Six years after I first visited Karachi, I'm back. Flew in last night with LNT for a 1.5-day workshop, hosted by the Sindh government, on off-grid energy with a special focus on solar. Our colleagues who work on habitat have been doing little trials on solar power for individual households and small communities for 6-7 years, and so we were invited to participate. My colleague RB gave a presentation today and then spoke on a panel in the afternoon and acquitted himself very well, which was a relief. Always nerve-wracking to see someone talking about our work to a room full of people who are not just unfamiliar with us, but who might give us funding or help us out in other ways if they get a good first impression. And public speaking is hard. RB has a weird, slow style, but he comes across as very knowledgeable and he has interesting stuff to say. For example, most of the speakers were from the government or the private sector; RB was one of only two from the nonprofit/civil society sector. And, probably not coincidentally, he was one of the few people who focused on the need to engage communities and addressed the lived experience of poor people who are being approached by this and that outsider trying to get them to adopt (and pay for) a new technology.
Some credit for that goes, if I may so so rather immodestly, to me. We had breakfast this morning as a little team and after hearing RB's thoughts about what he wanted to focus on, I encouraged him to consider that our main difference in a meeting like that is our credibility as a community-centered institution. We're not out to make a buck or get votes. We're out to help poor people's quality of life improve, full stop.
Karachi is enormous, people here think that when the ongoing census is completed it'll claim the title as world's most populous city, with possibly north of 30 million residents. I'm confined to a small part of it on this trip, given that I'm at a conference in the hotel I'm staying in, and that I'm a relatively rich person who basically only knows other relatively rich people. Last night I connected with a friend from Islamabad's brother, who's the marketing director for a big consumer product company. They had a product launch last night and he invited me to come along. It was at a yacht club on the water and there were lots of models and actors and TV presenters and producers and the like there. Chatted with a bunch of them, mainly very nice. And friend's brother was a good host, introducing me to people and checking in on me periodically even though it was a work event for him. Much more relaxed experience than the similar event I went to in Lahore last November, in part I'm sure because I've been here longer now and am a lot more self-assured.
Marketing is, well, let's just say it's not for me. I am, in a way, in sales -- business development and resource mobilization are just jargony ways of saying sales -- but at least I don't have to pretend (or perhaps convince myself to genuinely believe) that my inexpensive retail product is changing lives. Nothing like a room full of people taking a TV ad extremely seriously to remind one that advertising is ludicrous.
Some credit for that goes, if I may so so rather immodestly, to me. We had breakfast this morning as a little team and after hearing RB's thoughts about what he wanted to focus on, I encouraged him to consider that our main difference in a meeting like that is our credibility as a community-centered institution. We're not out to make a buck or get votes. We're out to help poor people's quality of life improve, full stop.
Karachi is enormous, people here think that when the ongoing census is completed it'll claim the title as world's most populous city, with possibly north of 30 million residents. I'm confined to a small part of it on this trip, given that I'm at a conference in the hotel I'm staying in, and that I'm a relatively rich person who basically only knows other relatively rich people. Last night I connected with a friend from Islamabad's brother, who's the marketing director for a big consumer product company. They had a product launch last night and he invited me to come along. It was at a yacht club on the water and there were lots of models and actors and TV presenters and producers and the like there. Chatted with a bunch of them, mainly very nice. And friend's brother was a good host, introducing me to people and checking in on me periodically even though it was a work event for him. Much more relaxed experience than the similar event I went to in Lahore last November, in part I'm sure because I've been here longer now and am a lot more self-assured.
Marketing is, well, let's just say it's not for me. I am, in a way, in sales -- business development and resource mobilization are just jargony ways of saying sales -- but at least I don't have to pretend (or perhaps convince myself to genuinely believe) that my inexpensive retail product is changing lives. Nothing like a room full of people taking a TV ad extremely seriously to remind one that advertising is ludicrous.
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