November 3, 2010.  Karachi, Pakistan. Over 1500 members of the software community, flooded the Sheraton Karachi for a 2 day jam-packed OpenDoor event, where Microsoft and the technology industry literally opened not only the doors, but the floodgates.

The mood was energetic, with waves of conversations, energy and potential pouring into increased innovation in Pakistan.  Unlike more mature markets,  Pakistan’s IT community bounces with agility from one opportunity to the next unhindered with relics of archaic technology. The first interaction a Pakistani has with technology is generally through the cell phone, with teledensity at nearly 64% of the population, hardly surprising with 111 million people under the age of 25, who represent a number roughly equal to  the entire population of Britain and France, combined.

The OpenDoor event in Karachi this week is hailed as the biggest IT event of the year.  In between customer and partner events, meetings and roundtables, I had the opportunity to present on two topics – The Microsoft Web Story, which is really a fascinating look at the surge of the web development community in Pakistan, and how the next generation of Microsoft’s web stack will take this surge global. The second topic is about Internet Explorer 9, and is chock full of amazing demos that showcase how IE9 delivers on the Need for Speed.

You can download my sessions or subscribe to the feed. Please comment and share your stories of OpenDoor Pakistan. Hear more coverage  about OpenDoor on CIO magazine