Bicycles are Evil - Official

Image by DenzilJr via Flickr

Now we have a new item to add to our list of Things Wot Are Evil. The bicycle.

According to a chucklesome report today's Gulf News, Dubai police have embarked on an anti-bicycle campaign, timing it nicely to coincide with the RTA's Bicycles are Lovely campaign. GN is scandalised, using the word 'utterly' for the first time I can think of in living history when it describes cyclists as being 'utterly confused'.

If the city's cyclists are utterly confused. I shudder to think what the consequences could be given they already do stuff like cycling against the flow of the traffic in their unconfused state. Many's the shalwar khamees and lunghi I have seen wobbling towards me on a piece of fabulous Chinese engineering as I have made my way around the city's streets. But the sight may be consigned, like so many other endearing aspects of Dubai Life, to the past.

Eye witnesses have told of having their cycles heaved into the back of trucks by plain clothes officers who have said ‘Cycling is not allowed in Dubai.’ Over 1,164 cycles have been confiscated and they're not givin' 'em back, says GN in its excoriating expose.

Clarifying the affair, Major General Mohammed Saif Al Zafein told Gulf News that cycling was not permitted on roads with a 60km/h speed limit and was not permitted in directions opposite to normal traffic.

Reports that two mildly inebriated cyclists have been apprehended kissing whilst eating rum babas are false.

Tantalise Your Tastebuds!

Image via Wikipedia

Yet another mindless radio ad has joined the throng of blithering blipverts, this time from the Meydan Hotel. We’re told their brunch consists of a range of ‘signature cuisines’. I would love someone from the agency to explain what a signature cuisine is because, of course, there is no such thing as a signature cuisine. It’s just something they made up to try and make yet another brunch sound different.

This idea of ‘yet another brunch’ is actually quite important. Resorting to empty, mindless phrases such as ‘signature cuisine’ and ‘tantalise your tastebuds’ (Let alone the awful and much-used ‘satisfy your senses’) tells us that we have here a product with absolutely no differentiation whatsoever. Differentiation is a key competitive concept. At the very definition of a given product, let us say a brunch, the first question to ask is ‘how is this different? How does this give us a competitive edge?’. If the answer is ‘it isn’t’, then we obviously have a problem, Houston. No?

Let us imagine the conversation.

“Boss! I’ve got a great idea! We’re going to do a brunch!”

“Good idea, Carruthers. That’ll use up the Thursday leftovers. How are you going to make it different to the other 250 brunches in Dubai Brunch City?”

“It’s going to be an international buffet, boss.”

“So are all the others.”

“With beverages.”

“All the others do ‘beverages’, Carruthers. That’s why the city fills up with over-dressed, pissed goons in flowery shirts and under-dressed pissed chicks in Coast frocks every Friday afternoon.”

“It’s going to have dishes from all around the world!”

“Yes, but how’s it different, Carruthers. Why should I come to this brunch rather than all the others?”

“It’s going to tantalise your tastebuds, boss! Satisfy your senses! It’s a whole world of cuisines on your doorstep including beverages to delight the whole family! And there’ll be face painting and loads of fun for the kids including a cleaner who’s been forced to dress up as a clown on his day off!”

“Oh, why didn’t you say that in the first place? Brilliant scheme! Approved!”

The problem here is that Carruthers’ whole product is boring, yet another brunch at yet another hotel. If the brunch is unusually good value and offers unusually good food, word of mouth (perhaps supported by some smart PR) will ensure that the brunch becomes popular. But declaiming its merits by squawking the same tired epithets in a fake-excited voice on the radio will not guarantee popularity, let alone raise any level of interest. Much as I’d like to blame the agency, I can’t. It’s the product that’s at fault – unless their brunch is truly, brilliantly differentiated and well positioned within its target market, in which case the agency needs to be shot because its work has failed to communicate one iota of that potential.

A good example of a differentiated product in this sector is the Westin Hotel’s ‘Bubbleicious Brunch’, which offers a package of all you can eat plus Laurent Perrier champagne at Dhs495 a head. I happen to dislike the Westin in a mildly cordial sort of way (I find it hard to get past the architecture, to be honest) and I don’t ‘do’  brunches as a rule, but even I’ve got the message on that one.


By the way, I do happen to believe quite strongly that any copywriter that even considers using the phrase 'tantalise your tastebuds' should be pilloried, flogged and then (but only then) sacked and deported. As should any client weak-minded enough to let them get away with it.

FNC Committee Slams TRA, Telcos Bigtime

Image by bbcworldservice via Flickr

We pay 85% more than Turkey, 85.5% more than Ireland and 83.1% more than Sweden for our broadband. This should come as no surprise (consider that the Japanese pay $0.27 per megabit per month for broadband and these other figures look positively benign). What is, perhaps, a surprise is that the news comes to us via Emirates Business 24x7.

A special committee reporting to the UAE Federal National Council has found that prices of telecommunications services are higher than those in several Arab and European nations refuting, according to Emirates Business 24x7, “The common perception that telecom charges in the UAE are low...”

Refuting a common perception among the mentally deranged, perhaps chaps, but I think you’ll find that the rest of us know perfectly well that we’re being gouged on an intergalactic scale by a cosy duopoly buoyed by a compliant regulator.

The EmBiz story reports that telecom prices across the OECD are, on average, 66% lower than in the UAE. The picture’s even more depressing when you look at the prices business users are paying for broadband – 91.1% more than Morocco, 83% more than Ireland and so on. In fact, prices in Europe are, on average, 95.1% lower for broadband connectivity.

The committee has concluded, in telling words, that “...in the past three years there has been no benefit from competition for consumers.”

In fact, the report hands out a pretty comprehensive drubbing to the TRA, pointing to the effective monopolies that the two telcos have established over certain areas, the lack of subscriber focus in regulation and generally accused the TRA of “failure”.

It’s a no-brainer that low-cost, high speed, highly available broadband is a critical element in supporting economic development in the Internet age. Jordan reacted to that need, expressed at the Dead Sea Forum in 1999 with the privatisation of Jordan Telecom, a move that started the country’s march towards being the region’s most competitive telecom market and where significant economic value is being generated by a dynamic and burgeoning Web-based technology industry. Egypt has seen blisteringly fast adoption of broadband and, once again, is seeing significant and growing economic value being generated through its online capabilities.

The UAE, once the leading telecom market in the Arab World (and actually pretty far ahead of the rest of the world at one stage – the UAE was 100% fibre-optic before the UK, for instance) is fast dropping behind. We’re paying too much for broadband at both the domestic and business level and it’s hampering adoption and innovation. We’re seeing an increasing number of Internet-based innovations (including, but by no means limited to, VoIP) being used as a business advantage elsewhere while our operators continue to cling to circuit-switched pricing models at the expense of their customers' business competitiveness.

Low-cost, high speed Internet access could, and should, be a major advantage being offered to businesses wishing to set up in the UAE to serve regional markets. And it's not - it's actually a major disadvantage. A trading economy, the UAE’s businesspeople can’t even use mobile data services when they’re travelling overseas because roaming data tariffs are insanely high. And those mobile services are going to become increasingly key to us all.

It’s good that the FNC committee has highlighted the massive discrepancies in value, despite the operators’ claims that they’re price competitive and great that its work has resulted in a resounding wake-up call for the regulator to be more subscriber focused.

Will anything change as a result? I remain, as always, optimistic...

(Interestingly, the committee found that 6,629 complaints had been logged about Etisalat’s mobile service quality, against a whopping 57,062 complaints about Du’s mobile service quality – a number made even more impressive by Du’s lower subscriber base.)

Mum, What's An ArabNet?

ArabNet founder Omar Christidis together with Samer Karam, Sana Tawileh and with the others on their team, pulled off a major coup – the first event in the Middle East that aims to foster web-enabled businesses and put start-ups together with investors and the other ecosystem participants they need to thrive and flourish. Alongside this, the conference aimed to investigate the issues, opportunities and future of doing business in an increasingly Internet-dominated Arab World.

The ArabNet conference in Beirut takes place yesterday and today. I attended the first day and so I can only comment on that – but I’ll be watching the Twitter feed (The tag is #ArabNetME) with great interest.

I’m by no means overdoing it when I describe ArabNet as a triumph. It’s actually a number of triumphs rolled into one. First and foremost, it’s a minor miracle that this event was put together so brilliantly and in Beirut, to boot. Sorry, chaps, but Beirut has not exactly carved its name recently as the place for important regional conference events and yet ArabNet has clearly shown that Beirut is not just a viable but a brilliant venue for them.

The event was impeccably organised. Having headed up teams doing stuff on this scale, I am only too aware of what a huge and difficult job it is. The technical setup, the exhibition area and the management of the entire staging and flow of the event were world class  – and so was the event itself. Great speakers included Aramex supremo Fadi Ghandour who was nothing less than inspirational in a mashed-up Anglo-Arabic after-lunch ‘graveyard slot’ address that had the audience standing, sitting, laughing and clapping – when they should by rights have been sleepily digesting. Some people had been whingeing on Twitter in the morning sessions that they thought the conference should have been held in Arabic – Fadi’s solution was to speak in both, with sentences that flew from East to West with brio and wit that must have had the poor old translator's head spinning.

Showing incredible wisdom for such a young team, the ArabNet guys masked the Twitter-feed displays to either side of the stage during the keynote session when a succession of important gentlemen spoke. The Lebanese Minister of Comms was indeed so incredibly important that he could only spare an audience of 1,000 highly online entrepreneurs and web-professionals from around the Middle East two minutes (and I do not exaggerate) out of his, we were told pointedly, busy schedule. He lost as many hearts and minds as Ghandour had previously won, his brief speech nestled cosily in a keynote session that, for me at least, resonated perfectly with a similar address I had heard given by Michel Murr at Termium over ten years ago - with nothing added and nothing taken away.

Twitter was not kind, and rightly so. ‘The Internet is important,’ was one of the many aphorisms that instructed us all. The howl of outrage was neatly masked by the ArabNet logo displays, but we could all see the feed on our screens. Which showed how totally disconnected the terrible old men up there were.

Lebanon has just about managed to cobble together one meg ADSL access – a somewhat pathetic achievement that was echoed in the conference room as more and more people snapped open their clamshells and tried to get online. Internet access slowed to a snail’s pace and yes, despite this, ArabNet trended Twitter globally for over an hour. Having said that (and being pleased for all concerned), I am increasingly worried at this new version of the Middle East’s old obsession with The Guiness Book of Records. People, it doesn’t have to trend to be important or relevant.

The day flew by – one session, the IdeaThon, had five new startup schemes sold to the audience by their progenitors in two minute pitches, while the afternoon Startup Demos session pitched ten up and running business schemes in need of investors (‘angel’ or otherwise). These pitch sessions provided great entertainment, were an inspiring display of innovation and gave a very clear indication that this region is now emerging, perhaps blinking a little, into an age of Web-enabled business.

The only part of the day that dented my enthusiasm and optimism more than the keynote session (note to Omar and team – you can ditch the suits next year and we’d none of us mind one jot) was the ecommerce panel. Badly led and therefore lacking inspiration or challenge to meet, it was as frustrating as watching someone wall-hanging yoghurt. Twitter was, once again, not kind and the general feeling in the room was up there for all to see – “please make this stop”.

And so on, via the Beirut-Amman joint Twestival, to the gala dinner – which was splendid. Tragically, the day having been incredibly long, I suspect a few hundred chocolate desserts (the end of a five-course menu) got trashed.

ArabNet was everything we had hoped for and more. Like the iPad, it’s not the end of the road but a first glimpse at where the future is headed. In well over 20 years of being involved with this region’s technology industry as a commentator and communicator, I can honestly tell you I have never seen such energy and hope for the future as I saw at ArabNet.

All they have to do now is brush aside the terrible old men and get the cost of broadband down, access speeds up and improve the availability and reliability of connectivity in the region. If anyone came away from ArabNet without the clear impression that this one single investment in infrastructure is vital to the future of the region as a viable economic force, then they were either daft as a brush or a Minister who was too important to be engaging with young entrpeneurs and innovators. Or both.

More fool them.

(A million thanks to ArabNet Conference Cartoonist Maya Zankoul, whose first pic of the day was an illustration for this post! Her cartoon above is licensed under a Creative Commons license. Another cool thing about ArabNet has been the assiduous support of a number of  bloggers, Twitterers, a cartoonist and a smart live feed too!)

A New Iniquity

Image by gerry balding via Flickr

Mr. G. tells me of a new iniquity being heaped on the heads of Sharjah’s already stressed-out cabbies. A new dictat from Das Company means that now they’re not allowed to buy more than Dhs50 of petrol in any given day – if they do, it’s to come out of their own pockets.

All of the cabbies working for the new ‘regulated’ taxi companies are remunerated purely on a commission-only basis – there is no basic salary whatsoever paid to them, despite this being in contravention of the current labour law.

They have to make Dhs 275 a day in fares to even have a chance of making money on their commission-only deal. If they make less, apparently they’re fined by some companies. They’re also fined for a wide range of things, from failing to stop for a fare through to picking up near the airport. In fact, a lot of people walk from Sharjah airport all the way to the ADNOC station on the airport road to avoid the Dhs20 surcharge that the airport taxis levy. Mr G got fined Dhs150 for picking up a passenger outside the ADNOC station, which has not made him happy. Given that he is an unusually lugubrious chap at the best of times, this is fascinating to observe. The inspectors who prowl the streets preying on unsuspecting cabbies are, of course, remunerated on the number of fines they dole out, a nicely sadistic way of harnessing unenlightened self-interest.

Interestingly, Dhs50 doesn’t even fill a Toyota Camry. At the 'new' "We've put the rates up to accommodate the drivers" rate of Dhs1.5 per kilometre, a taxi would have to travel over 180 Kilometres with a paying passenger to make the Dhs275 daily minimum. And, of course, taxis spend a great deal of time driving around looking for a fare - never more so than in Sharjah right now, where the buses roam left, right and centre for pennies.





You do begin to wonder what they'll think of next...

Is It Any Wonder People Have It In For Bankers?

Image by TW Collins via Flickr

The scene. A shop. Quite a noisy sports goods shop playing pump it up let’s get this fitness ting movin’ music. Sarah is trying to get me to make the decision between the black trainers with the black stripe and the black trainers with the pink stripe for her. The mobile rings.


“Hello, Alexander McNabb.”

“Hello?”

“Hello!”

“Hello.”

“What do you want?”

“Is this Alexander McNabb?”

“Yes, it is.”

“This is HSBC customer service.”

“And?”

“Hello?”

“Hello.”

“I’m calling regarding the issue you had with a transfer. You raised a customer support issue with Internet banking.”

“Right...”

“I need to ask you some security questions.”

“Okay.”

“What accounts do you hold with us?”
(told her, not telling you. Not that I don’t trust y’all, ye understand)

“What is your current balance?”

“I have not got the faintest idea. Not a clue.”

“Well, what was the last transaction on your account?”

“I couldn’t even begin to tell you.”

*desperately* “What is your date of birth?”

“Fried eggs and ham.”

“Thank you. You had an issue with Internet banking. I’m just calling to help you.”

“What issue? I don’t remember an issue? When?”

“About ten days ago. You had an issue with IBAN numbers.”

“Oh, Lord, yes! I remember now! You require an IBAN number on transfers to the UK but there’s no field specifying that you need an IBAN number on the online form.”

“We now require an IBAN number on transfers to the UK. You can insert this in the ‘comments’ field in the online transfer form.”

“I know that now. I had to call your call centre to find out and then I asked the call centre person to escalate the fact that there’s not actually a field in the form that requests an IBAN number. That was my problem, you see? If you require a critical piece of information to complete a process, you actually need to ask people to insert that information in an appropriate field, marked, for instance, ‘IBAN NUMBER:’.”

“Yes. You have to put it in the comments box on the form.”

“But that’s my issue! How am I supposed to know that I need to put the IBAN number in at all? By osmosis? By a process of miraculous information transfer? Holes opening in the space-time continuum? How simple is it to put a field on the form that says: IBAN NUMBER:?”

“I apologise, but that is not possible at this time.”

“Oh come on! Of course it’s possible! A badly trained macaque of below average capability could add a field to an HTML page in less than ten minutes. Instead, they got you – a call centre operative with about as much chance of influencing any policy decision regarding your bank’s woeful inability to make its systems even marginally fit for purpose as I have of winning the UK national lottery – to call me and say sorry but it’s broken and we’re not going to fix it.”

“I do apologise. I can put a request to escalate this with Internet banking.”

“They pushed the whole issue down to you! Are you going to escalate it to them so that they can push it back down to you so that you can call me to tell me you’re sorry that the issue about the issue regarding the problem I had is still an issue?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Let’s face it, you have absolutely no ability to escalate any issue whatsoever, do you? All you’re going to do is repeat sorry until I stop shouting, aren’t you?”

“Sorry.”

“Why don’t we end the call right here? I don’t have to be rude to you and you don’t have to listen to a rude and angry customer and we can both get on with our lives without the irritation and frustration of this call and your Internet banking form will continue to lack a simple input field requesting information that is crucial to the process in question.”

“Is there anything else I can help you with?”

Dubai Booze Food Ban Clarified. Not.

Image via Wikipedia

The news broke online yesterday that Dubai Municipality was to invoke a 2003 regulation banning the use of alcohol in food preparation across the city's licensed premises. Arabian Business, drawing from sister title Hotelier Middle East, got a nice little scoop in there.

Interestingly, the news ran today in The National, Khaleej Times and 7Days but not in Gulf News or Emirates Business 24x7. You'd have thought there'd be consensus that the story was of interest to the readership - both to those who drink and those who don't.

It's an area where the UAE has long struggled to reconcile pragmatism with public opinion. Advertising alcoholic products has always been banned in media here, with exceptions generally made for 'closed community' publications (for instance, a golf club newsletter). Reference to alcohol in radio or television advertising is generally confined to euphemisms such as the awful 'beverages', 'bubbly' or 'a glass of red'. The practice of using these terms editorially rather than the actual names of alcoholic drinks has become rather blurry of late, things had tended to slip and publications were actually using words like wine and beer. Back in days of yore, that would never have been tolerated, incidentally, and we'd have been hauled off down the Ministry for a wee chat at the very least.

According to the reports, the Municipality has stated the ban is partly a result of customer complaints regarding the abuse of the long-standing practice of flagging up dishes in a menu as containing alcohol. It has also stated that it had found this practice being abused in its own inspections - although it's slightly strange, is it not, that we didn't hear action taken against specific establishments who did this.

Arabian Business and The National are the only two titles that mention the fact that the city's horrified chefs have gone back to the Municipality and sought a more lenient step than a total ban. A final decision is expected Tuesday.

However, this latest move once again highlights a depressing pattern of behaviour. If officials had consulted with representatives of the hospitality industry - a vital sector to Dubai - then the importance of the decision to that industry could have been made clear to them before any announcement was made or circular issued. They could even, shock horror, have worked with the industry to find a way of ensuring any abuse of longstanding practice did not take place. Instead, we now have a period of uncertainty, patchy communication and lack of clarity regarding a seemingly draconian decision that will affect many of us - and a decision that will, once again, doubtless play badly in international media.

It's, as always, all about the public relations. PR isn't about 'spinning' bad news or burying stories, hyperbole and relentless feelgood 'messaging' - it's about communication, ensuring that you say what you want to say, clearly and effectively to the right people at the right time and in the right way. It's also a two-way street - you've got to listen to people before you communicate, ensure you understand the environment in which you are operating and shape your communication based on what it is you believe you want to achieve - the objective. The lack of listening or any attempt at consultation merely plays in public as arrogance and the inevitable 'clarification' just wastes time and resources.

We'll have to wait until Tuesday to see what's going to be the final word on this one, but in the meantime you're welcomed to a new bizarre twist to Dubai's attempt to define a course acceptable to all - you can have a glass with it, but not in it. You can have that glass in a hotel but be arrested and fined for having had it.

The glass is looking increasingly half-empty, is it not?

When Stickers Turn Evil

Image via Wikipedia

Gulf News has fallen into the very annoying habit indeed of selling advertisers the right to post a removable sticker on the front page. It’s come a cropper with this in the past, one sticker which wasn’t very removable damaged the paper when readers attempted to see the news they are paying for, while another was a ‘feel good’ message splatted on news of a devastating human tragedy.

It’s interesting to see how much a brand will damage itself for short term gain. Readers, who let us not forget actually pay for Gulf News and so have some expectation of getting access to news, are forced to remove the sticker before they can read the front page of the newspaper – the most important page of news that GN has to offer.

It is arguably no great deal, this process of getting your fingernail under the corner of a little advert and removing it before you can read the story under the front page headline. But it’s actually just as annoying as Etisalat’s habit of selling its customers to SMS spammers – I don’t want it, I didn’t ask for it, it forces me to act to remove it before I can access a product/service I have paid to receive. This means that the sticker connotes the brand it is promoting with irritation as well as devaluing the brand of the product used to carry the message.

It does seem odd to me that advertising agencies still fail to understand that consumers don’t actually want invasive advertising in their lives. Agencies slap themselves on the back about how their campaign was ‘edgy’ and ‘disruptive’ and appear to completely miss the point that I, and many others like me, do not want my life disrupted by a brand screaming slogans in my face. I don't want to have to remove stickers or open spammy text messages from companies. I am increasingly sensitive to it, increasingly irritated by it and increasingly likely to act against it by sharing my irritation with an increasingly large audience of people who are voting with their feet and sharing their feelings about brands and media that act in this way.

While I’m being bad tempered about this stupid idea, a message for Carrefour’s advertising agency regarding the sticker I had to unpeel from today's GN: the washing liquid brand Pril is spelled with one ‘l’ as shown clearly in the image of the product on the sticker. You dolts have spelled it with two ‘l’s in the text outlining the marvellous special offer I can ‘avail’ with your ‘voucher’.

Piracy's Death - Innovation's Birth

Image by Joriel "Joz" Jimenez via Flickr

The first headline I ever penned as a writer and journalist in the Middle East was for a column in 1986. I was quite proud of it (be gentle, both I and the market were young): "Software Piracy Waives the Rules".

Ever since then, the theft of intellectual property has held the Middle East market back - both in software development and in other innovations involving probably the region's greatest potential asset (oustide oil): intellectual property.

Call me optimistic, but I do believe there is a new wave of innovation washing the shores of the Middle East and it's being driven by a generation of people who have decided to explore the potential that the Internet opens up. I'm very much looking forward to ArabNet in Beirut next week, where we'll be able to see for ourselves just how that process is shaping up and perhaps gauge how strong and viable the movement is.

I have watched innovation get squashed in this region for much of my time here, a constant sadness to me. I watched the first generation Arabic software companies flounder (great innovators such as SaudiSoft, Sakhr and Nafitha sent to the wall by endemic software piracy that ripped the foundations out of their businesses and forced them out of the consumer software markets) back in the 1980s and I have watched piracy defining the market ever since - software, music and television alike - to its detriment.

Over the past twenty years, the region has been very much a consumer market - with piracy being a constant barrier to anyone considering the high cost of entry in developing, say, applications software. There have been a few highly notable exceptions to this, mostly Jordanian but also Egyptian and Lebanese -  mostly involved in creating bespoke software for international markets. But innovation - software innovation and business innovation based on pretty much any form of electronic content or property - has been stifled by the piracy of intellectual property and the unwillingness of regional governments to effectively enforce the IP legislation that is in place in every country in the region now.

I've posted before about my interest in how the very many social relationships that have opened up around the region are playing a role in bringing people together - social networks, together with the physical events they are triggering such as Tweetups and even GeekFests have allowed people to share ideas and approaches and generally helped to speed an ongoing process that is being driven by a large number of organisations and initiatives that are helping to foster entrepeneurship in the Middle East - from NGOs such as The Queen Rania Centre for Entrepeneurship and the WEF backed YallaStartup! to private funds investing in new business ideas such as Middle East Venture Partners. It just takes a glance at the ArabNet website to see that there's something very definitely going on here

The wonderful thing is that now there is a new freedom: the Internet has brought a new class of web-based businesses. The one overwhelmingly marvellous thing about 'the cloud' (the idea that you can use web-based applications and services to do the stuff that you used to do on your own computer) is that you can't steal it. Software piracy is a thing of the past. People can now develop in the Middle East, for the Middle East, and actually look to gain viable revenue from their work. And users in the Middle East can pay a reasonable monthly fee for access to services - or get them for free where business models are based on free access to consumers through raising alternative sources of revenue (A la Google).

All we've got to do now is get the region's telcos to wake up and smell the coffee - embrace online business models rather than clinging to the last shreds of circuit-switched thinking. Bringing down the price of broadband should be an absolute priority - because right now the Middle East has the potential to do what IP theft has stopped it doing for decades - make money out of the intelligence of its people.

Silence! I kill you!

Image via Wikipedia

People occasionally like to talk to me about censorship and seem mildly put out when I tell them that I've never come under any pressure to censor the blog. When this conversation takes place as an interview, I am always credited as being a 'blogger' or an 'ex-journalist'. For some reason media are unwilling to put 'PR guy' as my job title. It would appear to detract from my authority when talking about freedom of expression in media, for some reason. Oh well.

I have had a long acquaintance with censorship in the Middle East, from being banned in Saudi Arabia to being bawled at in Bahrain. I've even survived being shut down in the UAE (In, I have to point out, a previous life: nothing to do with the dear old agency I call home). I have been forced to crawl on the floor picking up copies of my magazine tossed there by Ministry of Information officials and had more than my fair share of uncomfortable meetings with blokes sat behind desks the size of aircraft carriers while I crouched on a chair that's lower than a futon, my nose touching the glass that invariably covered said desk. I all fairness, I must point out that all that stuff happened over fifteen years ago. Life is a lot different now and the pressures of censorship in the Middle East today are a great deal less, believe me.


I started this blog in part because I wanted to show that you can speak your mind in the UAE, in your own name. I have set my own limitations based on my experiences in media here and so yes, I'll decide not to comment on a toxic topic. Living here pays my wages, blogging doesn't. I do believe in respecting the society and culture of the foreign place I call my home.


However, I've been irritated on a few occasions recently where I have encountered an insane degree of censorship in the mainstream media I have worked with that has been derived from expatriates fearing the reaction they are assuming will come from 'up high'. That has even extended to broadcast media refusing to cover stories that are being carried not only globally but also in local news media. When I have pointed out how utterly craven it is to ignore a controversial story that is being carried by other media totally accessible by the target audience and subject to the same regulatory environment, I've been told that I should 'know how it is'.

But I do know how it is. And I know that media that self-censors to that degree is serving neither its audience nor its masters.

Couples Kiss. Naturally.

Image via Wikipedia

I watched with growing horror as the kissing couple story broke on Sky News last night. Another brilliant, world-straddling home goal, splashed all over the news. The message from the news report was quite clear: if you drink alcohol or kiss when you're on holiday in Dubai, the strict and fundamentalist Islamic state, you will be thrown in an Arab jail.

That should do wonders for tourism. The expensive advertising is screaming 'Come to Dubai and Live the Life! Have fun in the sun!' and the world's media are quite clearly screaming 'Not.' I can tell you who'll win the battle for hearts and minds here, and it's not the advertising.

Oddly enough, the fact that the whole incident took place in Jumeirah Beach Residence (Jaybeearr to most of us) depresses me even more. This, surely, is the very motherlode of the live the life dream in Dubai, the place where nice, clean people go for their morning runs along cobbled, nicely maintained walkways and hang out in the very large number of nice restaurants and coffee shops that crowd together under the stacked sandy towers above them. This is where people from all around the world chat, eat and drink together; where they shop together and pass each other in constant procession, walking out in society.

 I can understand the whole thing being taken seriously if the couple involved were clearly going at it like rabbits in public while beating the place up in their drunken stupor, or if the woman who filed the complaint had asked them to desist and had been attacked with a torrent of abuse. But if any of this was the case, it's certainly not coming across in the media coverage. In fact, what is quite clearly coming across from the media coverage is that this regrettable incident should never have escalated into anything other than a warning and being given a leaflet on how to behave in Dubai, if that. The defence says it was a social kiss, according to GN, making the lovely claim that the couple had "denied lip-kissing".

I believe that what is and is not acceptable in Dubai should be communicated more clearly. There needs to be a guideline that can be shared by the airlines and hotels that bring tourists in, by the real estate companies that let and sell property and by the media that tell us where to go and what to enjoy. And that guideline has never been needed so much as it is now.

Let's be clear here. I've lived here a long time and travelled extensively around the Arab World. I wouldn't be here if I didn't have some sort of affinity with the place and its culture. I totally respect the requirement for modesty in the UAE and that we should all of us show appropriate respect for its cultural values.

But I despair. I'm becoming increasingly concerned at this terrible schizophrenia; the place in which I have lived and worked for so long is suddenly alien to me. The place that openly and freely sells alcohol to all comers and which displays kissing on its television screens is the place where fines and jail cells threaten all who are brave enough to enter. The inconsistency makes a mockery of the tolerance that has been behind Dubai's success and that I had always admired so very much.

Buttons

Image by saraab™ via Flickr

Sometimes you find a story in Gulf News that goes beyond the ordinary, that is in a class all of its own. They usually originate from Ras Al Khaimah and involve herds of suicidal sheep, ghosts in caves or escaped deadly predators that some lunatic has been keeping as pets.

My treat today was the news that a shopkeeper in Ajman has been arrested for selling fake Dubai police uniform buttons. It's obviously no treat for the shopkeeper, who'll currently be in nick somewhere while they work out what to chuck at him charge-wise ("Let's do him under the 1986 official gold buttons forgery act!"), but the story itself has many touches of manic genius. It's here in all its glory.

Dubai police are not at all happy at the shop flogging copies of their buttons, as said buttons are specially made for them by a company in Italy. In fact, the danger of such buttonfoolery are pointed out to GN by a forensic expert and criminologist with Dubai police, who tells the newspaper, "These buttons could be used by suspects impersonating a police officer."

"I'm a policeman. Give me all your money."
"Show us yer buttons!"
"Here."
"Okay, you're legit. Will you take a cheque?"


The criminologist uses his keen understanding of the recidivist's mindset to conjecture that Dubai's Boys in Green might have been buying the buttons from the shop owner whose establishment is suspected, GN tells us, of being a tailor's shop, in order to repair their uniforms on the quiet. Apparently any policeman found ruining his uniform or losing his military costume accessories could face a military fine or trial.


So rather than face the consequences of their actions, they've been sneaking up to Ajman and getting black market buttons sewn on? Surely not - not policemen! There has to be some other explanation.

Won't it be wonderful if the shop owner had the presence of mind to keep a customer list? This could do for Gulf News what the parliamentary expenses scandal did for The Telegraph.

ButtonGate! We await the next installment of this one with bated breath...

Off on one

"Woss 'e up ter nar ven?"

"'e's off on one abaht ve bloody Emirates Festerval of Licherachure."

"Licherachure? Why on urf would 'e wanna blog about licherachure?"

"Dunno. But 'e as. 'E's bangin' on abaht books and writin' orl week."

"Oh, what? I 'ates it when 'e does vat. Writing vis, editing vat on and on. Iss allus better when 'e's avin' a go at ve RTA or summit, innit?"

"Yeah. Less go'n read Life in Dubai. 'e wone be all bla bla bla about ve bloody licherarchure wossit."

Which is my way of telling you that readership of this blog, as predicted, plummeted like a plummeting thing in free-fall and in fact almost halved last week when I was blethering about writing all week. And I don't care. It's my blog and if I want to get over-excited about the Emirates Lit Fest I shall. So there.

The Social Media Public Session wasn't bad at all, really, and was quite fun for audience and speakers alike (unless everyone hated it but were being nice to me for some reason). We didn't really solve the ills of the world or define the future of publishing or anything, but we had a lot of laughs. It hasn't changed my mind about this one jot, though.

GeekTalks up!

The first GeekTalks are up online, thank's to official GeekVid girl, Areeba Hanif (@MyBigDayFilms on Twitter). Areeba's done a great job putting these together - particularly as she had to face filming the talks with no space, bad access, crappy light and no sensible solution for her to get lights etc set up. She didn't crack a frown all through!

If you'd like to pop along to Vimeo, you'll find that we've set up a lovely profile for GeekFest Dubai 3.14 and will be posting GeekTalks there in future. You'll find it here or you can see the vids from GeekFest Dubai 3.14 on the Facebook fan page here.

We've used Vimeo because, for a small sum, we can host big video files and manage them effectively - and you can embed them anywhere you want. So do feel free to share!

Armaggedon!

Image via Wikipedia

I have made the point before that the publishing industry is following a business model dependent on its inherent inefficiency. The original post is linked here, but basically my contention is that the whole industry is built on the cost of distributing a product, squid and dead trees squeezed through rollers, that is about to be overtaken by a much more efficient means of distribution - the Internet.

Of course this is a very simplistic view - there are many other aspects to the industry such as editing and marketing, but I believe these would simply move to an online model where publishers would 'worldsource' such activities. In this model, publishing houses would be significantly smaller organisations surviving on significantly smaller margins and carrying much larger lists. They would be online-centric.

Print runs would be cut back to a minimum required for retail presence in a significantly smaller number of retail outlets - online buys would be serviced by POD suppliers. The music industry gives us a clear way ahead as far as the retail/online adoption model goes. Paper books won't disappear, but they will become less important to consumers - as, for instance, CDs have today. Hardbacks will be like today's vinyl records - a quirky indulgence for connoisseurs of the medium.

The inevitable atomisation of the industry will create a wide number of individual authors going direct to reader as well as a number of 'wannabe' imprints. We'll see an increase in pay to publish scamsters as well, no doubt.

In that scenario, online marketing will be crucial to publishers - particularly community development, where a publisher would build a wide circle of relationships that are built on the respect, trust and recognition for quality that will be pretty much the core of what the imprint will offer authors - because the core of publishing today is distribution and that's, as we've just said, moved online.

Many publishers are currently pushing the responsibility of maintaining online relationships to authors. The standard industry advice to writers would appear to be 'get a blog, a Fanpage and on Twitter. Move it!' right now, which is a tad unfair as it's increasingly going to be the case that a widespread, solid presence on these very properties (as well as some others) that will be the only thing an imprint really has to offer an author.Some of the larger publishers, such as Hodder & Stoughton (tentatively) and Random House (much further down that line, with Authorsplace), are aggregating author 'social' content and even beginning to look a little like communities - is this the way forward?

Or am I just blowing hot air? Are the tectonic shifts that are devastating the music industry and music retail going to pass publishing by?

Have a read of this - I read it after I wrote the above post (it was a Zemanta suggestion. I'll tell you all about Zemanta another time. It's cool.). It's from author Max Barry and it's yet more food for thought on the winds of change.

Authors and readers alike will be talking about stuff like this at the rather wonderful Emirates Airline Literary Festival, at the Social Media Public Session, wot is being moderated by me (hence all the fuss about this stuff this week). The permalink to the information page on the session is linked here. And you can follow the Festival's rather sound Twitter feed at @EmiratesLitFest.

Social Media - The View From Rome

Image via Wikipedia

Author Caroline Lawrence is best known for The Roman Mysteries series of historical novels for children. The series spans seventeen highly popular books although Caroline has now written twenty books in total.

She's coming to Dubai to attend the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature - and she's also coming along to the EAFL public session on social media on Friday at 8.00pm to join in the discussion about social media, writers and readers. If you'd like to join us there, you're more than welcome - there's a Twitvite here and Facebook event here.

 Caroline's a pretty online person (@carolinelawrenc on Twitter, for a start!), so who better to ask a few 'establishing questions' before we get down to the nitty gritty of writerly socialism on Friday?

Do you have a ‘social media strategy’?
My strategy is once I've set up my profile on Facebook & Twitter to keep active, but not flood people with tweets or other messages.

How much time do you spend socialising online every day?
 At least an hour.

Do you find social media time consuming/a distraction from writing?
Absolutely! That's why I installed FREEDOM software which stops you surfing for a specified amount of time.

What elements do you use?
Facebook (two accounts - one personal, one fanpage), Twitter (two accounts - one for my Roman Mysteries hat, one for my Western Mysteries hat) and two Blogs (Roman Mysteries & Western Mysteries). I also touch base with YouTube to see what's popular. Oh and my website, which I update myself!

Do you tend to shun social media, use it socially only, use it warily or try and make the most of it?
I try to make the most of it!

Do you feel you ‘get’ it or are you flailing about a bit? Is there one element you relate to most strongly as a writer?
I pretty much get it.

Would you ‘go E’ if you thought you wouldn’t drown in obscurity?
Yes, I would totally go E if it mean royalties of 70%! Or even if not. (In face, I think I already am E as well as in print! Here...)

What is the one thing you think publishers have to offer to a writer with, say, 10,000 social media connections already?
If you've got that many followers etc you're probably on the telly and don't need any help from publishers who are probably behind the times anyway!

Where do you see this going in less than 25 words?
Social media? It's going to explode. http://bit.ly/RTzPe

What’s the ONE question about social media you’d like to have answered.
Does Social Media really help raise our profile or is it just another way of procrastinating?

How Social Media Taught Me How To Write

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I picked up a parcel from Sharjah post office yesterday containing a jar of homemade chutney. We had some with a slice of cheese on toast last night. It was delicious.

It had been sent to me by Australian author HélèneYoung after I came in as a runner up in a frivolous competition held in a guest post on on Hélène's blog by writer pal Phillipa Fioretti. (Did I mention that Phillipa's first book, 'The Book of Love' publishes on the 1st April? Yes? Oh, okay then) I confess I had not seriously expected to ever see a jar of home-made chutney arriving from 'down under', let alone one sent by a Bombardier pilot and novelist, but then that's the power of social media for you - the power to globalise chutney.

I met Phillipa on Harper Collins' authonomy, where I had put a lump of my first book with the hope of finding someone who'd want to publish it. One of the fascinating side effects of authonomy was to drive a huge focus on editing work, with writers encouraged to critique each others' work and sharing views, information and approaches to writing on the site's lively forums.
I started writing books because I had reasoned I could write well. I had written millions of words in a 22-year career in media and communications, from articles, news stories, interviews and reviews through to market research reports, speeches and white papers - I'd churned out all sorts of things for all sorts of people, from CEOs to Kings. Why not write a book?

I quickly learned that Space, my first book, was as funny as I thought it was. It was popular on authonomy and hit 'The Editor's Desk', voted there by the community of writers that made authonomy snap, crackle and pop. I also learned that it was very, very badly written - although I didn't know it at the time. I remember Jason Pettus of the Chigaco Centre for Literature and Photography being particularly horrified at the way Space was put together. It broke most of the 'rules' of bookish writing - to the point where I have now retired it as uneditable.

I had a second book up my sleeves, a serious book about Jordan called Olives, that I also put on authonomy - although this time around I was just after 'crits' for the work. The frenetic effort it took to get the first book to the top of the slush pile was exhausting - and the proffered 'crit' from a Harper Collins editor was hardly value that returned the effort. 

The crits on Olives started to make me think more deeply about how it was written and I started to make some big changes and a series of wide-ranging edits to the book. Phillipa worked with me on a big edit and made me go and buy some books on editing and writing (I had hitherto vehemently resisted doing that but Pip bullied me), and Heather Jacobs, another of the little band of writers I've stayed in almost daily touch with since authonomy, did a painstaking line edit of the book. Heather taught me I use 'that' too much, the latest in a series of lessons that has completely transformed the way I approach writing.

I haven't met a single person since I started all this. It's all been online. I have canvassed agents in the UK, had feedback on my work from hundreds of people from around the world and profited enormously from having broken my pre-authonomy 'I'm not telling anyone I write these things' approach and have made friends online with a number of smart, talented writers whose daily doses of input, support and general silliness have been invaluable. There are writers everywhere in my online life now - on Twitter, on Facebook and the blog, too. It's nice to have them there, because I know they understand.

If it hadn't been for authonomy, I'd have learned nothing. I probably would have given up and gone back to the day job. Now I'm on book number three and 'shopping' Olives in the meantime.
>
I wouldn't have got a jar of Australian chutney, either...

Sorry, folks, this week's mostly going to be about books (Which usually sends readership plummeting, but hey ho!) - you can blame the Emirates Airline International Literary  Festival - in particular, don't forget the social media and publishing session on Friday! There's a Twitvite and FaceBook event page, BTW.

A Very Literary Fellow

 

Well, I've been asked if I'd moderate the Social Media Session at the Emirates Festival of Literature next week and I obviously frowned, said I'd think it over and then screamed 'Yes!' one second later, clamped to their right arm like a strychnine-poisoned pitbull wired to the mains.

It's a public session and is open with no registration or ticket requirement and I think it's going to generate not only a great deal of interest but also a lively and interesting debate.

The permalink to the information page on the session is linked here. And you can follow the Festival's rather sound Twitter feed at @EmiratesLitFest.

Why so interested? Well, there is my genuine interest in the topic from a professional point of view for a start, I do, after all, work for an agency that's very wired up with all this social media stuff. But this one's personal, too. As many of you know I have a nasty book writing habit and I will gladly use and abuse any route that could get me near any of the very lovely and charming gatekeepers I can hornswoggle into giving some of my work their consideration. Added to that, having stayed in touch with a number of writer friends since the whole Harper Collins' authonomy thing (using, in many cases, social media!), this whole area has been one where we have enjoyed extensive debate - and which offers a future of opportunity and fear in seemingly equal measures.

I have been fascinated by the role of the Internet in authorship and publishing ever since that involvement with Authonomy. I believe that social media is inextricably tied in to the future of publishing and that innovations such as the iPad are game-changers that are inextricably tied into social media.

There are a number of opinions about the way that publishing is evolving. Some of the more aggressive proponents (Dan Holloway's views, linked here, are always fascinating) of social media see it as a platform that has the potential to disintermediate publishing houses and put control back into the hands of authors.

Publishing houses are trying to find ways to use social media and the Internet that compliment their more traditional marketing machines, one reason why we had authonomy at all, but they are becoming fearful (and rightly so) about where the control is going to reside in the new distribution models that are starting to look not only possible but likely.

Meanwhile, authors are finding that they are gaining more control from their use of social media - more connection to their audiences, more direct relationship with readers and a marketing powerhouse that's in their hands and not at the whim of the publisher's disinterested publicist. Golly, people are even using social media to open bookshops these days!

All of this and more is going to get poured into that session and I think we're going to have a real roller-coaster ride with it. Always so much more fun than a sedate stroll around the park, no?

ArabNet: Dot Com Boom Anyone?

Image via Wikipedia

ArabNet is taking place in Beirut on the 25th March. A two day conference, ArabNet aims to provide a regional platform for Web startups that will foster innovation and entrepeneurialism in the Arab world and consists of a load of 'how to' conference sessions featuring high profile international speakers as well as a range of pitching and demoing opportunities such as the Ideathon, which awards cash prizes for the development of the best 3 ideas pitched at the event.

With the strap line 'Trends and Opportunities in Arab Web Business', the event is one of a number of symptoms of a resurgent regional technology sector - Jordan's ICT Forum looks set to take place once again this year after a couple of years off - that's being driven by the web and, yes, the social web.

A series of workshops has been taking place around the region prior to the event in Beirut, aimed at helping young entrepeneurs hone the business cases they're taking along to ArabNet.

Where I find ArabNet interesting is its potential to be more than just a talking shop - with venture capital and investors, the backing of existing regional big names such as Zawya, Maktoob and Aramex as well as important web media properties such as ArabCrunch, the event has every chance of developing as an important part of fostering the fast growth of Web-enabled businesses in the region. We never really had a dot com boom in the region. It'd be interesting to see us having one now - better late than never!

The New Media Law

Image via Wikipedia

This is a depressing column from Abdullah Rasheed, Gulf News' Abu Dhabi editor, today, written on the occasion of the much-delayed debate by the Federal National Council regarding the new Media Law for the UAE. I sincerely believe that Rasheed's words are required reading for anyone living here.

In it, he argues that media freedom has decreased in the UAE and calls for an end to the culture of censorship and silence in response to media that has become so common recently. "journalists battle to get even the simplest information due to non-co-operation of most official bodies" he says.

He points out that the number of UAE National journalists has dropped. And he points to a wide range of other major issues that are contributing to producing a national media that is uncompetitive. That international news sources and the Internet are sought as alternatives by those who feel un-served by the media. "Journalists are no longer doing their duty, meaning that the press is no longer monitoring the peformance of government."

The one point he doesn't make is that media struggling with all these issues are not challenging organisations in the UAE to respond as harshly as they could (and should) be - and the result of that is there is no culture of debate, argument or managing investigative media. You could well argue that a great deal of the negative international coverage has come about because of the inept way in which UAE organisations manage their relationships with international media - precisely because, of course, the counter-critical culture of the UAE is not mirrored elsewhere. To their surprise, UAE 'press officers', and the people they report to, discover all too late that journalists working for international media who are fobbed off or simply told 'there is nothing here' won't stand for it and will not only report, but do so with considerable vigour, too. Worse, they're being aided and abetted by social media. A leaky shark tank is not a minor problem with a malfunctioning valve when consumer-generated footage of an entire mall underwater is out there in the wild, for instance.


Decent spokespeople, sound media policies and sensible media relations can't develop in the absence of an empowered media. Those skills are critical, IMHO, to the future of the UAE as a player on the world stage - and so is a media that is allowed to get on with the job of reporting the facts in service of its readers, listeners and viewers.

Heroes

These heroes decided to escape last night's awful traffic by taking the sandy snicket between Dubai and Sharjah. What on earth made them think that you'd get large lorries and a cement mixer across undulating, churned up desert sand is beyond me. I drove past them laughing at their idiocy and they laughed right back at me with a cheery "Fie mushkila!".

Which just goes to show, everyone's doing Ten Word Arabic these days...

The weather man says we're gonna get an inch of rain tonight and another two tomorrow, which means chaos.

Take care, all of you...