Last Post

The Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA) has, as many of you know, taken the decision to block the sand between the Western areas of Sharjah and Dubai. I have covered this pretty extensively and am aware I'm in danger of boring you. But indulge me one last time.

I suspect this is, finally, the last post about the snicket. The RTA has now taken to stationing a number of four wheel drives (I think three) along the border, calling down a JCB by radio to plug any new gap being driven in the extensive Hadrianesque earthwork and concrete block barrier that they have put up to divide the open sand stretch between the two Emirates. It's too much even for the little band of lunatics willing to negotiate the remaining, amazingly dangerous, crossing over a high dune.

I banged through a gap in the fortifications today, beeping merrily and waving at the frustrated-looking bunch from the RTA calling up their yellow monstrosity. I suspect for the last time.

It's nice they've got so much resource to devote to stopping a few intrepid 4WDs from making the crossing (which is, incidentally, impassable to 2WD traffic and actually requires a modicum of desert driving skill to negotiate) between the two Emirates.

The shortcut did not cause high levels of traffic on the roads Dubai-side, and at no time resulted in any jams or traffic congestion. It did not cause any serious traffic incidents to my knowledge or contribute to a rise in accidents or fatalities. It didn't promote speeding, bad behaviour or reckless driving.

No journalist has picked up the 'phone to the RTA and asked them why they have built a wall between the two Emirates. And so we will likely never know.

Over and out.

PS: anyone who wants the backstory can just use the search box and look for 'snicket'.

Snarky

The ability to be cynical, negative and rude is one of the strongest assets of a good public relations practitioner.

If you have someone inside the tent who’s able to take a look at what you’re up to and see the downside, to ask the hard questions that media and the public will ask, then you’ve got an opportunity to factor that likely feedback into your plans. You then have the opportunity to change the plan, if that is what is required, or to prepare a well-thought out and clear response to the question that presents your point of view clearly and cogently. That includes looking at the searching, negative questions you’d rather not have to face, let alone answer.

We call the collection of those responses a ‘rude Q&A’: it's a document that summarises the worst things you can expect to have thrown at you, that asks the difficult or dangerous questions and that proposes a response to those questions. It means that your team is better prepared – they have had the chance to consider the factors involved and they all have access to a formal, unified response to the most challenging of questions.

A rude Q&A can make the difference between taking and managing the most probing query in your stride or standing around looking like a slightly surprised goldfish while you try and think up some off-the-cuff response to that bolt from the blue. It also avoids the awful situation where more than one spokesperson is in that situation and they both give completely different responses in their panic. Both responses may be perfectly valid, but it still ends up looking like the proverbial left and right hand disconnect.

Putting together a rude Q&A means being realistic about the other point of view, looking at the issue with fresh eyes and challenging it. It means having a downer on your good work, being cynical and snarky about your virtues and focusing on what’s bad about you. It means having the impertinence to ask the most inappropriate and searching questions of yourself. But it’s important that you do - before someone outside the tent does it.

This piece originally appeared as one of the chucklesomely named 'A Moment with McNabb' columns in Campaign Middle East magazine.

Twits

This Thursday will see the global Twestival event taking place in Dubai. Over 175 countries all over the world are having simultaneous events to celebrate the fine art of Twittering. All you have to do is be a user of the micro-blogging social networking phenomenon and this year’s biggest new thing since Marmite rice crackers.

Why bother?

Well, I can see there’s a downside to getting stuck at the upper deck of Dubai’s Barasti Bar on a Thursday evening with upwards of a 140 early adopters, geeks, nerds, social networking gurus (they’ll be the ones in towels) and neologists. But there’s an upside, too.

Twitter’s damn useful. It started as a social application which aimed to give you a 140 character space to answer the question ‘What are you doing right now?’ But Twitter has evolved at a remarkable pace. The underlying technology hasn’t changed so much as they way people have used it. Rather like SMS, Twitter has taken on a life of its own.

The Dubai Twestival venue was itself sourced and booked using Twitter, which can move information at remarkable speeds. In fact, Le Meridien Mina Seyahi (@minaseyahi) became a sponsor of the event - again, through Twitter. And so did Virgin Megastores (@virginmegame)!

Crowd-sourcing (Anyone know where I can get tickets to the Dubai Twestival?), customer service (I hate HSBC! "Hi. This is HSBC. What’s the problem?" - OK, so that example's a pipe dream, but you get what I mean. Companies like Comcast are using it effectively), marketing ("Try this out, it’s cool") and sharing ideas, information, updates, tips and links you’ve come across are all just a sample of the many ways that people are finding Twitter is a useful and cool tool.

For what it’s worth, people, my Twitter feeds into my Facebook page and to the blog (the feed’s there, to the right hand side) and generates a very different set of responses from each of the platforms it goes to. By using TweetBurner, a natty little application that shortens URLs, I can Twurl any site I come across on the web, sharing that information with the people ‘following’ me on Twitter, my Facebook friends and even you, the rather wonderful readers of this daft wee blog.

You can respond to a ‘Tweet’ on Twitter, send and receive direct messages and ‘re-tweet’ stuff you like and want to pass on to your fellow Twitterers. By tweeting and re-tweeting, information can flow at remarkable speed and to remarkable numbers of people. Just take the recent Mumbai bombings or the Israeli incursion into Gaza, where debate and information were flowing at a blistering pace.

And then start adding in other applications for Twitter. Take a look at Blip.fm (again, there’s a ‘Blip widget’ to the right side of the blog if you scroll down), which lets you select music you like and create a playlist. Each track you pick gives you a chance to comment and that comment’s shared with anyone getting your tweets as well as people following you on Blip. It’s a great way of playing with music, sharing and discovering new stuff. There are a whole range of interesting/useful/crazy Twitter tools out there, too.

If you want to find out more, a great place to start is by registering for Twitter, which takes little more than going to www.twitter.com and clicking on ‘Join the conversation’. You could follow up by registering for Twestival here - if you want to do that, I suggest you extractez le digit, because it's nigh on full as I post this.

If you get to the Twestival and want to meet up, I'll be easy to find. I’ll be the one not wearing bottle-bottom glasses and a funny ‘arm hammering my head’ hat...

PS: And now, for your listening pleasure, that Catboy and Geordiebird interview. Don't blame me if you go ahead and click here!!!

Fear?

Following on from the recent Gulf News interview with Ibrahim Al Abed, the head of the National Media Council, Khaleej Times has now siezed its chance.

That interview is linked here. It contains a few gems. I particularly like:

KT: What should the journalist worry about in the new draft?
NMC DG: Nothing. I am serious. Nothing. But, I do not consider a journalist to be a journalist if he spreads out a rumour. I do not consider a journalist to be a journalist if he wants to attack the President in an insulting way. And, I do not think that a journalist can be a journalist if he doesn't take into consideration the general culture of the country.

KT: Do you think journalists here self-censor?

NMC DG: Yes. I do not know... We have nothing to do.

KT: There seems to be some kind of a fear. What is the fear?

NMC DG: I do not think there is a basis for this fear. For me, any journalist has his own code of ethics. He should have. This is some kind of self-censorship. I look at it from this way. If you look at the code of ethics that was issued by the journalists, by the editors of the newspapers, we have many restrictions within the code of ethics itself. This is exactly the self-censorship.

Advertisement

Gulf News (640g) is more than worth your Dhs3 today, recessionary pressures notwithstanding.

It will repay your investment not because it contains much newsy stuff printed on dead trees, and certainly not for its coverage of the UAE Journalists' Association conference, but because of the advertisement on page 36. This alone justifies the expenditure, this alone makes today's GN a collector's item.

I commend it to you most highly.

Update. For those readers unable or unwilling (Nick) to purchase Gulf News, I have now uploaded a scan. GN's subscription department will never forgive me... You'll have to click on it to read it, of course...

The End is Nigh

Friends.

It is with a sad heart that I address you tonight. As you well know, a small band of valiant warriors has fought an implacable enemy for many months now, an enemy with resources and power beyond our wildest dreams; resources that it is willing to throw against us in an effort to crush us out of existence. If they succeed, they will deny us the very liberty of the sands that has so long been ours to enjoy.

This unjust war has been fought with honour by our people. It is not a war we asked for, but it is a war we prosecuted with dignity and valour.

The media has studiously ignored our plight. Not one pen has been lifted in our defence or to question the motives of this enemy, invisible for so many months but now clear for all to see. They have been allowed to continue in their course, to extinguish our hopes and dreams, while the world's press stand by and shamefully pretend that nothing is happening.

They brought earth movers to shake our resolve, but we were faster, more nimble and smarter than they. They built walls to bar us from the land, tore a slash of concrete barrier across this desert country so that it was divided by an impenetrable, dark, grey wall.

But we crossed their lines time and time again, confounding their nameless purpose. We carried the torch of freedom and liberty and we prevailed.

Friends, we prevail no more. Tonight only one crossing was left open and only a pitiful handful of defenders remained. Lorries dropped lines of concrete blocks, earth movers have been toiling since the early morning to push high piles of sand against those blocks and to carve new, impassable barriers out of the very land. The very weight of the resources our enemy is prepared to expend against us bears us down so that the burden is one we can barely carry.

I fear it is nearly over. I fear I have to tell you that hope almost escapes us entirely.

But we shall fight, my fellow countrymen. We shall fight. To the absolute end, to the finish. To the last man and the last four wheel drive, we shall fight the brutal invaders of our happy shortcut.

The war of the snicket is not, will not, be over.

We shall fight to the bitter end.

The Media Police

Gulf News (880g) today contains more commentary on the new draft media law of the UAE. In response to a petition from over 100 UAE academics, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists and members of non-governmental organisations, the national media council's director general, Ebrahim Al Abed has asserted that the law is a good thing.

Interestingly, the piece (which is significantly cut in the online edition, for some reason. You'll just have to shell out Dhs3 for the full skinny) adds some new fact. The National Media Council will be charged with ascertaining whether a breach of the law has taken place and forwarding the case to the courts which, if I understand his words correctly, effectively makes the NMC The Media Police.

Do you think they'll get smart new uniforms with shiny peaked caps and mirror shades?

"The National Media Council will have the responsibiliy of determining whether a possible breach of the law has occured - but it will then be for the courts to determine whether the law has actually been broken and to decide upon the penalty, if any" Al Abed told GN.

Meanwhile, another worrying development comes from the UAE Journalists' Association, which is holding a two-day conference at Dubai's Al Bustan Rotana today and tomorrow according to GN. The conference will discuss many weighty matters related to journalism and ethics, including the role of online media. In fact, talking to Gulf News, the Association's head said that:

"...trends and challenges to the media will also be discussed, such as the role of citizen journalism and bloggers. He said it was difficult to accept bloggers as journalists because they did not fall under a framework of accountability and ethics that govern responsible reporting."

Which is all very well, if 'citizen journalists' (hate that phrase) and bloggers are involved in the discussion. I certainly didn't get an invite... anyone else out there get one?

And do you WANT to be seen as journalists? Either professionally or in the eyes of the law? I know that I, for one, sure as hell don't...

Darwin

For those of you unlucky enough not to be on the mailing list, the 2008 Darwin Awards are now out. I shall treat you to one of the runners up before letting you follow the link to the winner.

The Darwin Awards are given annually to someone whose death was so utterly pointless that it considered thoughtful of them to have removed themselves from the human gene pool. Sure, it's cruel humour. But then we kill animals for sport, don't we?

2008 Darwin Award Runner Up: A ONE TRACK MIND Confirmed.

July 2008, Italy | Gerhard, 68, was queued at a traffic light in his Porsche Cayenne sportscar. Before one reaches the light, there is a railroad crossing, and Gerhard had not let the queue progress forward far enough before he drove onto the tracks. As you might imagine, given Murphy's Law, a train was coming.

The safety bars came down, leaving the Porsche trapped on the rails. According to witnesses, it took the driver awhile to realize he was stuck. Finally he jumped from the car and started to run--straight toward the oncoming train, waving his arms in an attempt to save his sportscar!

The attempt was partly successful. The car received less damage than its owner, who landed 30 meters away. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.

The moral of the story? Momentum always wins.

The Darwin Awards website is here while this year's award winner is here.

Snicketeers!

25°15'57.86"N

55°29'0.01"E

Have a lovely weekend folks! I'm going home - the short way...

30 Days

"Hi. Thanks for coming in to see us."
"Well, I was coming anyway. My Shiny's going dull again."
"That was actually the reason we asked to see you."
"Oh, cool. You're going to respray it again like last time it went dull?"
"Umm, no, not in so many words. We want it back."
"What do you mean, you want it back? No. It's mine. I bought it from you in the first place."
"Yes, but we want it back. You have to leave now and we want the Shiny back."
"But I don't want to leave. I invested everything I have here when you sold me the Shiny."
"That's the rules. What can we do?"
"But you said the Shiny would be a dream for life. That it was my gateway to new possibilities. You said I could relax in an iconic oasis of calm and dare to believe in my prosperous future. You said that I could dream a dream of dreamy dreams!"
"That was before the credit crisis. Now we all have to face economic realities."
"You said the Shiny would be mine forever!"
"We didn't. It's here in the small print, under redundancy. See?"
"But you didn't tell me that."
"We did. It's your memory at fault, that's what it is. Unless you've got something in writing?"
"No, of course not. Nobody even thought about redundancy when you sold me the Shiny."
"Well, we don't like to lecture, but perhaps you'd be better off by planning for the future rather than wandering around with your head in the clouds dreaming."
"What am I going to do now?"
"To be honest, that's not really our problem. We only work within the law."
"What law?"
"Our law."
"You're making it up as you go along."
"Right. That's enough. You're having a negative impact on the economy now. Give it back and toddle off, there's a good chap."
"I'll go to the newspapers."
"Jolly good idea. That'll give you something to pack with. Don't forget to leave the car at the airport."