Connect!ing in Karachi: Social Media Summit #smsPk

After 4 flights and 20 hours (don't ask...) I made it from Ankara, Turkey, to Karachi, Pakistan, with a 3-hour stopover home to shower and change!

Only been there 2 days but made a number of meetings and visits, a handful of interviews (including one with Sindh TV. I wonder if it will be dubbed. Well, if you happen to speak Sindhi... :) and met a number of amazing people in various fields - from radio broadcasting to PR to tech publishing.
Karachi is not what it's made to be. Of course being Egyptian I know that western travel advisories can make any city sound like London under the blitz, so that the 'security threat' was wildly exaggerated was a given. But I next to nothing about Karachi, so had no expectations.
It has a solid Cairo vibe (with a tad less traffic), drives on the wrong side of the street, and is also a blend of 19th and 21st century, a symptom many developing cities exhibit.

Have few stories to share that I hope to write up in the next days.

But enough about that. I am here to attend Pakistan's first international Social Media Summit, also dubbed "Connect!". Tomorrow (in a few hours, rather) I will be speaking on a panel about social media and social change.
With an audience of bloggers and techies (who will, undoubtedly, grill me in the Q&A session) I pla on focusing on our role as social media users/producers to induce social change - and the main question I hope to discuss will be the 'now what?' debate that we in Egypt are currently having.

The other participant from Cairo is Rebecca Chiao, by the way, co-founder of HarrassMap and overall amazing person.
If you're in Karachi, drop by for the conference at the Avari Towers hotel. We'll have a glass of falsa juice!