Shoot 4 The Moon,: amman

An angel celebrating his first birthday!

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:14:00 GMT

Our little angel Mahmoud has celebrated his first birthday last night with a small crowd of family kids!

365 days ago, Mahmoud came to life to change the world in his own way! :)

As passionate parents, we can't wait to see Mahmoud growing up and becoming an independent mature man who takes decisions on his own and chooses his own path for life. I think that would be the best day all along our lives!

I think the Mahmoud's charming smile can say a lot, so I just want to conclude with this nice short quote for John Bowring. It says: "A happy family is but an earlier heaven."

Happy birthday, little Hammodeh... keep growing :)

P.S. a previous post predicting the future of our kids is posted here. enjoy reading it!

Amman Twestival '09 - The future of Social media in Arab World

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:03:00 GMT

100+ online fans rushed after Iftar time to join the 2nd Amman Twestival on the evening of 13th of September and at the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship. The event was co-organized by Malik Shishtawi and sponsored by Aramex.

A Twestival or Twitter-Festival is a global series of events organized by volunteers around the world under short timescales, which bring people offline for a great cause. Twestival is run 100% by volunteers and independently from any not-for-profit; although the organizing teams do work closely to outline an achievable and measurable fundraising target. Twestival also sets out to identify key skills of volunteers and match these with the needs of the cause; particularly communications strategy, tech integration and social media training.

Twestival this year took place in over 140 cities around the world, Amman was not just another hosting city, but the capital that produces the most prominent Arab entrepreneurs in the domain of social media.

The discussion about social media was very interesting. I started by introducing the panelists: Razan Khatib, Zeid Nasser, Laith Qasem and Laith Zraikat. after that we went into and open discussion about the current situation and the future of social media in Jordan & the Arab world.

Lina Shehadeh -CMO of Aramex- talked about the value of twitter for a big corporate like Aramex and how is it utilized by the customer service department when it comes to B2C services aiming to resolve any raising issue with customers in effective manner in order to vent frustration quickly.

Hana Ramli was there as well. Her story was about how social media (facebook) helped her to recruit over 3000 volunteers in her impressive initiative "Ketabak Ketabi" and it is now becoming a regional initiative for Palestinians in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Co-founder of Nakhweh, Kamel Al Asmar, talked about how Nakhweh is utilizing social media in promoting volunteering opportunities announced at Nakhweh.com and how people trust social media leads over other means of marketing.

The active blogger Osama Romoh described his fan page on facebook as primary source of traffic to his blog. He also believes that twitter functionality is embedded in Facebook feed, and that makes him more excited to use facebook over twitter.

Sabri Hakim -the co-founder of Talasim- shared his story during Amman bombs and how his photo was featured on CNN. According to Sabri, Talasim is now utilizing twitter as an alert/reminder for latest updates on their portal and this creates more traffic & interactivity.

Mohammed Alzubi - the managing partner at Arab Seed Ventures, a venture capital fund focusing on seed stage investments in the Arab region & Silicon Valley - elaborated on what attracts Angel investors to invest in the business of social media in the Arab world and how web startups are becoming a sizzling opportunity for VCs and Angels specially after the Maktoob-Yahoo deal.

Majd Shwikeh -CEO of Orange- talked about her personal experience with twitter and how she became addicted to it! :). Generously, Majd promised to send a special iPhone offer to all participants of Amman Twestival. The offer is available here.

I was so glad to see the audience interacting by talks and tweets, which were displayed live on the big screen behind the panelists (check #AmmanTwestival). I think that setup kept everyone active until the last moment and even after that during the "Qatayef" (Ramadani Sweets) reception! :)

The last and most important portion of event was announcing the donation from Aramex to Al Aman Fund. The donation was followed by a mini-speech through which Maha Saqqa -Director of the Fund- invited attendees to volunteer their time to support & empower orphans in Jordan.

Enjoy this short video about the best tweets during the event.

I also recommend visiting the following interesting blog posts about the event:

IEEE Iftar '09.. Fun, Entertainment & Networking!

Sat, 19 Sep 2009 02:13:00 GMT

Last Tuesday, we were were invited to a special Iftar at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology organized by the IEEE Jordanian Student Branches.

The event was really very exciting and full of entertainment and fun activities. Members of DART -the student Entrepreneurship Society- joined the event and spent great time with others. The nice weather, dynamic audience and interactive program contributed to make it such a remarkable event! :).

The title of my potion was: "Your Path For Life". Basically, I talked about the choices you may have after graduation and what the best decision to take. The most interesting part was when I invited a jobless fresh graduate to share his daily life with the audience -with some sense of humor :-D.

As per the request of the audience I share the presentation here...

Few other photos are available here.

Interested to join IEEE or DART? drop me a comment here to guide you where to go!

Amman Twestival '09 Tweet. Meet. Give.

Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:19:00 GMT

On behalf of the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship, It is my pleasure inviting you to join the 2nd Twestival event in Jordan Amman Twestival (Twitter + Festival). This time the discussion will be around Entrepreneurship and Social Media. The event is designed to be very interactive where your tweets will be displayed live (on the BIG screen) during the event, which will give the moderator and everyone -including the panelists- the chance to elaborate on your tweet either by talks (or maybe another tweet!) Thanks to @tweetDeck :) !

The Cause for this year's Twestival is to support: Al-Aman Fund for the Future of the Orphans

Al-Aman Fund for the Future of the Orphans is an independent non-governmental organization founded in 2006 by Her Majesty (@QueenRania) Al-Abdullah.

Time: September 13, 2009 from 9pm to 11pm

Host:Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (@QRCE)

Location: Al-Hashemeyyen Theatre, Royal Scientific Society

Location map:http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=109625758156428484728.00043e8954f270a9d9d7c

For more information about twestival, please visit: http://amman.twestival.com/

Stay tuned follow @AmmanTwestival !

Joi Ito (Creative Commons) & Habib Haddad (Yamli) speaking at the Entrepreneurs Week!

Sun, 17 May 2009 09:10:00 GMT

It gives me a great pleasure to invite you to join the world-class speakers at The Entrepreneurs Week!

During this week, the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship and other distinguished partners are opening an interactive discussion with outstanding international speakers who are going to talk about several important topics in Entrepreneurship, Business and Management.

Among the speakers are Joi Ito; a Japanese entrepreneur, venture capitalist and board member of numerous for-profit and not-for-profit boards. He has a background in Hollywood motion pictures, Japanese television production and online media. His recent focus is investing in early stage internet companies such as Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, Six Apart and Technorati. Ito is the CEO of Creative Commons.

We also lucky to have Habib Haddad the entrepreneur behind Yamli.com, and drives its vision of empowering the Arabic language and users on the web. His responsibilities span from product strategy and design to business development. The World Economic Forum recently recognized Habib as a Young Global Leader for 2009.

Yesterday's Seminar about Blue Ocean Strategy was very interesting since the speaker Mohammad Ajlouni -the Managing Director of Middle East Defense Systems - one of the rare 48 Blue Ocean Certified Practitioners world wide.

The program of The Entrepreneurs Week:

Date	Time	Topic	Speaker
16/5	5pm	BlueOcean Strategy: How to transform a new business idea into a winning strategy	Mohammad Ajlouni Managing Director, MDS
17/5	5pm	Identifying your Strengths as an Entrepreneur	Ronald Evans CEO, SIMA International
18/5	5pm	Idea to Reality	Habib Haddad Co-Founder, Yamli.com
19/5	6pm	Innovation in Open Networks - Perspectives from an Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist	Joi Ito CEO, Creative Commons
20/5	5pm	Cross-cultural business issues as companies expand internationally	Doug Christgau Director, Cross-Cultural Development
20/5	5pm	The current U.S. and world financial market situation.	Larry Hutchins Certified Financial Planner, Wachovia
21/5	5pm	Insights into family-owned companies in regards to economic and human resource issues.	John Carmon President, Carmon Community Funeral Homes

Please feel free to attend all -or at least part of- these seminars. because such experts will not be available -and free of charge- again in Jordan until the upcoming Entreprenuers Week! :)

Entrepreneurs WANTED!

Mon, 12 May 2008 14:08:00 GMT

In cooperation with Google and King Abdullah II Design and Development Bearu (KADDB), the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) has officially launched the 3rd year of the Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC) with $70,000 of cash prizes in addition to in-kind services provided by the Centre to the winners in order to support the their mission in creating successful startups.

The QRNEC is now open for all entrepreneurs - whether you are a university student or an aspiring entrepreneur, so, everyone is invited to apply and compete for $ 70,000 of cash awards.

The additional interesting advantage for this year is that Google is offering an additional cash award for the best the online business plan, in addition to the special award that KADDB is offering for the best business plan for defense and security.

If you have a business idea in any discipline of technology (biotechnology, nanotechnology, information & communication technology (ICT), agricultural technology, environmental technology, water, energy or any other disciplines of technology) that is likely to win, present it to the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) through the its website (www.qrce.org) before 19/6/2008 and start on the road to success!

QRCE has established many invaluable partnerships, this year, with many institutions contribute to the support of the center and the competition. These institutions are: Google, King Abdulla II Development and Design Bureau, Orange, Jordan Commercial Bank, Jordan Dubai Capital, Optimiza, Jeeran and Jordan Business.

Are you curious to know about the winners and success stories of the previous 2 years? Then, please play this embedded video:

If you receive this post by email, you need to visit the blog url (http://mkhawaja.jeeran.com) to be able to play the video.

More posts will be posted here about the orientations presentations I did around Jordan.. stay tuned! :)

Special smiles for a speacial Eid :)

Mon, 24 Dec 2007 12:34:00 GMT

Special smiles for a special Eid! :)

Happy belated Eid Greetings :)

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 18:14:00 GMT

Jood and her little cow wish you a Happy Eid this year and every year!

Blind.. but with Vision!

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 17:02:00 GMT

It is my pleasure to introduce to you Mohammad Shar'; a specialized computer programmer in adaptive technologies.

Mohammed Al-Shar', who was born blind, has exceeded the expectations of his community and today he does what most of his peers with sight might find difficult!

While many blind people have gone beyond the odds to succeed, Al-Shar' has even taken his confidence to a new level of challenging his disability by learning and mastering computer programming. Currently, he is working as a technical support and training executive for Nattiq technologies, an international firm that specializes in assistive (also called adaptive) technologies.

To know more about Mohammad and his success story I invite you to read my articles @ October's issue of JO magazine. The article title is: "Life is Virtual".

You may also view the amazing video broadcasted at Al Jazeera channel few months ago.

If you receive this post by email, you need to accesss: http://mkhawaja.jeeran.comto be able to watch the video.

أفطر مع الملائكة الصغار

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 10:48:00 GMT

It's a pleasure inviting you to this Iftar...