Designing Your Life Very interesting event by IBA - Bill Burnett of the Stanford University Design Lab who has come from the US to train IBA staff for IBA’s own design lab collaboration was the guest of honour at the event hosted by IBA Executive Director Dr S Akbar Zaidi. Bill Burnett is an Adjunct Professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department in the Design Group, and the Executive Director of Stanford's Product Design programme which combines elements from both the Mechanical Engineering and Art departments. During his brief talk to a diverse audience (that included the likes of journalists Ghazi Salahuddin, Nadeem Farooq Paracha, Hum TV's Sultana Siddiqui and Duraid Siddiqui, Shehzad Roy, musician and director Babar Sheikh, The Citizens Foundation co-founder Mushtaq Chapra, Zubair Umar and several business leaders and entrepreneurs), Bill Burnett said that designing one's life was important because a key element for its success was knowing who you are. He said that he had worked in product design for many years, starting with Star Wars action figures and later on led teams that designed Apple computers. IBA Executive Director Dr S Akbar Zaidi said that collaboration with overseas universities was a key priority since it vastly expanded learning opportunities for students and faculty. He said that such collaboration was a two-way street and while Stanford had come to IBA, IBA had also gone to Stanford (as part of this interaction). One of the classes that Bill Burnett teaches at Stanford is called 'Designing Your Life'. Bill Burnett will lead a workshop at IBA Karachi where trainers from the institutions will be imparted the knowledge and skills needed to run a Life Design lab at IBA