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Dear friends, As we approach year-end, we would like to share a quick update. The demand for financial assistance from various campuses increased this year due to economic struggles resulting from COVID. However, thanks to your generous contributions, we have exceeded our goal of 60k this year and collected 68k USD. It is also the first time that we have hit the highest number of unique donors (138 and counting!), which shows how far we have come along since FAANA was established in 2008. Thank you to all of you who have contributed with your suggestions, time, and money. 
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 FAST-NU Alumni Association is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.
Topic: FAANA Webinar 16 Time: Nov 8, 2020 11:00 AM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85217253946?pwd=Yy9NY3ZrNFF3UTg3LzJrUVhOWE5EUT09 Meeting ID: 852 1725 3946 Passcode: 284587 One tap mobile +16699009128,,85217253946#,,,,,,0#,,284587# US (San Jose) +12532158782,,85217253946#,,,,,,0#,,284587# US (Tacoma) Dial by your location +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) Meeting ID: 852 1725 3946 Passcode: 284587 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kPDLFOV4S  Join us for the upcoming FAANA session titled: A Path to Product Management through Solution Engineering
The session would cover: - A career path into Product Management - Differentiation between Technical Sales and Product Management. - Critical components of Tech Sales. - What are the key competencies to be a successful Product Manager. - How to Demo a Product - Juggling between Problem Solving and Technical Sales. Tune in live at 9:00AM – 10:00AM Pacific Time (9pm-10pm Pakistan Standard Time) on Sunday, October 25th , 2020. Speaker: Sheharyar Mehmood Currently working at Qualtrics , Sheharyar enables organizations to create a one to one Customer Journey in order to increase and optimize their revenue and reduce marketing/sales operation costs. Sheharyar is an Alumni of FAST Islamabad Batch 2000. Later he went on to do his MBA from LUMS. Over the span of 15 years, he has worked across a diverse range of companies including Jazz, Oracle, Salesforce and IBM. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89690276350?pwd=SjZreXd2NmVVWGk5Ymtxd1Rzc2Jmdz09 Meeting ID: 896 9027 6350 Passcode: 074084 One tap mobile +16699009128,,89690276350#,,,,,,0#,,074084# US (San Jose) +12532158782,,89690276350#,,,,,,0#,,074084# US (Tacoma) Dial by your location +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) Meeting ID: 896 9027 6350 Passcode: 074084 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kkU4IlZfu  Join us for the upcoming FAANA session titled: An Intro to Cognitive Computing and a Use Case of Data Science in Education Sector.
The session would cover some practical applications of Data Engineering and Data Science in Education Industry Tune in live at 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM Eastern Time (9pm-10pm Pakistan Standard Time) on Sunday, September 27th , 2020. Speaker: Ahmed Sattar Ahmed Sattar is Data Architect / Data Scientist at IBM. Before this he was at Teradata for 10 years and has been in the IT industry for 15 years. Ahmed is currently working in the Education Industry in Atlanta Georgia. Prior to this, he has been involved in the Communication, Media and Finance industry. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89607501911?pwd=OFFRY0ZGcEUxWHB6cmdyNVJzNzR1QT09 Meeting ID: 896 0750 1911 Passcode: 704445 One tap mobile +13126266799,,89607501911#,,,,,,0#,,704445# US (Chicago) +16465588656,,89607501911#,,,,,,0#,,704445# US (New York) Dial by your location +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) Meeting ID: 896 0750 1911 Passcode: 704445 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kdKvDXiC1j  Join us for the upcoming FAANA session titled: Startups vs. Big Companies -- the boons and banes of two extremes in Tech
Your career is not something that should just "happen to you". It should be a carefully crafted undertaking that you should feel pride in and enjoy to the fullest. After all, this is what you'll spend most of your life on. Something that will deeply affect how you learn and grow in your career is how you choose your roles and of course who you work for. Understand what truly motivates and drives you and how to land those opportunities. In this session, the speaker would love to share some of his learnings from working for companies of almost every size there is in the tech world -- companies with less than 20 employees to 100s of employees to 1000s to 100,000+. We'll touch on the different kinds of risks you take when you work for a startup or a large company, what kind of things you're bound to learn, what avenues are available to you as you grow and how each of these will affect your career progression and the impact you'll have in your larger career. I hope you walk away from this session having a better grip on what things to keep in mind in order to have a rewarding career. - The impact of company size on your career - How to build a profile for a company like Microsoft - Transitioning between companies of different sizes - Risks of working in a small company and a large company - How to market yourself for a large company vs a small company - The pros and cons of having strong role boundaries (as are in large companies) vs wearing multiple hats (like in startups) Join via Zoom : https://us02web.zoom.us/j/81808677116 Tune in live at 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM EDT (9pm-10pm Pakistan Standard Time) on Sunday, August 23rd, 2020. Register Here Speaker: Assad Safiullah Assad Safiullah is a Software Engineer by profession, a graduate of FAST Islamabad and UT-Arlington, father of two and an occasional/casual musician. He was a Comp Sci Major at FAST-Islamabad and graduated in 2005. He then went on to complete Grad school from the University of Texas at Arlington. Although, he had a brief stint at Ultimus and an internship at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ, his career really began in Redmond, WA at Microsoft in 2008. He joined as a Software Engineer on the ASP.NET team and delivered the first version of ASP.NET MVC. He has the privilege of working on some extremely cool technologies in some of the most fun companies like Salesforce and Tableau. In a span of more than a decade, he went from working for one of the largest Software makers in the world to Engineer #6 in an early-stage Seattle startup to build their entire Engineering Team and then back to the same large company where it all began for him. Assad is currently an Engineering Manager at Microsoft working on Power BI and a technical advisor for an Engineering Effectiveness startup called Uplevel (look them up at https://uplevelteam.com).  Join us for the upcoming FAANA Webinar session titled: Data Warehousing: From On-Premises to Cloud.
10 years ago, hosting a data warehouse in the cloud wasn't something companies were really fond of. It added an additional debate over security along with the cost of migration and updating team's skillsets. In today's day and age, that concern has taken a turn in favor of cloud hosted applications and services and data warehousing is a prime field going through that transition. In this webinar, we will discuss about a little background on DWH, the need for every company to perform analytics and the value a cloud DWH can bring vs relying on an on-prem (legacy) DWH solution Tune in live at 12:00 PM (Noon) – 1:00 PM EDT (9pm-10pm Pakistan Standard Time) on Sunday, July 19th, 2020. Register Here Speaker: Muneeb Hasan Muneeb Hasan has been working in the field of Data Analytics for the past 15 years. Muneeb completed his bachelors in Computer Scinece from FAST Islamabad, Batch 2001 and graduated with an MBA degree from Georgia Tech in 2017. Muneeb started working for Teradata out of college, spent 13 years there before moving to Informatica and more recently to Protegrity as a Solutions Architect. Having been through the transition from on-prem deployments to cloud in the past 15 years, Muneeb has a unique perspective to share on what to look for while making the big decision before moving the enterprise DWH over to the cloud. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- FAST-NU Alumni Association is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting. Topic: Webinar 12: DATA WAREHOUSING: FROM ON-PREM TO CLOUD Time: Jul 19, 2020 12:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82758770717?pwd=ZERxcXZ3cnFvYVFvMVNkZ2FMWWVSdz09 Meeting ID: 827 5877 0717 Password: 824960 One tap mobile +16699009128,,82758770717#,,,,0#,,824960# US (San Jose) +13462487799,,82758770717#,,,,0#,,824960# US (Houston) Dial by your location +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) Meeting ID: 827 5877 0717 Password: 824960 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/keiarMQ4x0  Join us for the upcoming FAANA Webinar session titled: How to Build a Self-driving Car. This session would cover an overview of the autonomous vehicle industry and the different types of technologies available for you to get started with the development today.
The speaker would share some technical overview of the overall software architecture of an autonomous vehicle system. And some insights into the current state of the industry. Tune in live at 12:00 PM (Noon) – 1:00 PM EDT (9pm-10pm Pakistan Standard Time) on Sunday, June 21st, 2020. Register Here Speaker: Usman Muhammad Usman completed his bachelors in computer science from FAST Lahore in 2006. Since then he has been part of the software industry for more than 10 years working for companies like Techlogix, Microsoft, Salesforce and Lyft. Tackling domains such as C++ compilers, large scale search engines, online Ads platform and self-driving cars. Over the years he has gained expertise in fields like search & indexing, online services, distributed systems, machine learning and robotics. Currently Usman is part of the prediction and motion planning team at Level5 (Lyft's Autonomous Vehicles group). Working on algorithms to predict the future behavior of agents such as cars, pedestrians, cyclists; using a mixture of motion based algorithms and machine learned models using neural networks. In addition to this, he also leads the virtual validation team which uses simulation and data analysis to do large scale validation of the driving behavior.  Asalaam o Alaikum,
FAANA team hopes that everyone had a blessed Ramadan and a great Eid despite the unprecedented circumstances around us. We would like to provide an update on our progress this past year and plans for next year, including COVID-19 impact on our projects and action items for our members. Alhamdulillah, we were able to disperse 6.6 Million PKR in 2019 to FAST-NU students across all locations, an increase of 40% over the previous year. Eighty percent of this amount went towards the scholarship of students in need at all five campuses. Rest went to the innovation center and exhibitions at all five locations. By default, we allocate all donations to scholarships unless a donor specifies otherwise. This year we are increasing our donation target to $60k; This is achievable due to the growth and collaboration of alumni based in North America. To help achieve this goal, FAANA was planning for a membership drive and two in-person events in the East and West Coast before summer until the world got caught in the pandemic. So we have slowed down our plans for a membership drive and delayed the in-person event. We know and understand that everyone is donation exhausted due to COVID related campaigns, so we did not push for the Zakat contribution. However, we received about $2000 in Ramadaan due to your generosity. Click here to see more details on donation distribution. There are three initiatives that we are currently working on, which requires your support. Firstly, we would like to Survey on how to engage alumni in the US and Canada. Our purpose is to know what can FAANA do to help you contribute to this organization's mission. Survey Link. Secondly, we are doing a pilot to support students' Final Year Project using ideas sponsored by the North America alumni community. The idea is to see if we can connect North American Industry to FAST for various innovative ideas. Visit this link and submit your ideas before Jul 15th: Submit Project Idea. Lastly, this year we will conduct elections towards the end of the year. As per our charter, FAST donors (at least $50/year) are eligible to participate and vote in the polls. However, we will encourage you to become a member by donating before Oct 31st. We would like to hear from you what benefit you would like to receive to consider becoming a member. In summary, three action items require your action:
Feel free to connect with us via board@faana.org, on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/FastAlumniNA/, LinkedIn group https://www.linkedin.com/groups/4585458/ Or through our WhatsApp groups (only for US/Canada alumni). Words of encouragement are welcome as well! We are always at a lookout for volunteers who can donate their time. Warm Regards, FAANA Association Board of Directors https://www.faana.org/about-us.html
 Join us for the upcoming FAANA Webinar session titled: “Successful Traits for Technology Professionals”
This webinar is a session for people who are new to professional life or students who are about to get into the industry. It covers the critical soft-skills that will make you valuable to any employer or if you start your own business. Tune in live at 12:00 PM (Noon) – 1:00 PM EDT (9pm-10pm Pakistan Standard Time) on Sunday, May 31st, 2020. ( Joining info at the bottom) Ahmad Malik graduated from Lahore FAST in 1994 and came to the US for higher education soon after his graduation. He has been working in the USA for the last 20+ years, working his way up from a programmer to most recently as a Head of Technology at Learning Care Group, 2nd largest childcare provider in the US, Hong Kong, and Indonesia with 900 schools, 22,000 teachers and 100,000 students. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82105025709?pwd=Ly9ocm9iN0h6RWFmTFdUOTU3a1VBdz09 Meeting ID: 821 0502 5709 Password: 684971 One tap mobile +16699009128,,82105025709#,,1#,684971# US (San Jose) +13462487799,,82105025709#,,1#,684971# US (Houston) Dial by your location +1 669 900 9128 US (San Jose) +1 346 248 7799 US (Houston) +1 253 215 8782 US (Tacoma) +1 301 715 8592 US (Germantown) +1 312 626 6799 US (Chicago) +1 646 558 8656 US (New York) Meeting ID: 821 0502 5709 Password: 684971 Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/kcdAWpqC3k |
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