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. Piela says:

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  2. PAKISTANI says:

    This year’s OPEN Forum is about to happen. I do hope people in the area will visit.

  3. libertarian says:

    Tina, So is a huge gift to Stanford for

  4. Tina says:

    Give me a break–I think that’s a fair criticism from Eidee Man’s side. Stanford doesn’t need the money, and Pakistani institutions could do a great deal with it (to put it mildly). But no, it has to be thrown at a program to promote “Islamic studies” in a Western university, where it will do nothing except pay some ivory tower faculty to write papers twisting the history of Islam to fit their romantic Orientalist notions.

    Meanwhile kids in Pakistan grow up ignorant of the basic principles of science and technology, and fall continually behind, turning to the most barbaric mullahs out of ignorance and poverty. Lacking access to decent education, parents send their children to be radicalized in madrassahs, so they can use learn to shout Allah’s name as they detonate their vests in marketplaces all over the world.

    So is a huge gift to Stanford for “Islamic studies” really a service to Islam or Pakistan? You decide.

    I think it’s precisely the opposite.

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