Disclaimer: This is a long and rambling post, quite likely to bore the hell out of you. You have been warned.

Why the excitement and blow by blow account? It's my first techie-conference and promises to be an interesting experience. According to the itinerary in the backpack of goodies I received, all attendees were asked to be at the venue (Pearl Continental) between 8:15 and 8:45 am, an ungodly hour, if I do say so myself, but the rules made it clear that if you wanted to be let in, you would have to arrive within this time limit and be seated. Not one to miss a single day of the event that I so happily got a 3 day leave from the university for, I arrived at 8:30 on the dot, to be greeted by a multitude of cars honking at each other and fellow techies arriving with their cards and microsoft baggies. Beaming at people for no reason, which may have been the reason nobody sat right next to me in the hall, I made my way to the single metal detector and took my place amongst the dozens clamoring to get in. Being a girl has a great effect on shareef men. It's like you have an invisible force field around you and everyone keeps several inches space and lets you pass ahead of them in return for a sweet "thank you!" as opposed to my poor friend who had to fight his way through the other sweaty males looking to enter the venue as soon as possible.

Once inside, we followed the wave of people with identical Microsoft bags into Ballroom A, where we were seated, oddly, almost squarely behind a large pillar. Wondering how anyone got any ballroom dancing done in a ballroom with large and very hard pillars in the middle, I craned my neck and found, to my delight, that I could still see the table with the five empty chairs and the several projector screens set up. One of the screens displayed a mostly empty auditorium with blue chairs that I later learned was the LUMS auditorium. LUMS students were watching the sessions live from Lahore but not too many of them had actually bothered to turn up yet due to the aforementioned ungodliness of the hour. Upon consulation of the itinerary, I discovered that we were waiting for the Opening/Keynote Session. This seemed to involve a great many special guests who had not turned up as yet because the five chairs and podium remained empty, while one of the screens displayed the LUMS students slowly filing into their auditorium. While we waited, we were treated to a mindnumbing number of repetitions of an advertisement Microsoft seemed to think was absolutely worth watching many, many times. I'm afraid I'll be hearing the opening lines, "We are all made of code. This code does not tell us what we are, but what we could be!" in my nightmares for some time to come due to the endless reptetions we were mercilessly subjected to.

After a long wait it seemed all the special guests had arrived (half an hour late) and we could begin. Onto the podium came Rahat Kazmi, a complete non-techie who had no idea what he or anyone else seemed to be here for. As the master of ceremonies, he announced in each of the five people seated at the "special guests table" with some vague references that completely flew over the heads of all present. First up the Manager of Microsoft Pakistan, Mr. Jawwad Rehman came up to enlighten us about the effort (and money) Microsoft was putting into Pakistan and developing us poor unfortunate people. That being done, the CEO of NADRA was called up, a Brigadier by rank, but all too obviously not someone who was comfortable with making presentations. His slides were full of bullet points such as "Alhamdlillah, we have had much success with this project" and halfway through, he seemed to lose control of his slides and had to summon two technical people to assist him, at which point he let reel the one liner that would (in my friend's opinion) ensure he was never asked to speak at the PDC again: "I hope this laptop isn't made by Microsoft". Next up, a dynamic young speaker called Rafal who was (as everyone would constantly remind us) in great demand in Pakistan and abroad as a speaker. To me, the man's endearing ability to completely (at times almost literally) throw himself into his speech and his voice reminded me of Mr. Bean. However, once you get used to Mr. Rafal Lukaweicki's mannerisms and enthusiasm, he is a very good speaker and knows what he's talking about. Next up, Mr. Khwaja, an extremely shy banker type who told us rambling tales from 1971 to today's scenario and would nervously lean into the mic as he laughed at his little jokes, which would cause those of us catching a bit of shut-eye to start, alarmed at the odd sound. Blessedly, at last Mr. Rahat Kazmi reappeared and announced that we owed the fifth panelist a vote of thanks for his choosing not to speak at this point (appreciative laughter all around) and that we would get to the presenting of plaques. The only memorable thing here was when little Arfa Karim, the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional in the world was called up to receive her plaque and the applause brought the house down.

Next up was the 15 minute break for tea (cold), biscuits and cake (I hate those weird multicolored raising things in cakes), after which we were given the option to go to whichever session out of the four that would be going on simultaneously. We decided to take it slow and went in for Motion - Helping Business Customers Understand the Value of Service Orientation by Mr. Arvindra Sehmi. All I can say is that I have no idea what he said or what he was trying to tell us, but at the end of it, I would have sold my soul to have him stop already and let us break for lunch. Muted snatches of thunderous applause from the next hall convinced us that Rafal (Mr. Bean) had let his session off on time and they were now enjoying lunch as we sat here listening to this man go on and on. At last, at the urgent hand gestures from a volunteer, Mr. Sehmi let us off for lunch.

Lunch was an interesting affair. Expecting some really good food a la PC's kitchens, I was not disappointed, albeit it was odd to have near two thousand IT professionals and students standing up and eating due to a lack of any seating whatsoever was quite odd. That, however, did not stop them from coming up with ingenious solutions (it's what we do) to get both hands free and eat in peace.

Once done, we made our way back to Ballroom A for the next session: The Future of IT by Nasser Ghazi, the CEO of Multinet. The speaker had obviously done his research but halfway through the lecture, pitch dark came over the hall. KESC does it again. Once the generators were turned on, the festivities resumed, followed by a tea break of (unrealistically) 15 minutes. Having had enough of lines and security checks for one day, we bid the PC adieu till tomorrow and left before the last session of the day.