The success of the P@SHA-Google workshop in Karachi hadn’t quite prepared me for the turnout in Lahore on January 30, 2010. 148 people showed up at The Mall of Lahore for the event even though some, who had committed to be there, were held up at work and weren’t able to put in an appearance.

Fariha Akhtar had accompanied me to Lahore to make a presentation on the Takebackthetech campaign at the VAW & ICT seminar for the legal community, so of course she attended the P@SHA-Google Internet Marketing workshop too, and there was no way that anyone could stop our fantastic live-blogger from live-blogging in Lahore.

I met a number of old friends and colleagues – Zafar Khan of Sofizar who continues to make money while he sleeps, Imran Hussain who sat and listened to the Steve Jobs iPad keynote while waiting for the workshop to begin, Adnan Ali (http://twitter.com/adnanbwp) who has just passed the written test to become Google Certified (all he now has to do is continue to run a 3 month online campaign before he is officially Google Certified), Abdul Aziz of Lumensoft who shared his experience in marketing his technology product online using Google Adsense, Saad and Basit from Five Rivers Technologies, Rafaeel who continues to show the rest of us that he is a young entrepreneur we should continue to watch in the years ahead, bloggers galore – Maryam, Iftekhar, Talal and so many others. The air was full of energy and we didn’t really  need the Red Bull.

Listening to Badar Khushnood’s presentation the second time was just as fun as it had been the first time around. While Fariha blogged, I tweeted and took some photos .

The participants were totally engaged from the get-go and some of them challenged and dug deep into what Badar had to say. Others amongst them – people like Adnan Ali who is a Google certified expert, and Zafar Khan of Sofizar who is a SEO whiz, were able to assist. Several members of Zafar’s team, who are experienced in various SEO and SEM techniques, were also present. So Badar had quite a bit of help fielding the many questions that were raised. Here is a partial visual glimpse of the event. More photos of the event can be viewed here.

It would be remiss of me not to mention Bramerz [http://twitter.com/bramerz],the first Google certified agency in Pakistan, who helped with all the logistical arrangements i.e. venue suggestion & booking, backdrop designing, onsite registrations & fee collection, etc.

And last, but certainly not least, kudos to Iftikhar Hussain for gettingthe backdrop printed & actually delivered & fixed in time even though he was gaven the design at 6 pm the previous evening and it had to be set up before Juma prayer on Friday. His choice of printer and frame-maker was amazingly economical too. Gosh we have quite a community! They all pitch in to make it all happen. Thanks guys. You’re the best.

The networking that followed was very intense. People shared ideas, techniques and experiences. They caught up with each other. I met some old friends and made some new ones. Fariha too met people whom she had so far only known by their names and DPs on Twitter. The Red Bull kept everyone active and energized.

I am glad we were able to attend the workshop in Lahore and now Badar and I are looking at dates for Islamabad.