Fake Plastic Souks Is Ten

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oh golly, oh gosh! I nearly missed it. Happy Birthday, Fake Plastic Souks! Ten years ago this month, I was sufficiently intrigued by the idea of expressing my opinion without using a pseudonym (at the time the standard approach for bloggers in Dubai) and was also missing writing magazine articles (I used to do a lot of that) enough to contemplate starting a blog. It's hard to imagine today, but back then it was all, well, terribly experimental. Now, of course, it's quaintly retro.

It all followed on from another experiment in online scribbling, a Wiki called 'Orientations' I had started to put together, which played with the idea of creating a hyperlinked series of articles that led you on an adventure, a little like playing Colossal Caves, around what was something of a stream of consciousness. PB Works, the nice people wot hosts the Wiki, have been threatening to take back that workspace for years and yet the crumbling ruins of that largely incomplete experiment still exist. The first word of the first post on Fake Plastic Souks linked, through the fiendishly clever use of houmus, back to the Wiki in a sort of nod to the past.

Here's the first Fake Plastic Souks post, linked for your clicking pleasure!

That first post was inspired by the sententious rumblings from the Arab Media Forum and amused me greatly. Like many things that amuse me greatly (my first novel, for instance), I find I am in an audience of one. Luckily, that has never detracted from my amusement. The ability to amuse oneself avoids a great deal of unpleasantness in life, I find.

An awful lot of water has flowed under the bridge since those early days, quite a lot of the events which took place around me documented as I jotted things down. It's not quite Samuel Pepys, but I occasionally enjoy stumbling across something old and dusty. In all this time, a tad over 1.2 million pages have been read. Which is nice. I would hate to think how many words I've thrown into this little cloudy corner. I've probably written about 700,000 words in my various novels (not including the two books I made from FPS posts for publishing workshop purposes) and likely more in the blog.

Oh yes, the books. There were two of them, made when I needed a text to create a sample book for a 'hands on' publishing session I did for the LitFest chaps. The first one documented 2007-2009: Fake Plastic Souks - The Glory Years. I joked that I'd do another one if that book sold more than ten copies and to my mild amazement, it did. So I made the second, Fake Plastic Souks - The Fear Returns, which covered 2009-2011. The links take you to the Kindle editions, but there are also paperbacks. I never did get around to a third one. Just as well, probably.

It all seems a little irrelevant these days. Mind you, an early and perhaps over-passionate proponent of 'social media', I now find myself yearning to sit under a tree and play with wooden toys rather than post, share, tweet and snap for the benefit of small and frequently mildly bemused audiences.

I think my favourite things from over the years are were when I 'outed' Harper Collins' Authonomy and the 'Shiny' posts, which did rather tickle me. Documenting the egregious contents of Tim Horton's French Vanilla Coffee not only provided me with amusement, it has informed something like 10,000 people. The 'stuff they put in our food' posts have always caused the most 'Yews'. My abiding interest in food, of course, led to the co-creation of Dubai's first 'food blog' with partner in crime Simon McCrum, The Fat Expat. That was finally shuttered due to lack of time and photographic talent back in 2013. TFE was never really Instagram gold, but I still use it to find recipes even today.

These days, as people may have noticed, I post rather more infrequently and have stopped looking at Sitemeter or analytics. In the early days, the blog would attract a sort of 'background radiation' of readers, about 30 or so per post. That grew to hundreds and even thousands, with anything up to 40,000 page views each month. I was just starting to think that was getting rather reasonable when I met Russian writer Boris Akunin, whose blog gets about 1,000 comments a day. When he invited readers to join him in a walk around Moscow to protest Putin, 10,000 people turned up.

I was duly humbled.

Anyway, there's no real point to this post. I just thought I'd mark the occasion...

The STILL Blog And Birdkill's Cover

Birdkill written, I needed a cover image for the book. The title was simple enough, the original short story was called 'Martin', but having made such a mess of my previous book titles (Note to authors: naming your book after a popular food category means a lifetime of SEO fail) I wanted to get this one right. A brief flirtation with 'The boy who killed birds' ended in 'Birdkill'.

I started a-Googlin' for cover images (without any real idea in mind) and soon enough stumbled upon Mary Jo Hoffman's 'STILL Blog', where her image of a lifeless Fox Sparrow was to be found: the perfect cover image. I can't remember what search string got the result, but have a sneaky suspicion it was something fiendishly complicated like 'dead sparrow'...

A quick email exchange later, said image was licensed to me, a process I had been through before with the 'Pill skull' cover image of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, which I licensed from Australian artist and borderline head case Gerrard King.

Mary Jo's work is starting to gain the mainstream recognition it deserves, having build a solid wee following on instagram (@maryjohoffman) and with visitors to the STILL Blog itself. A number of people and companies, including major US retailers now, have started licensing her images.

The idea behind STILL is simple enough. Formerly an aerospace engineer, Mary Jo stepped out of the world of fast-moving corporate careers to have kids and enjoy a somewhat more bucolic lifestyle. These days she takes her Puggle, Jack, for a walk every day and forages in the pretty countryside around her rather stylish home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. She takes the results home and adds them to her collection of things, arranging these natural finds and taking a daily snap for her blog. She'll occasionally pull in objects from further afield as the family roams. She's got a great eye and creates images of abiding perfection: daily moments that truly give you a sense of stillness.

Sometimes it'll be a single object, sometimes a painstakingly arranged array artistically and beautifully laid out to produce an effect or tell a little visual joke. Her images provide a moment of contemplation each day, sometimes seasonal and sometimes vibrant, lively and filled with freshness. Warm autumn, stark winter and all year round, every now and then, a little death. They're all photographed using natural light.

Like many things that have happened to me on this book journey, the STILL connection has given me a fascinating new insight into something I hadn't known was there before.

I caught up with Mary Jo and grilled her lightly with a little salt and pepper and olive oil about the STILL project and her life in images...

You transitioned from being an aerospace engineer at Honeywell to a stay-at-home mum. How?
I did indeed. I worked in as an aerospace research engineer for 15 years. My area of expertise was flight controls (aka autopilots). By the time I left, I was Director of Research with offices in Minneapolis, Prague, China, and Phoenix.

I loved the work, but the job required too much travel, and was seriously getting in the way of our ability to have children. I was told, in so many words, “Right now, you’re married to your husband. When you take your next promotion, you will be married to the company.” Then, as if on cue, the beloved and virtuous company I had worked for up to that point was bought out by a large, uninteresting, and mostly uncaring corporate conglomerate. So, before it was too late, I quit.

My husband and I essentially tag teamed. I had been the primary bread-winner, and he had always been part time, and now we switched roles. It has been 13 years since then, and we have two incredible kids. I don’t regret the choice often, but I sometimes miss all those smart guys I used to work alongside. Fortunately my husband is not only my best friend but also the smartest guy I know, so I am content hanging with him and the kids as long as they are willing to hang out with me. 

Would you describe your life and surroundings as idyllic? 
The word “idyllic" makes me uncomfortable, because it implies a kind of ideal. I don’t think of our life as ideal. I think of my life as a combination of happy, earned, and fortunate. In summary, I am happily married to a guy I am crazy about, and have been for 25 years. Together we made two pretty remarkable kids. When we were young and in love, and I was making a good income as an aerospace engineer, we continued to live like college students because we simply didn’t want for more. So we saved much of that professional salary for over a decade. That financial security has given us lifestyle flexibility today that we could not have imagined in our 20s. It was one of the smartest things we ever did.

On the flipside, and there is always a flipside, I have a hereditary autoimmune disease called Sjögren's syndrome. Today it is mostly a nuisance, but it could get ugly at any time. When I was young, I was a tomboy and athlete, but today a good six kilometre walk is about as much as I can reasonably do. So those two things: a hint of financial security and a nagging sense of time as precious and finite, have led us to be more deliberate about our lifestyle than most of our peers.

My surroundings, however, I just found out, are very nearly idyllic. I recently learned from Dennis Dutton's TED Talk that there is such thing as a universally idyllic landscape shared by all cultures around the globe.

He describes this universal archetypal landscape as follows:

"People in very different cultures all over the world tend to like a particular kind of landscape, a landscape that just happens to be similar to the Pleistocene savannas where we evolved. It's a kind of Hudson River school landscape featuring open spaces of low grasses interspersed with copses of trees. The trees, by the way, are often preferred if they fork near the ground, that is to say, if they're trees you could scramble up if you were in a tight fix. The landscape shows the presence of water directly in view, or evidence of water in a bluish distance, indications of animal or bird life as well as diverse greenery. And finally -- get this -- a path or a road, perhaps a riverbank or a shoreline, that extends into the distance, almost inviting you to follow it. This landscape type is regarded as beautiful, even by people in countries that don't have it. The ideal savanna landscape is one of the clearest examples where human beings everywhere find beauty in similar visual experience.”

This just happens to describe the land around our home in every way, right down to the copses of trees that fork at the base, lush greenery, abundant wildlife, and a path through the cat-tails out to a bluish lake in the distance. So, somewhere in my amygdala, I must have known this when we bought our home ten years ago. This setting has been a huge source of my inspiration.

There's a transcendent quality to the images you post daily on the STILL Blog and a tremendous sense of peace. Does that reflect your own peace or are you a howling maelstrom of conflict and terrifying possibility underneath? 
While it would sound much more interesting to hint at a howling maelstrom of inner conflict, I have to disappoint you and say it just ain’t so. I have always had a pretty firm sense of who I am, what I want, and what “normal” looks like. I love art. But I don’t really have demons. If there is a peacefulness to my images, I think it comes from a deliberate attempt to separate myself from the craziness that is much of contemporary media and modern consumer culture. The nature I focus on is a healing force, waiting to be paid attention to, if we can tune out the computer, the daily news, and the exhortations of advertising.

You have said the blog is images of things you pick up on your daily walks. Do you find yourself being forced to forage every day now? Do you ever wonder what it would be like to walk aimlessly again? 
My walking and gathering is still a joy. I never think of it as a job or a necessity. But arranging the images and processing the photos, now that I’m in my fifth year, can occasionally feel like one too many things to fit into my day. There are some days when I would like to wake up, open a book, demand a steady stream of lattes, and never leave my bed.

US retailers Target and West Elm (the Pottery Barn people) have picked up your work for licensing. Do you worry you might get so caught up in the commercialisation of your work that you lose the very essence of time and peace that have presumably led to its creation? 
That’s a very astute question. And the answer is both yes and no. The truth is that the commercial work has already gotten in the way. I did a lot of the design work for the Target products in particular. And for several days before each major deliverable I would spend whole days at the computer preparing image files and would often forego my daily walk.

I also found it hard over the last year to quickly shift from left-brain activities like meeting deliverable deadlines, to right-brain activities like being attentive on my walks and then really seeing my found object so that I could photograph it in an original way. I believe it is possible to train the brain to quickly shift between these two modes, but I haven't gotten there yet. However, I am not so concerned about this for the long run. The piling up of two major retail launches occurring simultaneously is not likely to happen again. I hope there will be more opportunities like these in the future, but as long they are reasonably staggered, I am confident I can have my cake and eat it too. 

My book's got your dead sparrow on it. Is that a first for you? 
Is it my first image on a book cover? No. Is it my first dead animal photo on a book cover? Yes. I think I have sold three images to publishers for book covers, and probably about half a dozen images for book covers to individuals who are self publishing. The STILL images have been used in more ways than I could have ever imagined. Some of the examples that pop to mind include: animation characters for kid’s educational videos, an LGBT poster, Royal Opera banners, Smithsonian lectures, 2 master’s theses, Trend catalogues, product packaging, wine labels, company logos, magazine covers, and countless tattoos.

What's the story of this particular unfortunate bird? 
This little fox sparrow hit our glass door. I still feel kind of bad about it. We’ve lived in our current home for ten years. We would get the occasional bird that hits the glass windows, but it was fairly rare. And they were often dazed, but not killed. Then, two years ago, I had the windows professionally cleaned for the first time. And to make matters worse, I did it in spring, right when all the migratory birds were passing through our area.

Well, it was sort of a blood bath. In the previous eight years we’d only had maybe six bird deaths, but that spring, we probably had six in a matter of weeks. I vowed to never get my windows cleaned again.

There's a lot of death in STILL. Would you like to comment? 
There is indeed. An Italian art zine publisher recently produced a zine on death, and asked me to submit some dead animal photos. So I went through my archive and found over forty images of dead animals. I had no idea I had that many. It should be obvious, but focusing on nature does not always mean Monet water lilies and Van Gogh sunflower fields.

Everything in nature dies, and if you spend enough time there, dead things simply become part of the landscape, and coming across them becomes part of experiencing that landscape. They are often some of my favourite images—with a lot of peacefulness, beauty and grace. In all cases, the animals were found already deceased, and, I hope you agree, have been respectfully commemorated.

Will you get bored with it? Do you have other projects in your back pocket? 
Another insightful question. Will I get bored? Maybe. Probably. Some day. But I’m not yet. Maybe I’ll become like a crazy cat lady, and instead of 27 cats, I’ll have 27 years of doing daily STILL images. Doing STILL has been such an unexpected life enhancer, in part I think because of the hyper-attentiveness it requires, that I am in no hurry to quit. But I am in my fifth year now, and I am feeling the itch to change it up in order to continue to grow creatively.

I don’t have any brilliant projects in my back pocket. I wish I did, I have tried out a few ideas, but nothing has stuck yet. I can’t decide if I will evolve this project or if I will put a period on it by commemorating it with a book. Ultimately, I would like to create something similar in its dailiness, but new in its form and expression.

You can follow Mary Jo on Pinterest, Instagram or RSS the STILL blog here.

Above: The making of the Birdkill cover image!

Huffington Post Reviews Blog Shock Horror

When I hammered the best (IMHO) bits of the first two years of this blog into a book for a self-publishing workshop thingy I was giving over at Dubai's uber-funky hangout The Archive, the last thing I thought was that it would aspire to the lofty heights of a review in the Huffington Post.

Well, it has. You can read that very review here.

When you've finished, you can buy the book here for your Kindle or here for your iPad or other tablet. The good news is that it'll cost you the brave sum of $0.99...

Indian Lecturer Held By Dubai Police For Defamation

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gulf News' Bassma Al Jandaly reports today on the case of an Indian university lecturer who has been held by Dubai police, while on a visit to the country, for defamation. Arrested on the 5th May, two weeks later he's still in Dubai, out on bail but with his visa held by police.

The lecturer worked for a "private university" in Dubai's Academic City. According to the story in GN, police confirmed the man had his contract terminated without reason by the university - Dubai courts found in his favour and he had received his end of service benefits.

However, returning to India, the lecturer appears to have indulged in the activity known as the grinding of the axe. I think I found his blog, which makes for highly entertaining reading and lets the university have it in no uncertain terms with remarkable vigour and an almost obsessive degree of staying power. Although comments are turned off and the YouTube videos have been made private, the rest of the content is up there and there is certainly plenty of 'masala' on offer.

The university's response was apparently to lodge a defamation case against the man at Rashidiya police station. And so when he travelled from the US, where he is based according to GN, to the UK and stopped off to see his Dubai-based wife, his collar was comprehensively felt.

In a rare moment of sheer cravenness I'm not going to link to his blog because I can't be entirely sure this is indeed the blog in question (given there are no names in the story, I found a blog that seems to fit the bill quite nicely by Googling "dubai university lecturer india end of service", as you would) and I'd rather not be joining him over at Rashidiya nick trying to defend myself against a charge of sharing links to material alleged to be defamatory.

It's interesting (and noteworthy bloggers, tweeters and all you other online commentators - as I pointed out in my last post, in fact) that in the UAE, defamation remains a criminal rather than civil matter. Now covered by the provisions of the UAE's cyber crime law, the mere accusation of online defamation has resulted in this man's liberty being taken from him. He can now look forward to a lengthy and expensive trial process unless the defamation case is dropped.

In choosing this course of action, I would argue that The University That Must Not Be Named has ensured greater reputational harm will ensue from this affair than if it had chosen not to pursue a criminal case of defamation in the UAE.

However, in the meantime, our lecturer friend would appear to be in rather a lot of hot water...

Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy: Apologies For The Inconvenience

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have finished writing Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy. This is a good thing. The book really sort of finished itself, taking over from me and racing its way to a cataclysmic, bonkers finish that had me breathless writing it, let alone what it's going to be like reading it.

I'm quite pleased. Now it's getting a hard edit and then it'll go off to 1) beta readers to pull its ears and see if they can make it cry 2) a couple of subject matter experts, including a former student at MECAS - the Middle East Centre for Arabic Studies in Shemlan (I takes me research serious, like, I does) and last but by no means least 3) Agent Robin to see if he feels he can shop this one around.

The book is partly set in MECAS, which shut down in 1978 due to the increasingly dangerous environment that was Lebanon At War. MECAS has long fascinated me - it was from here George Blake was taken to be arrested for being a Soviet double agent. The Lebanese call it 'the British Spy School' with some justification. Few people know this little village above Beirut has such a murky past, but it's an absolute gift to someone like me. I have not hesitated to accept it!

It's a lot darker, IMHO, than Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and I would  argue it has a little more of the feel of Olives - A Violent Romance to it. But then I thought Space was funny and my first Amazon review (as usual, Big Dave) emphatically disagreed. So what would I know?

It's not just about Shemlan, of course. There are little bits set in Tel Aviv, Baghdad and Riyadh and a lot in Beirut. There's a smattering in Aleppo and a good hunk in Tallinn and the island of Hiuumaa in Estonia. It's amazing what you can get up to with a little under 100,000 words to play with!

Anyway, as a consequence I have not blogged at all this week and so owe you an apology if you were expecting a slice of the usual inanity, half-thought and uninformed comment.

How To Sell To UAE Bloggers

I'm doing quite a lot of 'how to'ing recently, am't I? Don't worry, this isn't a book post...

This advice doesn't come from someone that runs amazing professional 'blogger outreach' programs because I don't really do very much of that. It comes from the other end of the horse - the blogger at the receiving end end.

While it's lovely to find you have been added to the Cision media distribution list and positively feted by PR people, many of the approaches seem to miss some reasonably basic thinking when it comes to seeking the engagement of people with blogs, popular Twitter accounts or much-liked Facebook pages. So these pointers might be helpful for future approaches.

1) Bloggers are people too.
I almost fell into the trap of labelling this one 'bloggers are not journalists' but this misses the fact that journalists (no matter how it goes against the grain to admit this) are also people. Little I have to say about approaching bloggers doesn't also apply to approaching journalists.

So by saying we're people too, what do I mean? I mean, for instance, that it would be nice if the approach were individual to me rather than generic. Saying you enjoy my thought-provoking blog is all very nice, but that hardly tells me you actually give a hoot or have ever read anything I have written.

If you had, you'd be aware that I'm much more likely to bite you than let you pat me on the head.

I am naturally going to feel more interested in helping you out if you've been a regular reader/commenter on this blog. Even a few words referring to why you think this blog would be interested in your new perfume line for dogs - ideally linked to some content I have posted here - would let me know you've at least had a stab at mapping the relevance of what you do to what I do. Shared interest is good. Irrelevance is bad.

2) Bloggers aren't there to cover your products
I know, it's amazing isn't it? But the majority of what I write in this blog is peculiar to me and the world around me. Inviting me to the Armani hotel to attend the launch of a new range of bamboo shopping trolleys will not have me gushing and bright-eyed at the prospect of going to such a wonderful place. I have never written about bamboo shopping trolleys before and have exhibited no interest in these items in the past (although now I'm quite sure Klout will include it in my areas of expertise and I'll own the category in search).    I don't write about products or review products. Ten minutes spent browsing the blog would mark me as a non-target for shopping trolley launches.

Fashion and food bloggers are more susceptible to these types of invitation if they relate to fashion or food and if they are somehow interesting and/or innovative. Food product launches are not likely to cut it. Fashion bloggers are (sorry guys, but you are) incredibly spoiled and will need something out of the ordinary or a great relationship having been established.

3) Bloggers have day jobs
There are few people in the Middle East making money out of blogging to the extent they don't have to earn money by doing something conventional like, say, working. So a Tuesday afternoon event is likely to be out of the question - an all-day gig mid-week, even if it's exciting and deeply tempting, will likely not cut ze mustard. We have jobs to go to. That means if you want to organise an amazing all-day event targeting bloggers, you'll probably have to work on a Friday. Altogether now? Aaaahhh.

4) Slowly slowly catchee monkey
An individual approach that is contextual will be much more likely to reap rewards than scatter-gun event invites. A great example here is how Nokia's PR agency, d'Abo & Co, used my recent highly public Twitter meltdown with my HTC Android mobile (there's nothing like a mobile perma-crashing and telling you it's 'quietly brilliant' every time it staggers back to its feet to get a chap's goat) to slip a Nokia Lumia into my life. It was a risky strategy, they had to have had real confidence in that product - but, having the expectation I'd hate the Lumia I actually loved it and didn't mind saying so. I don't feel beholden to them for lending me a mobile, but I did think their timing and smart approach was very well managed. I don't mean to be difficult, but I am generally brand antithetic. Some bloggers I am sure will love brands. Love 'em to death. Positively fawn over  'em. Let me know when you find one, eh?

So it's a matter of monitoring conversations (blogs, Twitter, Facebook, whatever) and mapping out your influencers (who IS an influencer?) before making an approach that is generally, as with any conversation, led by a contribution of some sort. Give forward to earn a place at the table.

By the way, most UAE blogs have relatively small readerships.

5) Build a community by being a member of the community
What is an influencer? A Klout score? Number of followers? Number of comments? You need to establish some metrics to decide at what level of influence it's worthwhile bringing someone onside - because you'll need to invest in the relationship. It's not a one-hit thing, the key word is the R one - relationship. Approaching a person, inviting their involvement and engagement with you, facilitating that engagement and maintaining a respectful (ie not 'we're targeting product messages at you because we think people listen to you') dialogue. That way you can bring influencers on board, typically one by one, and maintain that conversation to the point where you actually could organise a tweetup or other event and people would be happy to come. That'll take time and investment, but it's so much more effective than pumping out generic materials in the hope that bloggers will slavishly act as botnets for your product messages.

That's my 2p worth. I genuinely hope marketers out there find it useful.

We're Back, Baby!

delete (Photo credit: M i x y)

You can only begin to imagine the look on my face when I pootled over to the blog yesterday to put up a post for the day (I was going to whinge about the new Salik gates, for what it's worth) and found the cheery words from Google (in Arabic, of course, because they insist on showing Arabic content to someone whose account preferences specify English) that my blog had been deleted. To give Google some credit, it was thanks to Google Translate I was able to find out what the hell the note the Space On The Internet Formally Known As My Blog (SPOTIFKAMB to IT people) meant.

Deleted. Gone. All of it.

It took a while to sink in. This blog has become a part of my life in ways I would never have thought possible. I've been feeding it words like a remorseless Tamagochi since I started it (as a frustrated writer who missed journalism) in April 2007, when I posted about the Arab Media Forum (This here post, in fact) to a readership of approximately three. I've been posting more or less regularly ever since - a body of work that stretches back, I realised as I made my way to the Blogger Forum to try and get some help, six years now. In all, over a thousand posts from rants about mendacious food companies through half-baked observations on the state of our media to book plugging now populate this dusty corner of the Web and I have become quite fond of it.

Every day a few hundred or so people pop by to hang out and most of them use the ashtrays and everything. Some posts have attracted thousands and thousands of readers - the ones where I expose the crap people put in their food and drink are posts I am particularly proud have attracted such attention, because I think it's important more people are made aware that Subway bread contains gunk, Aquafina is tap water and other great truths.

Why did Google do it? They never do tell you, but an educated guess (fuelled by some panicky reading yesterday) would be some sort of spammer/hacker exploit that meant a number of blogs (the UAE Community Blog and SeaBee's 'Life In Dubai' were also affected and a number of other blogs were complaining of unfair deletion about the same time I was) got trashed.

A number of people kindly suggested on Twitter that I migrate to Wordpress. Thanks for the suggestions, but it did feel a little like when you tweet about a PC problem and all the iZombies come crawling out to intone 'Buy a Mac' in their little, dead zombie voices. I like that blogger is the Barney of the blogging world, a sort of Little Tikes easy to use thing in nice, primary colours. Wordpress is far too complicated for me and I have neither the time nor inclination to build my own templates and other stuff. I gave up playing around under the bonnet of technology years ago and have no hankering to go back.

I did come away from the experience with the definite feeling that Google's fighting a 24x7 bot-war against the hackers, spammers and other manifestations of absolute evil. Occasionally that results in a few carbon based life forms getting squished. The only thing I can say is they unsquished me pretty quickly - so thanks to Nitecruzer, the entity that seems to do most of the management of anguished bloggers at the Blogger Forum. He could perhaps be politer, but this is a man tested with a constant dialogue with pissed off bloggers, so you can see how he might be occasionally inclined to testiness.

Anyway, drama over. Back to the usual hooning around and complaining about stuff... Move on, people, there's nothing to see here. Come along, now. Let's be having yer. And take those shinies with you...

Five

Birthday Cake (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's the Arab Media Forum 2012 today. So what? I hear you mutter.

Well, this silly little blog was born five years ago during the Arab Media Forum 2007, with this post in fact, 'Lebanese Takeaway'. The eagle-eyed among you will spot the post was, in fact, dated the 24th April rather than May 8th, but that's a minor detail. It's the Arab Media Forum Calendar rather than the precise date we're following here.

For the benefit of anyone wot gives a hoot, this here post on how to speak Arabic in ten words is the most popular thing I've ever posted here and the post still gets a smattering of hits every day from people searching for "What does Akid in Arabic mean?" and similar queries. It means you're never going to see that shipment, mate. That's what it means.

I'm mildly amazed I've kept it going this long, to tell you the truth. I started out originally because I missed writing and was in an 'in-between' phase with the nasty book writing habit. That and I was getting increasingly interested in digital media at work and had been experimenting with Wikis and other online things. I had a mild dislike for the 'anonybloggers' of the time and felt quite strongly that if you had an opinion, then you should have the guts to express it openly.

In all this time I have never been cautioned, 'yanked' or otherwise approached or pressured by any entity, government or commercial. This has also been a source of mild, if pleasant, surprise - and a glance back at the archives tells me that I have on occasion been more intemperate on occasion than I recall today!

Anyway, there it is. Thanks for dropping by and for wiping the handbasin when you've finished for the convenience of other passengers.

Must Use Bigger Elephants

I'm over in Australia today rabbiting away about my remarkable tally of rejections from the British publishing industry on Ozzie Sci-Fi writer Patty Jansen's brilliantly titled blog, Must Use Bigger Elephants.

It's all part of Patty's 'Blog Tour', a brilliant scheme writers have evolved to share space on each others' blogs and therefore give each other access to their readers for a day. I've guest posted on a number of other writers' blogs (and gladly hosted them on this one), mostly because of the international community of writers I've stayed in touch with since we all met on Harper Collins' Authonomy website.  Few us still visit Authonomy, but a great number of us still stay in touch.

It's interesting, Authonomy could well turn out to have had a demonstrably important and wide-ranging effect on writing and fiction that was completely unintended by its founders. And one not entirely in their interests, as many of us have thrown up our hands at the publishing industry and gone it alone. Tools like blog tours give writers access to global audiences as well as giving readers access to new writers. And of course self-publishing means you can reach global audiences far more easily than all the printing, shipping, distributing and stocking involve in 'traditional' publishing.

So do please be my guest and pop over to MUBE and have a root around and perhaps, if you're into science fiction, take a look at Patty's work. Don't forget to behave well while you're there and wipe your feet before going in...

This looks like Beirut!

Image via WikipediaI have long been meaning to post this but for one reason or another the timing has never seemed quite propitious. Today, the omens augur well.

I follow an awful lot of blogs around the region. I don't always comment as often as I'd like to (comments are always nice, they let people know there are eyeballs out there), but I'm usually pretty diligent at dipping into Netvibes and seeing who's been updating.

One of my favourite treats is Jad Aoun's blog, Lebanon: Under Rug Swept. A great highlight for me is Jad's one-man campaign to stop people using the cliché 'Looks like Beirut' to describe any given scene of destruction or degradation. Apart from finding the mildly obsessive spirit of Jad's endeavour attractive (he snail mails a 'looks like Beirut' certificate to offenders, as well as outing them on the blog), I'm amused by how, over twenty years after the end of the civil war, people are still using the phrase.

It's something I have encountered in my writing life, an oddly jaundiced Western view of the Middle East in general and certainly of Beirut in particular. I have had agents rejecting the manuscript of my second serious novel, with the rather over-complicated working title of Beirut, based on the fact that people don't want to hear about war zones. (I am currently represented by Robin Wade of Wade and Doherty, who is shopping Beirut around various London publishers) The book's about an international hunt for two missing nuclear warheads and is set in Hamburg, Spain, London, Brussels, Malta, Albania, the Greek Islands and, last but by no means least, that most sexy of Mediterranean cities, Beirut.

I love Beirut. I always look forward to visits with anticipation and excitement. I don't live there, so I don't have to experience the city's everyday frustrations (and they are legion) - I can just drop in and fill myself up with wandering around the streets, enjoying Ottoman architecture and the vibrant street life. I wander around stealing locations for books or snapping vignettes, exploring the fascinating diversity of the place, from the flashy shopfronts of Hamra and Verdun to the labyrinthine ethnicity of Bourj Hammoud. The city sparkles and jostles, stretched out from the long corniche along the splendid Mediterranean up into the mountains, all presided over by the great white-capped bulk of Mount Sassine. At night it lights up, bars and restaurants serving a constant tide of laughing, happy people - Gemayzeh no longer quite the place to be it once was (and Munot before it), while Hamra is becoming busier. It feels good to be there.

So I am always pained to get reactions to Beirut like 'This gritty and realistic novel is set in a war torn city' or 'We don't think the British public would be interested in a conflicted city like Beirut'. The first comment made my blood boil even more because the book is most certainly not based in a war torn city. It's based in a sexy, modern city that fizzles with life. (The fact that much of its infrastructure teeters just to the right side of disaster just adds frisson...) The comment just showed the reader had, at best, skimmed a few bits before spurning me like one would spurn a rabid dog. What made it worse was the reference, twenty years after the fact, to the place being war torn.

In fact, thinking about it, I may well just refer any future perpetrators directly to Jad!

A Most Respectable Blogger

I actually have this as a t-shirt and I'm very fond of it, too...

I was asked by my co-host on the weekly UnWired radio programme, Rama Chakai, what it was that made me 'a blogger' (I'm introduced on the show as a public relations director, writer and blogger). The answer is, of course, other people. It's not a title I have ever given myself - other people, media in specific, give it me to validate me. You see, journalists do tend to think I'm not much use as a public relations person (unless the story is about public relations, of course), so they have to find something more acceptable to the public. Like bank robber or canary molester.

I have written here before about media using 'experts' with no validation of their expertise. It's an insidious game. And I'm part of it, despite the fact I have never introduced myself as anything other than my day job.

Would I still be 'a blogger' if I had a more acceptable job, such as Middle East Analyst at the SNAFU Institute? No, I don't think I would. So here is proof that it is more generally acceptable to be a blogger than a public relations person.

Yeah, I know the bar's incredibly low there. But it's perhaps interesting how bloggers have acceptability as qualified sources of information for mainstream media.

Emirati Activists Arrested

WAM Abu Dhabi, 25 April 2011 (WAM) -- UAE Attorney General Salim Saeed Kubaish has stated that a group of UAE citizens were arrested on order of the public prosecution and questioned in the presence of their lawyers.

He said that Ahmed Mansour Ali Abdullah Al Abd Al Shehi, Nasser Ahmed Khalfan bin Gaith, Fahad Salim Mohammed Salim Dalk, Hassan Ali Al Khamis, all Emiratis, and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq, who does not carry identification papers, were held in preventive custody for investigation for being found committing crimes of instigation, breaking laws and perpetrating acts that pose threat to state security, undermining the public order, opposing the government system, and insulting the President, the Vice President and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

WAM/TF

WAM is the national news service of the UAE and the above file yesterday confirms what the rumour mill has been talking about for days. One of the men's wife told newspaper 7Days she hadn't seen him since he was arrested on the 8th April but had talked to him on the phone and 'He is OK'. As I know absolutely nothing of the details of this case, there's little I can add of value, except that it will be interesting to see what crimes the men are substantively accused of beyond speech - the freedom of which is enshrined in Article 30 of the UAE's constitution, albeit with the caveat 'within the limits of the law'.

Best Burger Bullies Blogger

And you thought that every restaurateur in the Middle East learned a clear lesson from the awful public relations disaster that was triggered when the fools behind Benihana Kuwait decided to try and bully Kuwaiti blogger Mark '2:48AM' Makhoul into retracting a blunt view of their restaurant? Think again.

Omani blogger Omani Cuisine reports receiving an email threatening legal action after posting the unflattering review of Best Burger linked here for your listening pleasure.

The Benihana disaster represented a new low in Middle East media freedoms at a time when we all watched the new highs of Tunis and Tahrir. Let's just hope that the bullies at Best Burger fast come to realise this is not the way to go if you don't want a great deal more unwelcome attention and opprobrium than the original post would have generated - particularly if it had been taken - in the spirit that blog posts are almost invariably intended - as valid customer feedback!

Middle East Expert

Image via WikipediaWatching Sky News last night, I was infuriated to see, once again, a random person interviewed and billed on the strapline as a 'Middle East Expert'. It's something I hate with a passion, to the point where I got told off for talking at the TV again. Yes, I really am turning into a grumpy, spittle-flecked old bastard.

This awful, lazy habit of validating people with a label rather than a credential is a major problem with mainstream media. When we've got The Observer trotting out the canard that we need 'proper' journalists to give us more trustworthy sources of information than 'citizen journalists', we're obviously being told to sit back and trust our media, take whatever they feed us as gospel and meekly accept that someone who Sky News calls a 'Middle East Expert' is, indeed an expert. And on the Middle East, at that.

And yet that's a great deal less validation than I'd expect of a source on Twitter, say. Who says he's an expert? What's the measure of expertise? Why not give his title, which presumably would be Dean of Middle Eastern Studies at London University or Middle East Analyst at the United Nations? Or is the problem that he's a lobbyist, baker or perhaps a candlestick maker? Don't get me wrong: I don't care if he's a candlestick maker if he's making sense and putting forward a credible argument. But I still want to know what he is so I can filter my judgement of what he's got to say.

I see this process all the time myself. I'm the Group Account Director of Spot On Public Relations. I'm a PR guy. I'll accept communications consultant. Media don't like to put 'PR guy' out there against their nice, glib commentator, so they like to change my job title. I have been a 'social media expert' (ugh) and once, to my extreme, squirming embarrassment, a 'social media guru'. I have been, on many occasions a 'blogger' and even a 'prominent blogger' and, again once, a 'leading blogger'. Would you trust a 'leading blogger' or a 'PR guy'?

It's a no brainer, isn't it?

When I shot a scene for Piers Morgan in Dubai, I gave the producer my business card. On the segment, I appear in the desert with the immortal words, 'Ex-journalist and blogger' under my name. Not 'Group Account Director' or 'Public Relations Professional'. 'Ex-jounalist' neatly rubs away the vague, if evaporating taint that comes with 'blogger'.

So you can only begin to wonder at the vested interest disguised by 'Middle East Expert' or 'Defence Expert'. It infuriates me precisely because I know how very dishonest the practice is - from a media that insists on telling us that it is the only trustworthy source out there these days.

Media Events

Image via WikipediaLook, 'doing' social media does not consist of sending invitations to bloggers to attend media events.  Many bloggers I know have day jobs and any with media experience would rather force a prickly pear up their right  nostril than go to a press event.

There's a department in hell that consists of press events. It's for really, really bad people for whom an eternity in blistering flames being tormented by devils is just too good.

In particular, if you send me invitations to attend media events, I will feel perfectly free in future to hold you up to public ridicule. I am not interested in your product launch. I am not interested in your initiative. I might give the coverage, however it is derived or appears, a passing glance if it engages me - but I am not about to invest a couple of hours in some drab hotel being fed tired food while suited executives cluster around and whisper, glancing at me before approaching me with wolfy smiles and 'So, you're a blogger!'

If this blog was that of a dedicated follower of fashion, I'd likely go to a preview or launch event if it was big. Likewise, if I had a geeky weather blog and the airport met office contacted me to arrange a tour of their facilities, I'd likely be interested.

But a deranged marmoset with a frontal lobotomy could surely work out that this blog is merely commentary, of personal experience, news and a few tatty half-thoughts. Which brings us back to the single greatest complaint that journalists have about PRs and in-house communicators that attempt to engage with them - that these people simply haven't taken the time out to understand their publication/medium and its target audience.

Anyone that wants me to go to a launch announcement 'as a blogger' has similarly not invested the time to work out that not only do I not care, I actively do not care. I vocally and negatively do not care. I will respond well (but negatively) to appropriate invitations from known social contacts. I really don't like getting press invitations. I'm not press and I won't act in lieu of a compliant media and slavishly convey your product information for you.

That my name is now presumably on someone's list of 'social media' contacts is a worry. This, then, is a cease and desist order. Next time, I'll take it public.

How did you get here?

Image by tricky ™ via Flickr
I'm not asking any deep philosophical question or setting out to give you a Paulo Coelho answer to the riddles and mysteries of life. I was just wondering how you actually, you know, got here.

SiteMeter, which is a handy little doodad that does all sorts of analysis on visitors to one's blog, shows a remarkable diversity of paths that lead to this silly little blog. Quite a few people come via the UAE Community Blog, appearing to use that Venerable UberBlog as a 'jumpsite'. Another good dash of visitors wander in from Twitter for one reason or another - some impelled, no doubt, by the odd pimping tweet broadcast by yours truly.

A good number come via search and all sorts of strange searches lead people, presumably often bitterly disappointed to find that what you see is most certainly not what you get, here. I am particularly proud that all sorts of permutations of Subway, Aquafina, Pringles and Kelloggs are leading people to the posts on this blog that explore the egregious side of all four. That people searching Google for "subway fake wheat bread" get this post on their first page of search results is a delight to me. I see quite a few people, one way and another, who are looking for various sorts of fakery. A rod for my own back, that one!

Some appear to repeat searches they've made before - at least I can only hope this is the case with the recurring incidence of 'Russian Girl Face Slash' I get landing here. I'm also very glad I regularly disappoint the people searching for various permutations centred around Russian girls and nocturnal activities. I occasionally post some of the stranger searches I get, such as this here post.

Some people seem to stumble by. Some use their RSS readers, although by no means as many as I'd have thought. A few people wander in from other blogs who have either linked to one of my intemperate rants or kindly put me on a blogroll.  Quite a lot come up as 'unknown', so I don't know where they came from.

So here's my question today. Where did you come from? Drop a quickie comment if you wouldn't mind.

Oh - and thanks. It's nice to see you!

Watching A New Life Unfold

Image via WikipediaI have known Sara for years. A former colleague and current friend, she is far too talented for her own good and manages to combine a keen intellect with an absolute lack of ambition for herself. She believes in people and in the good to be found in people; something I admire particularly as I do not at all share her capacity in this regard.

She left Dubai for London some years back with a vague idea of using the communications skills she had honed in a sort of NGO sort of way. That never really happened as I fancy she thought it would until a few weeks ago all sorts of things came together and she decided to throw in London life and travel to Nablus to become a teacher.

I would contend this is not normal behaviour, but then chacun à son goût...

One of Sara's many talents is language. She's always had better than native English language skills (although this is not, generally, setting the bar very high. Few foreigners manage to mangle English like the English manage mangling English); I recall her once stopping a client dead in his tracks by pointing out that their encounter had been more than usually serendipitous. After all, it's not a word you expect from an Arab girl, is it? Her encounters with ignorant English colleagues in London were relayed back to me with delighted indignation ("Dahling, I just can't belhieve an Arab is editing my copy!"), but the fact remains that Sara has a way with words that is unusual, a keen eye for humanity and a strong sense of fairness and compassion.

When you combine these things with the whole 'Year in Provence' adventure of starting a new life as a volunteer in the West Bank, you could be forgiven for thinking the mixture would provide a powerful, evocative and compellingly detailed account of the experience.

And it does. Her blog is linked here and I commend it to you with all my heart. Go there now while it is still new and she is at the very opening of her adventure. Because I bet you a pound to a penny that this unfolding story will delight you as the days fly by.

Attacked by Blogs

 The recent breakfast cereal incident reminded me of this piece, which ran in Arabian Business, as well as on the blog, a while back. I thought it worth sharing an updated version of the piece just in case it's useful to someone.

What should you do if a blog slags off your company or makes snarky comments about your customer service? What are your rights and how can you fix the damage? Here’s a handy ten point guide for companies that feel themselves wronged by blogs.

1. Think
Before you rush to make a dim-witted comment on the blog, think about it. What has the blogger said that you disagree with? Is it an opinion or a factual error? Can you back up your assertion that there is a fundamental error? Can you provide evidence that the opinion expressed is ill-founded or at odds with the majority of people? If you work with a PR or communications agency, get their counsel before you act. Cast around for any other mentions, conversations or expressions of opinion/fact on this issue. Once you've commented, monitor the reaction and feedback and be ready to continue the conversation.

2. Remember: it’s a conversation
If you’re being attacked by blogs, it may be worth taking a look at the situation they’re highlighting and seeing if the point is valid and addressable – and then addressing it before going online and saying so. If the attack is invalid, then it’s worth acknowledging the point that’s been made before making your, well-argued, counterpoint in a measured, respectful way. The more aggressive the blogger, the more a measured tone will position you as the reasonable and authoritative participant in the conversation. It’s literally just like a face to face conversation – and wagging fingers or shouting will just get people’s backs up – even if in response to someone who’s obviously infuriated. Think how you’d behave in a customer service situation. Well, bloggers are just customers with an audience. Typically, although not always, people express frustration or annoyance online because the offline system has failed and they haven't felt as if anyone has listened to them.

3. Most blogs don’t matter
Before you go making a great big song and dance, consider doing absolutely nothing. Most blogs are read by an average 1.1 people – the 1 being the blogger. Is the blog well respected and well read? Will it influence opinion? Just because someone in the company has emailed a link to the blog around every member of the management team doesn’t mean that the blog is normally well read. A few hundred visits to a marginal blog prompted by that email, by the way, will just let the blogger know that they’re onto something that gets them more readers. So they’ll likely do more of it, not less.

4. Blogs can matter very quickly
I’m going to be very Delphic now. In deciding to ignore a blog, do bear in mind that blogs can go from zero to hero in absolutely no time. A lot of today’s journalists spend a lot of time on blogs and the oddest things can result in a huge amount of interest. There have been instances of a blog post making national front page headlines within 48 hours in Europe and gaining over 2 million readers as a consequence and Middle East blogs have also broken stories that have moved into mainstream media. And then there are companies that have turned expressions of customer dissatisfaction made on blogs completely to their advantage. The success story is built around actually listening to what people are saying, not ignoring it.

5. Don’t hide your identity
Like the Ray Bans ad says: don’t hide. There may be an urge to post a positive, balancing comment on the blog under an anonymous handle or a pseudonym. Do be aware that most bloggers have access to tools that allow them to track back visitors to the blog. You make a comment on my blog? I know who you are. I also know where you are, what browser you use, what version of Java you have, what operating system, where you came from and where you went to. So if you work for a major daily newspaper or a telco and you don’t like what I’ve got to say, have the guts to say so under your own name so that your comment is honest and balanced by your vested interest. Because I’ll know anyway and just ‘out’ you for being a custard. And so will many other people who write blogs.

6. Find out who the blogger is
No, I don’t mean set the secret service on ‘em. I mean take the time to read some of the blog at least, look at past posts and comments and see if the blogger is authoritative or a loose cannon. There’s nothing more awful than watching some corporate flak try to make a fool out of a widely respected expert because they didn’t bother finding out who the blogger was – regardless of whether they blog under their own names or pseudonyms, bloggers have an ‘identity’ in the overall conversation. (Please do note that I do not, under any circumstance, intend 'widely respected expert' to refer to myself. I'm just a goon.) Take a look at the blogs that link to/are linked to out of the blog. Look at Technorati and find the blog’s rating. There are other tools you can use too, including alexa. See if the blog attracts any comments and also take a few minutes to look at Twitter, because Twitter is probably the greatest blog-traffic driving tool in the blog-traffic driving toolshed. And don't forget Facebook, too! Perhaps also do a google or two and find out how the blog ranks on search. Authority is about tone, resonance and reach.

7. Take some time out to understand blogs in general
Know what a troll is? Or a trackback link? Understand the importance of RSS and feed readers? Know what IMHO stands for? If not, find a younger member of your staff and get them to explain it all to you before you start blundering around crashing conversations. By the way, if you want to know what blogs, Twitterers and others are saying about your company, consider setting up a Google alert. If you're ready to be slightly more sophisticated about your online presence, you'll want to engage an online monitoring company.

8. Don’t crash the conversation
Think of it all like you’d think about joining a real-life conversation. In posting to my blog, I’m putting something into the public domain that I think people will find interesting or that I just want to get off my chest. Usually both! It’s a bit like standing on a soap box. A few people are kind enough to drop by and listen to me – some have a chat with me at the end of the lecture. And I go to their lectures too – to listen and have a chat afterwards. It’s all pretty civilised most of the time. It’s relatively easy to join the conversation as long as you don’t crash in without having bothered to listen to the preceding debate. Again, just as in real life you wouldn’t rudely barge into a group and vent your opinion on a topic without taking the time to find out what the prevailing opinion and tone of debate was like. Well, not unless you want the group to all round on you and tell you to shove off, that is...

9. You can’t make it go away
Blocking access to a blog from within the corporate network because it has attacked your company will just ensure all your staff go home and take a look at what all the fuss is about. I worked with one company that did just that, in the face of our advice, and we watched in frustration as they embarked on a futile and highly visible witch-hunt that resulted in scoring 11,000 visits to a blog that wouldn’t have got 11 visits otherwise. For one reason or another, you have earned the attention of a blog. Depending on the situation, it’s likely that the best and most advisable course of action is to engage with that blog’s author and balance the POV with your own or even, gasp, act on the input.  By the way, consider search when you're commenting. The greatest crime of the cereal commenter was naming the clients who weren't otherwise named, ensuring that search brought up the post (try Googling 'Kellogs fake diet'!). SEO can also be your friend - investing in a good SEO strategy means your voice turns up first on search and these days that's actually a business essential.

10. Consider blogging as a tool
Don’t think of blogs as purely a dangerous manifestation of unfettered opinion and irresponsible ‘citizen journalism’. Blogs are so much more than that. They are a powerful medium of expression that is increasingly becoming an important barometer of public opinion and source of public voice. They are self-correcting in a way that conventional media aren't - people will correct a mistake on a blog faster than you can say 'nmkl pjkl ftmch'. And they're part of the revolution in social media that is changing the way people today communicate. They're not about to go away, in other words. By the way, this post is a very good case in self-correcting point!

You can actually use a blog as a highly effective platform for your company to engage with customers. Take some time out to have a look around and you’ll find that they’re actually a neat tool. You don’t have to have a million readers for a blog to matter, either. It’s better to have a few hundred people that want to interact with you than advertise to 100,000 that don’t. Remember, this is the era of the ‘long tail’. So think about joining ‘the conversation’. I think, after a while, you’ll be glad you did.

Hate

Image by George via Flickr

 To be perfectly honest, I'd rather have nothing to say about this at all, but I don't see how I can let it pass by now that it's been resolved, to most people's minds, appropriately.

The blog at www.al-emarati.com posted a hateful piece a few days back, based on the Mangalore plane crash. you can hear more about it in this podcast of the Dubai Today radio show yesterday, which I co-host every Tuesday. Jessica Swann and I talked to Samurai Sam, the shadowy figure behind the ever-central UAE Community Blog about the very issues raised by that venomous little blog. The whole issue raised an interesting ethical conundrum - how bad does it have to be before even people like myself and Sam, who believe passionately in free speech, agree that it's bad enough to be blocked?

I'm told that the al-emarati blog, although it looked as if it hosted several bloggers, was all the work of one man, a person who many bloggers will know as A Blessing in Tragedy. Sure enough, it certainly seemed that way stylistically, veering between interesting comment and bilious ranting. You'd start to worry about the stability of someone capable of that range in commentary rather than fiction.

There was a sizeable group of people calling for the Mangalore post to be blocked by the UAE regulator, the TRA. Although I appreciated people's strength of feeling (you'll just have to believe me when I tell you it was a truly horrible outpouring), I and others felt that blocking is not the solution to stuff that you don't agree with. Tellingly, the regulator's guidelines for blocking do not include incitement to race-hate. And I'm not sure how qualified we are, in the absence of a definition in law, to call that. If it doesn't actually break a law, blocking content is purely an emotional reaction and sets a dangerous precedent for obliterating opinion that we don't agree with - but that is vitally important for open debate.

However, it's been taken out of our wishy-washy pinko liberal hands. The blog has been deleted and now returns a 404 error. The URL had previously displayed the etisalat and du blocking messages, which rather made my heart sink. But now it's a 404. Whether that is because its author finally realised that he'd gone too far, or because Google had invoked US laws governing race-hate, we may never know.

But yes, I am very glad it's gone.

Citizen Journalism. Bah.

Image by bunky's pickle via Flickr

Another Arab Media Forum already! It hardly seems a year since the last one. It's now become traditional for me to celebrate the birth of this little bloggy thing (with this post) during the 2007 forum, as it is that very event wot was taking place as I first hit the 'Publish Post' key.

This year's forum features more social media stuff than ever before, but that's not really terribly difficult as it has previously had the token panel or two, last year there was even a blogger. I have to confess I didn't bother going this year. It didn't really seem terribly relevant - many of the discussions are taking place in an environment where change is driving a huge movement away from traditional media sources - even here in the Middle East where we are, as all agree, lagging. Broadcast is less challenged than print, but the low quality of regional printed news media will just exacerbate the speed of movement.


I was interested to see that 'a participant in a session on citizen journalism' (Gulf News didn't bother naming him/her) talked about the National Paints fire, the news of which was broken by our very own Albert Dias (@albertdias), quickly followed up by a Twitpic (Twitpic or it didn't happen is increasingly the standard).  We managed to get Albert on the 'phone for the opening of the Dubai Today Radio Show which made for a brilliant and dramatic opening to the show as Albert provided us with a cogent and intelligent commentary from the scene, 200 metres away from the holocaust that was devouring the huge paint store, his voice surprisingly calm against the background of explosions and sirens. And yes, BTW, I'm delighted we scooped GN online by at least 45 minutes.

So was this the 'citizen journalism' that the Forum was, yet again, debating? Well, not really. Albert wasn't a journalist, he was an eyewitness. It's just that he has access to much more efficient sharing networks: breaking the story on Twitter doesn't mean reporting it. It's just that we get access to the cold, hard facts that are the stuff of journalism. The journalism came when we decided to broadcast his voice, questioning him with a listenership, and principles of reporting, in mind.

That role, the role of taking the evidence and collecting it to give as rounded and objective a picture as possible, will never change. More of the responsibility for it is being put in our hands as we sift through sources of hard news and data, shared sources of fact and opinion. But we'll always need people to bring it together for us. It's just that we're going to want them to be online and, ideally, to be independent and have a sound reputation. Mendacity, in this environment, is not really an option- and trust networks, reputational networks, will become the cornerstone to popularity, and therefore revenue, into the future.

Journalism doesn't actually need huge publishing houses and hundreds of makeup artists and printing presses and all the rest of it. It doesn't even need massive recording studios, satellites and specialised receivers. The networks in place today, even with the lack of lower prices and higher bandwidth in our tragically under-served region, provide journalists all the access they need to inform and serve their audiences. But they will never again be the only source of information available to consumers.

A debate they might just get around to having next year. Or maybe not until the presses finally grind to a halt and they realise that nobody cares anymore.