The chairman of P@SHA that stands for Pakistan Association of Software Houses  emphasized on the importance of the right use of ICT resources. He quoted that the  ratio of employed ICT graduates  is merely 15-20% today.

Naseer A. Khan recently attended “Technology: A Tool to Convert Potential into Opportunity”. The ceremony was held in Royal Palm Golf and Country Club in Lahore. The aim of the ceremony was to highlight the importance of technology and find new opportunities that could open the door to a new world.

The event was graced by dignified personalities from the field of technology.

During his address he said,

“The importance of utilizing big data is now being understood and companies are taking active measures to deploy this technology into their advantage.”

He also quoted a fact that  originally came from Big Data that Adding that if employed in decision making can’ do wonders.

He added,

“As much as 73% of the international organizations has either already invested into Big Data or they are planning to do so in the near future.”

Talking about less enrolment he further said,

“The curricula as followed in technology institutes of Pakistan has already been outdated and it needs to be revised and improved to the needs of today’s industry.”

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The Pakistan Software Houses Association for IT and ITES (P@SHA) is finally open and is inviting nominations for its 14th P@SHA ICT Awards.

P@SHA ICT Awards are  successfully completing their 14 years. The aim of the awards is to provide recognition to the software and service applications developing companies of Pakistan.

They aim to do so by giving them  opportunity to gain local, regional/ international exposure; acknowledging creativity, innovation and excellence in Pakistan’s Information and Communications Technologies sector.

The winners at these awards will further be  selected for Asia Pacific ICT Alliance Awards. There they will compete with the best 17 teams from various companies to make their mark.

About 17 product categories and 15 service categories are introduces this year for the nominations. One company can send nomination for multiple categories.

How to Apply for ICT Awards 2017

Those interested in submitting their entries, can follow the guidelines given below:

1: Visit www.pashaictawards.com and download the category nomination form you want to compete in.

2: Furnish the details as listed in the application form.

3: Send the filled application form to awards@pasha.org.pk

4: P@SHA will not accept entries on flash drives/ CDs/ DVDs etc. All supporting content including videos must be uploaded on any freely accessible video sharing website like Vimeo or YouTube. You will need to provide links to this content with your application, not the original files.

P@SHA staff is available 24/7 to entertain your queries.

The due date for submission of nominees is 15th August 2017.

The post P@SHA Opens Applications for ICT Awards 2017 appeared first on Techlist.

Wonder Tree is moving forward to help the needs of special children. They are to promote some games based on special needs of such children.

The Wonder Tree is the Pakistani startup from Karachi that won the third prize at Global Innovation through Science and Technology (GIST) Tech-I Startup Competition last year. The competition was held at Stanford University.

The Chief Technical Officer Muhammad Usman who is also the co founder of the startups stated that ones his elder brother who is born with special needs was playing on PlayStation and was enjoying it. That day he decided to do something for the special children. He quoted, “It was then when all the dots connected and I realized what I wanted to do.”

For the children suffering from autism, down syndrome, cerebral palsy, ADHD and other mental disabilities games will be designed in presence of special education teachers, occupational therapists and psychologists.

The startup has been successful in designing  four games for such children.

The games are developed keeping in mind the ease to operate and play as they just need a kinect v2 sensor, a television and a laptop to run.

The games also features the reporting system that keeps the record of children’s performance.

A special needs student plays a WonderTree game. Source: WonderTree.

Usman had much to say about it. He said,

“We’re working on ways of using this data to build AI (artificial intelligence) into our games so in the future; our games will be able to adjust the difficulty levels and other settings as per the child’s needs, progress and disability. This will make our games highly efficient. We’re really excited about this.”

Rangoonwala Special School, Special Olympics Pakistan and Wonder Tree have worked in collaboration to test the technology of Wonder Tree. The Wonder Tree has also sent the proposal to seven other schools for special children to test the effectiveness of the games.

The Chief Executive Officer Muhammad Waqas said on the occasion,

“We’re also collaborating with the Institute of Professional Psychology (IPP) for feedback and improvement on our games. A MoU has been signed between  Wonder Tree and the Network of Organizations Working with People with Disabilities, Pakistan (NOWPDP) recently to further assess the startup’s technology.”

He also said, “Our team is small, but we’re working hard to make our games available and accessible to everyone.”

He further added,

“Very soon our games will be available for download through our website or through the Windows store. So anyone with a laptop, a kinect sensor (which can be bought from stores or ordered online) and an internet connection, can download our games that benefit special children.”

The program is in its initial stage but the company is hopeful to extend the program to a large scale so that many children can get benefit from the game.

Waqas said ,

“We know that the prerequisite hardware is not cheap, but it’s still a better solution compared to the unavailability of trained psychologists, special educators and therapists in Pakistan.”

He also said that the startup is trying to make it affordable by decreasing hardware requirement.

Waqas said,

“We’re already tapping into local NGOs and plan on approaching the government too.”

He further added,

“But we cannot do this task alone. Our specialty lies in creating a turnkey, cheaper and effective solution for special education and therapy. Implementation is another ball game and we’ll need all the help we can get.”

Special children are part of our society we should embrace them rather than neglecting them to create a better society and a better life for the special children.

The post This Pakistani Startup Helps Special Children to Learn through Interactive Games appeared first on Techlist.

There are two things one wants more than money, one is reorganization other is praise.

This quote goes with the aim of APICTA perfectly .It is an international Awards (Asia Pacific ICT Awards) Program to honor the ICT works of brilliant minds, working for more than a decade and half it provides an opportunity to network with the like-minded people as delegates from countries across the Asia-Pacific region take part in the competition. To represent Pakistan, this year a delegation of 41 people was taken to the international arena set in Taipei by Pakistan Software Houses Association (P@SHA). The team included the entities that were declared winners or runners up at the P@SHA ICT Awards 2016.

Taipei (Taiwan) was the venue for 16^th annual wards of APICTA. It was recently conducted and the good news here is that Pakistan managed to bag 3 Gold Medals and 6 Silver Medals.

Teams who won Gold Medal from Pakistan

• A team from NUST won Gold in Tertiary Student Projects for their project “Clinical Decision Support System for Diagnosis of Movement Disorders”.
• A team from NUST also won a gold award, for its project, “Analysis of Optical Coherence Tomography Image for CDSS”.
• Wonder Tree won the Gold for Inclusion and Community.

Teams/People who bagged Silvers from Pakistan

• UBL Fund Managers
• Mandi Express
• Sionser
• Trillium Information Systems
• Amin Farid
• Nadia of Sheops

The choice was tough as there were 17 countries competing for the Asia Pacific ICT Awards. These proved to be great success for Pakistan. The delegates were from countries like Bangladesh, China, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Australia and many more.

It is a huge success for the teams and the country. We are proud of our winners and congratulate them.

The post Pakistan Secures 3 Golds And 6 Silvers at the Asia Pacific ICT Awards 2016 appeared first on Techlist.

The successful candidates will be informed about the next steps via email. You can team up into groups or pairs .For those selected startups that have to relocate to Karachi for the program, need to bear all expenses related to the relocation and working out of The Nest I/O.

This is not just two or three day event but an incubation program of four months. The program is to be held in Karachi. Before contacting the authorities you must know which program you are interested in. Nest I/O plans to give you two choices Internal Incubation Program (IIP) and External Incubation Program (EIP).

IIP is for early stage startups and requires a full time commitment at The Nest I/O. The IIP program individuals are also provided office space.

EIP is for startups that have already launched or are ready with their product – they work remotely with The Nest i/o out of their own respective office space. The admission into each of the program depends on the nature and stage of the startup and its viability.

Kindly note that the office is open only Monday to Saturday, 9 am to 6 pm. The Nest I/O only incubates products and not services.

The only thing you have to do is tell the authorities about your idea and yourself. The judges will judge you on the basis of uniqueness of the idea and what homework you have done about it. Another thing is product’s benefits or can it give enough business.

So girls and guys get going and register as soon as possible to avail the opportunity. As opportunity knocks once at the door maybe this is your time to open the door and welcome it.

About The Nest I/O

The Next i/o is a technology incubator launched by PASHA (Pakistan Software Houses Association) in early 2015 partnered with Samsung and Google, the financial support is being provided by US State.. The Incubator provides free office space and mentorship, while they are not taking any equity.

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