Salman Khan: Bill Gates' Favorite Teacher

No, it's not the Khan you are thinking of. As the story goes, Bill Gates was told of Khan Academy [1], a digital video trove of educational lessons on topics such as Banking, Finance, Biology, Chemistry and Mathematics, by his friend. Each video is 10 to 15 minutes, recorded single handedly by Khan from the comfort of his home. As Khan Academy's FAQ explains, he tweaks each video over and over again to make the concepts easy to grasp in the first viewing.

BillG is said the be a fan of online education, and upon getting a recommendation, he and his 11 year old son went through the video tutorials; Bill was impressed enough to say, "This guy is amazing. It is awesome how much he has done with very little in the way of resources." As the story runs on CNN with the same heading [2], the fondness became further known when BillG praised Salman in Aspen Ideas Festival.

But wait who is this Khan? The complete name is Salman Khan (the West seems to prefer "Sal Khan" over "Salman Khan"). He is an American born to Bangladeshi/ Indian parents. Salman holds a BS in Mathematics, another BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and an MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, all from MIT. He further holds an MBA from Harvard Business School. He worked as a hedge fund manager before going full time with these video tutorials.

Where did he get this idea from? In year 2004, while teaching his cousin Nadia over the Internet, he came to realize that he could record videos and distribute via the Internet. As his videos on Youtube became popular, he quit his day job (as a hedge fund manager) and started home tutoring full time. His videos get more than 20,000 hits each day but he doesn't make any money from these. He is quoted as saying:

"With so little effort on my own part, I can empower an unlimited amount of people for all time. I can't imagine a better use of my time."

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This is a second Westerner with Bangladeshi origin who has created a big name in "online work." The first one I know is Jawed Karim, one of the cofounders of Youtube [3]. Amazing is the fact that Bill Gates chose to visit Bangladesh in 2005 [4].


[1] Khan's Academy
[2] Sal Khan: Bill Gates' Favorite Teacher" Story on CNN Money
[3] Wikipedia on Jawed Karim
[4] Bill Gates Visits Bangladesh

Saleem Mirza: Techlogix

Saleem Mirza, Director Professional Services at Techlogix and a graduate of FAST Lahore, demised in the US last week. Perhaps, he was in the US on a business trip. An email from Kewan (CEO Techlogix), dated 16th Aug 2010, to company's employees confirmed his death at West Palm Beach, Florida.

He was a medal holder from the batch of 1991 (student id: 91-0052); joined Techlogix as his first employer. In the words of Kewan, "Saleem joined Techlogix in 1994 and I cannot think of anybody else who has contributed more to the success of this company than he has." Yet, he was a simple, down to earth person.


This is a real tragic news, compounded by the fact that another acquaintance, Aurangzaib Alamgir was murdered last month. The guy was eCommerce head of United Bank Limited (UBL), and successfully launched UBL Omni some time back. Recently married, he went out for shopping with his wife but was kidnapped from the parking area of Naheed Supermarket, Karachi. It's said that there was no ransom demand; rumors say that in his last days he was leading an investigation in an Internet Banking fraud at UBL.

Book Review: Outliers

Malcom Gladwell has rightly adapted the tag line of the book as "The Story of Success." I find the book amusing in many ways---there are reflections on my own life which I can relate. The quest started with "Bad Luck or Dumbness (the details span over to Luck vs. Details debate by Salman Kasbati.

Some answers I learned in life myself, and some other answers were provided by the book. The nice thing is that Malcom has gone through case studies and hence there is considerable empirical analysis on which he basis his claims.

We continue to make World Records

Despite all odds, we continue to exceed everyone's expectations in this dry and troubled country. Ali Moeen, a student of Roots (Rawalpindi) has made his name to Guinness Book of World Records by securing 22 A's in his GCE exam.

I heard in the news that after being interviewed several times abroad, our government woke up out of its coma and awarded him some Presidential Medal. Who needs recognition when even your survival is at stake?

Mortals: Alia Sabur

People in this world are amazing, as if mother nature itself wasn't fascinating enough. Alia Sabur is the world's youngest professor.

جو اپنے آپ کو ڈھونڈ لے ۔۔۔

جو اپنے آپ کو ڈھونڈ لے
وہ آسماں اور زمیں ہے
جھلملاتا ستارہ ہے
وہ کہکشاں سے حسیں ہے

Bill Gates visits Bangladesh

Re-edited.

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He was on a one-day tour and visited Dhaka on Monday. A Bangladeshi friend shared the following picutre.



Bill Gates visits Bangladesh

Another friend, Fawad Halim, remarks:

Regarding the photo, I can't decide if
* BillG's head shrunk drastically
* BillG's spending all his spare time in the gym
* That's a doctored photo

But this news post confirms the authenticity of the picture above. Bill Gates will visit three Indian cities starting from today.

Adil Akif starts blogging!

Adil Akif, one of the senior FASTians (my undergrad school) in Microsoft, has started a blog about SOA, J2EE and .NET. Many of you might know him because of CSJobs mailing list that he started many years ago. He is also involved with many welfare projects and we get to read his emails on GoF and Sahics alumni mailing lists from time to time.

CSJobs was turned into Pak-Jobs-IT, managed by Sadaf Naqvi, batch of 98, FAST Karachi. With more than 25,000 members, perhaps it was one of the biggest mailing lists on Yahoo! Groups. It seems to be dead now.

A very nice effort on IT jobs seems to be rozee.com.

On Getting Visa Rejection (Almost)

ahem...The journey is going to be much longer than I expected. I have recently been informed that Australian High Commission has started rejecting visas for students seeking admission in Master programs with a 3 years Bachelors. Since my case is similar, upon persuasion of my consultant I have withdrawn my application. Interestingly, though, this is a recent policy and wasn't applicable a few months back (Hint: Another batchmate, Usman, went with a similar qualification and a 1.5 year worth of lesser work experience). The restriction might be lifted next year. This means that it's a tailor made restriction and I have been saved from going to Australia at the last moment!


Still, human beings like to cling to their ideas/plans, so I have discussed this issue with Dr. Ata-ur-Rehman and he might help. Anyways, these days I am re-planning everything and have been provided useful insight by some friends (special thanks to Hamid, Kasbati, Kazim, Rashid, Usman and Kami). Most probably, I will apply for Chalmers University (Sweden) and LUMS (or perhaps Canada/ England too). Back to the starting track! I would be glad if somebody joins me in this effort. I might also attempt at GRE in the first two quarters.

The result of the whole activity has been that I got an 8.5 in IELTS; I have gathered some pretty good information on studying abroad; also became good friends with a few education consultants and some hard-working Pakistanis studying abroad.

Just a regular update from my side...

"I have told you before, there's no escaping the nature of the universe. It is that nature that has again brought you to me. Where some see coincidence, I see consequence. Where others see chance, I see cost."
Matrix Revolutions: Merovengian

The Journey Has Already Begun!

That's for sure because you have come to this place and you are reading this. Let me introduce myself first:

I am a year 2000 computer science graduate of FAST Institute of Computer Science, Karachi. I was a topper and share a 3.78 GPA with two other batch mates (Hamid Shahid and Imran Saeed). After graduation, I joined Cressoft Karachi (one of the most prestigious software houses of Pakistan). I managed to clear SCJP exam by 91% and was then selected for IBM WebSphere Application Server and IBM Commerce Suite training from IBM Karachi. I had to conduct the same training when I joined back the company after 7 days.

Later in Nov 2001, I joined Avanza Solutions where I was hired to write a middleware and transaction processing engine specialized for the banking domain. Upon completion of the project I was given a 50% increment in pay as well as a promotion. I worked for the next one and a half year on various projects and almost always set examples for others to follow.

I now have a three years of work experience and these days I am trying to move abroad for higher education.

What I have written only describes the events; I'll cover the details, motives behind the decisions and the after affects in some later posts. The posts that follow this one are targetted at people like me, i.e., graduates of computer science who want to create some difference by their knowledge and spirit to work. I am outlining a path for others based on my experience. If you are a believer, you will surely benefit from these readings.

The first series of the posts will be related to my experience of moving abroad...