Shoot 4 The Moon,: success

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 !

Milan... The city of mediapreneurs!

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:41:00 GMT

Media gurus, government officials and promising entrepreneurs were gathering last Wednesday at the Milan Chamber of Commerce to discuss the future of media and mechanisms to better support technopreneurs (technology entrepreneurs). The event was organized by PROMOS in cooperation with Creative Commons, "Meet The Media Guru" and the local government of Lombardy.

Over the full-day event, I was glad to speak at the same panel with peers from the Arab World: Abdullatif Al Sayegh -the CEO of Arab Media Group one of the powerful player in the scene of Arab media, and Mohammad Abdullah -the Executive Director of Dubai Media City. I also was glad to speak to Antonio Ferrari -the World-class journalist who interviewed leaders across the world including H.M. King Abdullah few days right before the recent visit of the Pop to Jordan. I was also glad to meet Roberto Ronza -the Senior Advisor of the Lombardy Region in Italy.

For Melan, media business occupies a huge space of the landscape of the local economy and plays a great role in promoting it as the city fashion, history, art and business opportunities.

During the panel discussion, statistics about traditional media in the Arab world and future of the Media after the rise of Media 2.0 (social web) were presented. As part of discussion interesting ideas were raise, like the how policians and celebrities are adapting with the new media? and how new media will affect the positioning of traditional media instead of replacing it? (Taking for example, the status of radio and cinema after the widespread of TV) Also, how the growth and spread of new media is dependent on the development of infrastructure (internet speed and cost of bandwidth, availability of supporting devices and enabling technologies.. etc.)

During my talk, I focused on Innovation as the primary competitive advantage in the 21st century -while price and quality were the most dominant competitive advantages of businesses in previous centuries- and I moved to speak about the progress of the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship in nurturing innovation by establishing a specialized training Institute in the domain of systematic Innovation.

Speaking about Innovation, I presented two success stories from Jordan: Ketab Technologies and Kindisoft and how these entrepreneurs managed to gain remarkable market access and achieve rapid growth and recognition of world class companies such as Google and Disney.

In the afternoon session, there were one-to-one pre-scheduled meetings where I get the chance to meet a representatives from FBF -an international network branding company and candidate for one of Oskar Awards. I was pleased to talk to two exceptional entrepreneurs Fuse Creative Lab and Lorri who have successfully developed amazing interactive surface solutions using gesture recognition technologies, which can really achieve better performance than Windows Surface and Xbox technologies and can be applied for so many other applications.

I will be writing a special post about them soon. But for now, I can keep leave you with this interesting appetizer that demonstrates one of their solutions!

iSi / eMotion Control 2.1 from fuse creativelab on Vimeo.

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! :)

Join the Arab Innovators!

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 08:59:34 GMT

This Monday, the 23rd of Feb, we have a BIG event! DART and ArabCrunch are organizing the ArabCrunch Demo 09; the launchpad for emerging technologies in the Arab World.

During this event, Five technology startups from Jordan and Egypt are going to officially launch their innovative products and speak out about their vision for the future!

In addition to the Innovators demonstrating their products, we has 3 distinguished speakers: Sumaya Kazi (Sun Microsystems), Herve Cuviliez (Kuv Capital), and Khaled Jabasini (E-Marketing MENA). The role of these speakers is to evaluate and elaborate on what is presented by the 5 demoers.

For further information and registration, kindly visit the event website.

Looking forward to meeting you there!

Mahmoud; the Gentle Baby :)

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 14:28:00 GMT

It is my pleasure to introduce our little son to you:

Name: Mahmoud M. Khawaja
Date of Birth: 21st of Nov. 2008
Martial status: Single!!
Hobbies: sleeping, imagination and discovering the new world around :)
Occupation: jobless ?!
Dreams: Endless....

To know more about his "predicted" character, personality and style, I invite you to read this interesting post. :)

The Art of Online Advertising!

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 13:39:00 GMT

It is a pleasure to invite you to this special seminar co-organized by Google and the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship.

This information is free of charge. For further information and registration, please send an email to: google@qrce.org

إبدأ مشروعك.. تقدم لتتميز

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 10:25:00 GMT

الآن أصبح لديك فرصة أكبر لتحقيق حلمك بإنشاء شركتك الخاصة. في عامها الثالث، أتاحت جائزة الملكة رانيا الوطنية للريادة المجال لكل الرياديين – سواء كانوا طلبة جامعيين أو أشخاص طموحين من عامة المجتمع – للمشاركة في المسابقة والتنافس على جوائز يقدر مجموعها بـ 70.000 دولار أمريكي. فإذا كانت لديك فكرة مشروع في أي من مجالات العلوم والتكنولوجيا، لا تتردد بتقديم فكرتك لمركز الملكة رانيا للريادة من خلال الموقع الإلكتروني www.qrce.org لتبدأ خطواتك الأولى نحو النجاح!

تتميز الجائزة هذا العام بمساهمة شركة Google
العالمية في دعم جائزة إضافية تقدم لأفضل خطة عمل لمشروع على الانترنت، بالإضافة إلى الجائزة التي يقدمها مركز الملك عبد الله الثاني للتصميم والتطوير لأفضل خطة أعمال في مجال الأمن والحماية.

إذا لم تتمكن من مشاهدة العرض التعريفي لجائزة الملكة رانيا للريادة خلال الحملة التعريفية للجائزة في الجامعات والأماكن العامة (النقابات، غرف الصناعة والتجارة...) فيسرني دعوتكم لمشاهدة الفيديو الخاص بالعرض بالصوت والصورة

إذا كانت هذه المرة الأولى التي تسمع بها عن الجائزة فأدعوك لزيارة موقع مركز الملكة رانيا للريادة للتعرف على دور الجائزة في تحويل الإبداع والثروة الفكرية إلى قيمة اقتصادية عالية من خلال تشجيع أصحاب الأفكار والريادية على تحويل أفكارهم إلى منتجات وخدمات مميزة في السوق العالمي

ملاحظة إذا وصلتك هذه المقالة بالبريد الإلكتروني فيجب عليك زيارة الموقع حتى تتمكن من مشاهدة الفيديو

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! :)