoughts and have guided me to support the concept of nature controlling and seeking commanding position in all that happens. It allows me to think deep into the impact something small, such as Iceland, over something as big as the European continent. Throughout my life, I have always heard small things are the ones that matter. Nature has testified to my belief now. It doesn’t always have to be something big to make a difference. It can be the small ones that can make the difference. Humans have tended to query this conception through history but nature suggests the contrary. Nature always prevails as it has prevailed throughout history. "TAKE THAT!"

PTI – “Profound Turmoil Institution”

I enjoyed the opportunity to partake in the PTI (Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf) meeting in Stockholm last Saturday, April 10, 2010. The Imran Khan lead political party, a very famous personality and someone I am really proud of, views the horizon and foresees the future with hope, optimism, and a promising justice system. Recent developments have revolved around the Pakistan political system which has favored and constituted this entire scenario. It is a question of time that a radical outbreak occurs that allows PTI to seize power and dethrone the present Govt. or the ones that succeed the present Govt. (at least the way the PTI forecasts the political climate). The question that remains deadlocked is WHEN PTI will conquer the PM Secretariat. A big question mark ….

The meeting was effective in the sense that the PTI representatives seemed rational and focused not merely on the existing problems. Instead, they decided to focus on actions and solutions to counter the turmoil. To start off, a significantly emotional speech was bestowed upon the audience to magnetize their consents, a marvellous and admirable execution of the PULL strategy. I looked around during the speech at people and perceived a false sensation that these people were hypnotized for a short while. Some of them were keen on pitching their views (their rather unrealistic views) and expected a transformation to occur at a drastic pace. I would like to highlight when it comes down to translating these views into collective participatory action, success tends to remains at a lone corner  and very vulnerable. It is primarily due to reluctance by individuals to perform actions who can make a big, big difference. The reasons tend to overweight hmmmm …….. pretty much everything!

During the meeting, it was exclusively pointed out PTI is yet deficient in the number of registered members who would be willing to commit themselves to support the process. Previously, the party has relied on the mere fame of Imran Khan. It did manage to gain certain inroads owing partial thanks to the freedom of media and the sphere of influence it carries. Nonetheless, the status-quo is essentially mirroring the past. No clear signs of advancements that are noteworthy are in prospect. The party representatives are strayed right now. Their courses of actions ought to be complemented and should be acknowledged with admiration. They are cruising ruthlessly to reach the stardom they seek. However, it seems they have been lost in the middle and are facing numerous challenges and prospective unforeseen consequences.

I have started to speculate how to resolve this heated series of events. Ideas are many, yet they lack depth and execution with heart. Reaching wonderland is a dream that requires big heart culminated with undiluted consistency. At present, achieving this feat is haunting genuine PTI participants like a nightmare. It has to be said that the status of PTI representatives today cannot be viewed as being part of a bigger party, but rather their role resembles an institution that lacks best practices and associates itself with conflicts of opinions and turmoil.

I detest putting into perspective that I belive the current state of PTI can also be interpreted as “Profound Turmoil Institution” …..  (rational or Irrational? I am going to leave it to the people to decide.)

From Conventional Wednesdays to Blooming Wednesdays ....

Today, Wednesday, March 31, 2010, I feel possessed, mesmerized, captivated, owned, surprised, amazed, eluded ….. I am astray at putting words and strings together as they simply don’t exhibit the elegance to describe the unbelievable experience I underwent. It is tortuous to express and communicate my sentiments as of the today’s happenings. It would be unjust to write about it. It all happened today, It all happened today …….. The day took off just like any other day. It felt nauseating to wake up early. I managed to gain my composure to go to my school, Stockholm School of Economics. Apparently, a guest lecture was scheduled in the Media Management Course to be given by Tomas Bacoccoli, a relatively unknown personality to us who is passionate about music. I arrived 5 minutes late into the class and saw that Tomas was just getting started with the proceedings. He was to discuss branding and its relationship with certain entities in addition to how to attract consumers. He pinpointed the importance to create an emotional attachment between the brand and the consumer to make a product a formidable success. That is where the emotions started to peak. He started uncovering the profound mysteries in such an awesome way which consequently, had every single individual engaged so deeply throughout the session that went nonstop for over one hour and a half, something that rarely happens in a class at SSE. I am definitely sure it would have seen all too conventional if it wasn’t for Tomas. It seemed so different from our other lectures. Everyone was emotionally involved. His mysterious skills, his tone of voice, his examples, his jokes, and the structure of the presentation encompassed great balance, great substance, effortless flow and above all, emotionality. I was stunned, REALLY STUNNED! At the same time, I felt blessed to have been a part of the audience. I felt proud. I felt honored. It seemed nothing short of a miracle to view Tomas’s consistency in evoking the audience in front of him so mysteriously. He amalgamated academics, experience, passions, emotions, sentiments all in one absolutely sublimely. It was striking! His statements and expressions made me project them on myself literally. They affected me emotionally. It made me dig deep to look into myself. There seemed to be facets of mystique involved. I was lost for a while really reflecting on Tomas and observing him. I appreciated some thoughts on synergies between today’s episode and the magical universe of Harry Potter and being experiencing them physically.

It went on and on. Tomas acknowledged he had the audience engaged. He could feel it. Tomas concluded by saying he missed out on something that he’ll address later. People were reluctant to move. They wanted to listen more from Tomas. They wanted to see more of Tomas’s actions and reactions. Time was up. We considered ourselves unlucky not to be able to witness more of Tomas’s exhibition. Nevertheless, the encouraging aspect made waves later during the day when it was made public that Tomas will be having another session at the TEDXSSE4M event on April 21, 2010 at Stockholm School of Economics. I anticipate it to be an even greater exhibition.

Give to Receive, Receive to Give

The new BUZZ word!!! "SOCIAL MEDIA" ..... Quite alarming, isn´t it??? Recent stats suggest that this term has been around for quite a while now. Does this mean that the so-called term "BUZZ" is implausible or is it really new? Well, this is quite a predicament which could potentially shape out to be an extensive debate.

My recent move to Northern Europe has compelled me to get involved in Social Media somewhat. Why so? Well, the reasons are two-fold. First, the nature of my daily routines involve studying a Masters program in Media Management at two of the finest institutions renowned worldwide namely, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Stockholm School of Economics in the capital of Scandinavia - Stockholm. Having spent a couple of months here assessing my curricular studies which reflected on certain elements pertinent to Social Media, I reached a conclusion that the best way to learn Social Media is to actually exercise Social Media, thereby conferring a practical perspective. I must outline the way I approached this entire situation. My initial involvement into practical Social Media was purely incidental and unconsciously driven. We are living in an era where it may be considered criminal not to be in possession of an email. It would be perceived to be really odd to make a statement along those lines in a world where boundaries are becoming fuzzier and hard to define. This, consequently, helped me establish an initial contact with this entire eclipse. This contact has strenthened significantly over recent years. The exponential development in the area of media technology and the brisk response to new services has obliged the progress in this particular relationship. I foresee this relationship would strengthen in the upcoming days, months and even years - so to speak! The second reason that justifies my association with Social Media is life in Sweden itself. It is considered a common practice in Sweden to communicate via email and having a strong acquiantance with social media for several purposes which, in turn, has proven to be quite successful in a variety of ways. Adding more spice to this speculation, it is considered a good line of attack to reach the masses here as well. Sweden is also among the top countries that encloses numerous bloggers. This entire story line has had an influence on me as well somewhat and has driven me to compete for the zeal to engage myself more into this communication exchange. It is considered a reasonable medium to express interests, thought, sentiments and emotions. Social Media is taking its toll pretty well here. Watch out, though! Bells may start ringing when I mention this. Is toll the correct terminology to be applied? I am a little skeptical right now. Possibly it is the correct terminology. Nonetheless, with the essence of social media becoming increasingly social (not to mention it is FREE to use), the term "toll" becomes futile. Anyhow, avoiding debates for now! This can be looked into further later on ........

I have to reiterate that a blog is good way to express and communicate thoughts, behavior, interests, sentiments and emotions. From a personal perspective, I would actually need to undergo this experience before I come out jumping to statements that I have heard from peoples' mouths. I will try to stay active on this issue and share my experiences of this wonderful country. I have had the opportunity to endure nice experiences here where I have come across several extraordinary, tender, humble and sweet people (one person in particular!) who utter flowery words that just steal the moment. I anticipate I am destined to continue towards this. I wonder if Social Media and Blogging assist this in addition to my aim to contribute to the development of modern media in ways I can. Time will tell. Effort is required. Anyways, this is it for now.

Hasta la Vista!