OPEN Forum 2008: Leading Through Change

Posted on June 13, 2008
Filed Under >Shahab Riazi, Economy & Development, Pakistanis Abroad
14 Comments
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By Shahab Riazi

We all hear about high performing Pakistanis in their respective industries and areas all around us but we rarely get to hear about success stories for Pakistanis as a community. There will be an opportunity to do exactly that this weekend at the OPEN Forum 2008.

OPEN Forum Silicon Valley 2008

OPEN, the Organization of Pakistani Entrepreneurs of North America (see earlier post on OPEN here), will hold its 5th Annual Business Conference, called OPEN Forum 2008 in Palo Alto, CA, on June 14, 2008. The theme of this year’s conference is “Leading through Change.”

Past conferences have attracted business and social leaders such as Imran Khan, Fmr. California Gov. Jerry Brown, Pervez Musharaf and Syed Babar Ali, Founder of LUMS. This year the speakers and panelists are no less impressive.

A star attraction is this year’s keynote speakers Gov. Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee and former US Presidential candidate. But the other speakers in teh lineup are equally inspiring. They include Green Energy poster child Steve Westly and Mike Moritz of Sequioa Capital who was #1 on the 2007 Forbes list of top Venture Capitalists and was the man behind upstarts like Google, EBay, YouTube etc.

The conference agenda also features some leading lights of the Pakistani-American community. Prominent amongst them are Munawar Hidayatallah, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer at Allis-Chalmers Energy, and Sohaib Abbasi the Chairman and CEO of Informatica and who spent 20 years at Oracle Corporation where he was most recently a member of the Oracle’s executive committee and was senior vice president of two major divisions, Oracle Tools and Oracle Education. His gift to Stanford Univeristy created the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies at Stanford.

These are just some of the luminaries that will be brought together in a jam-packed program of intellectual stimulation and entrepreneurial inspiration. If you are planning to be in the Bay Area this weekend, then this is an event not to miss. If you are not there, follow-up on the proceedings at the conference website. Conference will be held at the SAP Campus, 3410 Hillview Rd, Palo Alto, CA; all day, Saturday, June 14, 2008 (8:30 AM to 6:15 PM).

14 responses to “OPEN Forum 2008: Leading Through Change”

  1. Kareem says:

    Impressive line up. I would also love to see videos of these presentations. I hope someone can post them.

    I think something like OPEN should also be created in Europe.

  2. Emails addresses of all the prominent pakistani intelectuals in all fields residing abroad well settled there and also who residing in pakistan and struggling to make real pakistan of our dream may be given on your website for our information knowledge and unity.

  3. Give me a break says:

    Eidee Man, Libertarian, so what is your point. Are are you just in a mood to keeray nikalna? Finding faults just for the heck of it. I guess you guys just gave you 2 mil to Burkina Faso!

    There are some types of Pakistaniat we should try to keep away from. Such as never having the ability to praise any other Pakistani and trying to smear and ridicule other Pakistanis!

    By the way Libibertarian, the position you imply here is singularly non-libertarian.

  4. libertarian says:

    Eidee Man: Stanford

  5. Eidee Man says:

    Yes, these people should be appreciated; they’ve been very successful. Although one wonders if the money was best spent on the second-richest university in the world (Stanford’s ridiculously large endowment is second only to Harvard’s, and they probably have more money than the governments of small countries.)

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