That Was The ArabNet That Was

(Photo credit: carrierdetect)

It's been a hectic week, hence the lack of posts. The ArabNet Dubai Digital Summit sucked down more time than I'd ever have thought it was going to - but what a time it's been. The week's flown by in a whirlwind of panels, chatting, eager startups and blethering about all things online.

Not even HSBC's decision to mount an insane war against their SME customers, reported upon excellently by the Al Arabiya English website, tempted me to post. Truth be told, there just wasn't the time and anyway, what could be possibly said that would make any sort of sense of a bank unilaterally shutting down business accounts in the United Arab Emirates with just 60 days' notice - just before the summer and Ramadan coincide to ensure 60 days' notice is insufficient?

Even HSBC's assertion that it 'remains committed to the SME market' wasn't enough to break the ArabNet spell. Although now looking back on the story that comment still provokes wide-eyed astonishment. We've wiped out the Marsh Arabs but remain committed to all indigenous peoples. Right.

I got to have a little gentle fun with banks myself at the ArabNet banking solutions panel, when Graham from Radical outlined some of the cool stuff his company had been doing with banks internationally and the very brave Pedtro from Emirates NBD took to the stage to speak for the Middle East's own banks. Perhaps starting the panel with the assertion that all Middle East banks are rubbish wasn't terribly PC of me (I realised my introduction to the topic had turned into a spittle-flecked rant only when the audience started to turn into a mob hefting burning brands and demanding to march on the monster), but I thought if we could all agree that basic principle, we could then move on and not spend an hour throwing custard tarts at Pedro.

And that's the way it worked out, generally - but I came away from the session with the feeling that people like Pedro are fighting against legacy systems and legacy-minded management, while banks in other parts of the world - leaner, meaner and generally more competitive - are providing some really smart digital services. You wonder what's holding us back and then something like HSBC vs SME happens and you realise that yes, it is pretty nigh hopeless.

I enjoyed many of the talks and panels I attended at ArabNet, there were few 'duffers' in the mix which was a blessing - and with three tracks on the go, rare was the moment when something interesting wasn't happening somewhere. Skills marketplace Nabbesh was raising money on startup crowd investing platform Eureeca, Wally got Dhs 1.5 million funding for its blisteringly smart expenses tracking app (it scans receipts and lets you track locations, venues, expenditures and the like), Restronaut took everyone out for dinner (the latest brain-child of Make Business Hub founder Leith Matthews) and private car booking service Careem offered everyone a free ride. There was a lot of stuff going on, I can tell you.

I had the dubious honour of being the last speaker at ArabNet Dubai and so was surprised to find a packed room in front of me - that's a testament to the engagement and commitment of the audience at the event. There were a few grumbles of 'three days is too long' but I'm not so sure, myself. It wasn't a stretched out agenda by any means. Anyway, I spent fifteen minutes gibbering and railing at the audience in tongues, the usual shamanistic display of erratic behaviour. And then I got to lead a panel on women's content and branded content. 

With one client and three publishers on the panel, it was always going to be hard to get a good challenging debate moving - and the publishers were determined not to have the fight I was so keen to goad them into, so the panel was a tad tamer than I'm used to. Tragically, we didn't have the Twitterfall displayed on the stage monitors, so couldn't see the howls of outrage taking place on the projected screen behind us. As the panelists talked about why marketing managers didn't understand women in the region and why women's content was Chanel and handbags, a furious cry rose from the significant female element in the audience who felt women were, well, worth more than that. I couldn't see it and so the opportunity to square the circle between audience and panel was lost.

And then, in a trice, it was over. The developers' awards saw Lebanon taking the trophy and a couple of hours later, the Atlantis conference centre was back to being a vast expanse of strange nautical primary colours and Dubai was filled with little pockets of partying geeks and, no doubt, a very relieved and exhausted ArabNet team.

See you there next year!

Confession: Spot On was an ArabNet partner

ArabNet - The Dubai Digital Summit

It starts tomorrow - ArabNet's Dubai Digital Summit - three days of conference, workshop, developer competition, roundtable and other information sharing stuff. It's a pretty packed agenda - there are over 120 speakers (including li'l ole me) and there are expected to be upwards of 800 attendees gathering at the aesthetically interesting Atlantis Hotel on the Palm.

The three-day conference is at the core of a number of other activities, including ArabNet's 'Digital Showcase'. This excellent initiative gathers over thirty young digital companies from around the region and provides them with a platform to show their wares at ArabNet - and includes brokered meetings with media buyers, banks, telcos and other business enablers. There's also the final of ArabNet's developer competition which will bring together winners from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Jordan in a final face-off to crown the best developer in the Middle East. My money's on the Jordanians...

The actual conference consists of three tracks - a Forum Track and a Workshop Track - then on day one a Startup Track and day two an Industry Track, which splits into verticals and is more 'solutions' oriented and day three a Roundtable Track. Someone with a highly advanced sense of humour has put me moderating the banking panel on the industry day, which should provide a few laughs if nothing else...

There are four industry round tables taking place in the Roundtable Track, which will tackle key issues in the development and expansion of the Middle East's digital industry. I'm chairing the one on advertising, "Growing digital adspend", which should be interesting as the invited attendees for what is intended to be a productive brainstorming session represent all sorts of interests - mainly vested! - in the way this important sector is developing in the region.

As anyone who's been to ArabNet in Beirut will attest, there's a 'vibe' to the event that is truly infectious, a coming together of smart people who share a passion for something that is at the heart of exhilarating and often breakneck change and transformation. There's a grin-inducing cocktail of dynamism and innovation in the air.

So all in all it promises to be a busy, intense and fascinating week - and if you are interested in mobile, online, digital, social or anything touching the online and digital industry in the Middle East, you would be mad not to be there*.

Oh, and you can catch my presentation on addressing the 'content crisis' at 5pm on Wednesday and see quite how neatly I manage to wave in the inevitable plug for Beirut - An Explosive Thriller.

* Disclosure - Spot On is the PR partner for ArabNet but as you'll all know by now, this blog has never represented my day job. I'm bigging up ArabNet because I'm a fan, not because I'm shilling for them.

Hi Ho, Hi Ho, It's Off To ArabNet I Go!

Two years on from the first ArabNet Digital Summit in Beirut and the world has changed. I don't know that ArabNet can take the credit for that, but organiser Omar Christidis can certainly take credit for knowing when to start a serious regional digital conference with a focus on startups and 'the digital opportunity' in the Middle East.

As I posted at the time, the first ArabNet Digital Summit in March 2010 was something of an eye-opener. With low expectations confounded by a very high standard of event, ArabNet showed that there was undoubtedly a flowering of talent, innovation, interest and investment in the region's digital industries. The second ArabNet a year later cemented that, although a daringly expanded event did expose a couple of organisational weaknesses. That didn't really matter, the highly ambitious agenda was expanded to include a developer day event, the two day core conference and a community day. The ArabNet team went on a road trip around the region, literally taking a bus from country to country and arranging presentations, workshops and the like with the aim of uncovering, even fostering, the region's potential startups.

This year, the ArabNet Digital Summit is a five day event - the popular Developer Day has been expanded to the plural, the two day conference remains at the core of the event. There's a one day 'Industry Day' (taking place concurrent to the second Developer Day), which aims to examine how digital technologies are transforming a number of vertical industries in the region. It's a smart idea, because it means taking an approach to technology that is necessarily made relevant to each of the industries the day serves, which include healthcare, banking, travel, education, and government.

Then we have the two day ArabNet conference, the 'Forum Days' which include a number of keynotes, panels, workshops and the much-loved 'Ideathon' (pitch a startup idea from the stage) and 'Startup Demo' (Startup pitches its work and seeks funding) competitions. There's a third competition, as well, for agencies to case study their digital campaigns.

As usual, I'll be there causing trouble. I'm moderating a session on Industry Day, 'Social Media and Customer Relationship Management' and then during the main forum, I'll be presenting on how companies can, in fact need to, 'Take back your content' - how companies are going to need to plan and execute content strategies in this world of 'discoverability' we're carving for ourselves. Then I'll be moderating a panel on 'The Future of News' which will be, if I have anything to do with it, a real bunfight.

Apart from the stuff I'm doing from the stage, I'll be doing the usual at ArabNet - meeting smart and interesting people, learning about what's happening around the region and soaking up information and best practice from the speakers onstage.

See you there!

Here's the Spot On ArabNet page, BTW!

Of ArabNet

I just thought I'd post a quick update about ArabNet - many others have posted a great deal more about the event than I could and probably made more sense, at that...

I went to the event with high expectations and they were, in the main, met, matched and knocked out of the field. This is now established as a crucial regional event and one of two or three that are truly not to be missed if you care about the online, digital, mobile and innovation businesses. I didn't attend the first day of the event, the Developer Day, because I stopped being an 'under the bonnet' kind of guy back in the 1980s - instead we lolloped up into the mountains for some tourism before lounging around Beirut taking in the sights.

The first day of the two-day ArabNet Shift Summit started off with a keynote session from Ministers and the like. This, I avoided. I attended it last year and may attend it next. But once every two years is enough. I'm told that someone Ministerial promised Lebanon 20 MegaWatt broadband, which sort of explains a lot of things including, perhaps, why there was no Internet access in the hall for much of day one. The irony of this is obviously exquisite, but hard to appreciate when you've got documents to send and video footage to upload, let alone a Twitter account to feed. One daft omission was there were no power cables to the classroom style seating in the room, which meant those of us old-fashioned enough to be using a laptop were pretty well banjaxed quite early on. This was something ArabNet had got right last year, you can only assume it fell victim to the vastly extended scope of the event as a whole. Both the Internet and power plug issues were fixed for the afternoon sessions - a lovely example of how an event management team that's aware of what Twitter's saying can react fast and put stuff right.

The Ideathon pitches (a new idea pitched in two minutes to the crowd) were immeasurably stronger than last year, with a number of viable and exciting ideas being put across really well. One presenter (let's not forget these guys were mostly first-time presenters) stumbled only to be clapped on by the crowd. It was a real feel-good moment.

The event ran very late indeed, to the point where the Startup Demos, meant to be in the morning session, had to be put back to the afternoon. This also meant that the whole process of splitting the hall into two for the afternoon breakout sessions would have to take place after lunch, too. The Startup Demos are pitches for early finance from businesses that have already commenced operations and are given five minutes each. In the event, many got way more than this (at least, that's how it felt) but again the quality of stuff we were hearing about was way in advance of last year - some really, really cool ideas came across and I'd find it hard to single out any one Startup Demo as unworthy of funding.

My favourite Startup Demo was undoubtedly Jordanian online bookstore Jamalon, which is building a viable regional book publishing, delivery and fulfillment business that is mindful not only of the challenges of 'e' for publishers, but actually represents a viable and well-conceived solution to this and also to the issue of fostering content creation and a stronger reading habit in the region. This one, I felt, could be important. Some old pals took to the stage, too - the ishopaholic team were there, sharing the app that had seemed so engaging when we played around with it on the Dubai Today show a few weeks back.

I moderated two sessions after lunch, one on mobile and one on group buying. I had a lot of fun myself and so far there have been no written complaints or lawsuits, so let's assume they went well enough. The panelists, like the speakers we had heard in the morning session, were people with authority, background and something to contribute - a real treat in these days of commercially-led conferences filled with sales pitches and corporate rhetoric trotted out by sales execs trying to sound like they would know an innovation if it smacked them on the back of the head. No, these speakers were quality - although if TechCrunch's Mike Butcher had told us how very busy and important he was once more, I was ready to storm the stage.

I was running out of time, fast, however. That morning, I'd got a call from a distraught Sarah - the new waterproofing on our villa roof had been done so well that even the drain had been waterproofed. Nothing like men taking pride in their work, is there? She'd noticed this when next door's water tank overflowed and dropped some 200 gallons of water directly into our house. Clothes in storage, furnishings and all were soaked, much of the house's contents had to be moved to safety and Sarah was joined by life-saving pal Derek in witnessing water pouring down the walls of the back bedrooms, guest bathroom, kitchen and study. I felt the only thing a chap could do from Beirut was fly back early to join the happy clean-up operation and so I missed day two of ArabNet.

However, I didn't miss the dinner/party which was fun (although I did find chatting to pals and contacts to a background of full-on rappers was 'interesting') and inevitably led to our favourite hang-out in Gemmayze, Beirut's Temple Bar. It was fun. Messy, but fun.

The long and the short of it is that ArabNet was once again brilliantly organised, with a few minor hiccups creeping in because of the vastly ambitious scope of this year's event, and is a must for anybody - and any company - interested in the Middle East's fast-growing digital economy. A caveat - Spot On was involved in supporting ArabNet's PR efforts, so I could be accused of bias in these views.

There's a very real sense that innovation-driven businesses are starting all over the region, at least partly influenced by the new sense of responsibility and opportunity being felt in the light of the events taking place all around us today.

That new sense of aspiration and ambition were in the air at ArabNet and it's a heady scent...