Profiteering, Anyone?

As UK and much Northern European airspace remains closed, flights are being cancelled in swathes. Each new day is bringing more destroyed travel plans and now news is emerging of airlines behaving scandalously.

Not least among these are Aer Lingus, which is not only continuing to display a happy 'we sell cheap flights' website (only a one line link to a sparse volcano information page on the home page would even give away the fact that there's any problem at all), but is still not answering its phones to customers, providing any sort of telephone based information or even changing its standard messages or daytime only working hours.

Alongside this, Aer Lingus is actually still selling tickets on flights this week - flights that people whose travel has been cancelled are actually trying to rebook onto - flights that the airline is charging high prices for, too. Take a one-way from Dublin to London. Pre-crisis they asked €24.99 for that sector - now a ticket to travel
later this week (Wednesday, in fact) is being shopped out for as much as €149.99.



So people like us, stranded thousands of miles from home, can't get onto new flights following cancellations because the airline is selling our places to new travellers. What's more, if you take a look at the prices being offered, it's like a bookies' odds on the days when travel will actually go ahead!

Emirates, with a UK helpline that simply tells customers that it's not taking calls, is hardly doing better - and BA is, according to Sky News, behaving atrociously to passengers - including refusing to pay hotel costs for passengers it has stranded in Beijing, trying to charge them one-way fees for rescheduled return flights and failing to provide consular services for pax whose visas are expiring through no fault of their own.

I'm frankly amazed at the lack of fury over the cack-handed communications of the airlines, let alone the lack of media coverage at how badly airlines are communicating with their customers and managing the situation. Now they're selling out people's hopes for higher fares while restrictions still apply.

I'm quite sure fussing about it on this Middle Eastern blog backwater won't help, but at least I've got it off my chest!

Remote

It's been an eventful holiday one way and another. We spent a miserable day in Limerick Regional Hospital's A&E waiting room before being sent home for lack of a bed. By the next morning, Sarah (who was extremely ill) collapsed and had to be taken right back there by ambulance, a journey of over an hour. The paramedics were absolutely fantastic, a jovial yet highly professional crowd. All of the medical staff were truly marvellous: kind, good-natured and funny.

We owe the doctors, nurses and staff at Thurles Ambulance Service and Limerick Regional a huge thank you.

Despite that, Ireland's health service is obviously at breaking point - even from our limited experience you could see it was dangerously under-resourced and over-managed. I was infuriated by the fussy bureaucrat in admissions who insisted on calling me rather than letting me call them to check on the availability of a bed - only to find out when it came to the crunch that they actually couldn't call me as I had a UAE mobile and their lines were barred from international calls. We only found out we had a bed when I called back in desperation post-collapse. I pointed out this was perhaps an issue worth escalating in case of other international travellers being in our situation only to get a repeated response of 'that's not my issue, it's nothing to do with me, that'. I understand, I said, but perhaps you could flag it to management because as it happened it was a somewhat dangerous situation. 'That's nothing to do with me, it's not my responsibility.'

Thanks.

And of course, the one time we decide to spend a week offline in a totally remote lighthouse in the middle of nowhere (well, West of Kinsale, anyway) is the one time we needed online access - when Iceland's most unpronounceable volcano erupted and spewed ash across Europe's airspace, everyone was directed to airline websites (the airlines having worked out that websites are really cool at informing customers rather than actually talking to them). Aer Lingus are as good at not answering the phone as Limerick Regional's bureaucrats are at avoiding responsibility. In fact, we haven't managed to get through to a human once all week - despite tens of calls every day.

Our flight out of Cork got canned so we've gone north to stay with the in-laws in Dundalk - we'll be flying out of Dublin as and when we do get away. In the meantime, it's lots of following aviation sites on Twitter, watching the news and drinking Guinness.

Well, even clouds packed with volcanic dust must have their silver lining...

GeekFest Dubai 4.0 – When Geeks Go Green

We’ve got together with recycling company EnviroServe to arrange a gigantic old technology collection at GeekFest 4.0. Enviroserve is a Public Private Partnership with the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Environment and has a dedicated e-waste recovery facility in Dubai. Before anyone accuses me of organising something, this is all thanks to Spot On resident tree-hugger, Alec Harden (@alecharden).

It’s an often under-appreciated fact that our favourite geeky toys can actually be recycled usefully when we’ve upgraded to that lovely, sparkly Next-Gen device– and can often be harmful to the environment if they’re not properly recycled. Just think of all those nasty heavy metals in all those Lithium batteries, circuit boards and old toner cartridges – let alone all that recyclable plastic!

What’s more, there’s gold in them there motherboards, as well as a range of other recyclable goodies – in fact, EnviroServe attempts to offset as much of the cost of recycling as it can from recovering those goodies from your old toys.

So here’s the deal. We’re bringing our old stuff to GeekFest and collecting in at The Shelter ready for EnviroServe to pick up in one great big bag of old geekery – and if your old GeekLife is interesting, you can even share it in the display of Ancient Geeks we’ll be mounting before we junk the whole damn lot.

What counts as recyclable? Old printers, PCs, phones, toner cartridges, hard disks, speakers, hifis, iPods – anything electronic, in fact.

DIC recently announced it had managed to recycle a whole 1,000 bits of technology. We’re gonna beat that at GeekFest 4.0. See if we don't!

We've got some stunning GeekTalks as well as other stuff up our sleevies - more later!

GeekFest Dubai 4.0 will take place on the 29th April 2010 at The Shelter in Al Quoz. You can do the Facebook thing, follow @GeekFestDubai on Twitter or just pop back here nearer the date for more information.

Don't forget, BTW, GeekFest Amman 1.0 taking place on the 17th April - follow @GeekFestAmman on Twitter or you can find it here on Facebook!

And GeekFest Beirut (you guessed it, @GeekFestBeirut or Facebook) might just happen on the 30th April, but they're being too UNorganised to predict just now!

We All Need A Little Love

One of my writer pals, the rather wonderful (albeit editorially brutal) Philippa Fioretti, yesterday enjoyed the official debut of her first published novel, The Book of Love, in Australia.

The Book of Love is a romantic comedy - and has already garnered rave reviews from Austrialian media.

Publishing works strangely in Australia, it would appear, so you can't just off and buy the book from Amazon.Com. You can, however, nip over to bookselling website Dymock's, who'll sell it to you quite happily. The link to that is HERE.

There is a minor, teensy-weensy issuette if you're based in the Middle East, in that Dymock's don't ship here - they'll only ship to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Hong Kong, the US and the UK. So you'll have to use a forwarding service or have someone you know that lives in one of these places mail it onto you.

If you can't be arsed with all that, then either wait for Jashanmals or Magrudys to stock it or fly to Australia and buy a copy from a good bookshop.

The Inevitable Blog Post

Image via Wikipedia

Dubai’s popular Barasti Bar started as a pleasant little seaside watering hole but has grown over the years to become a major venue, to the point where it now hosts gigs, last night’s double bill of Vanilla Ice and Snap! being one such case in point. The gig was free to women and ‘FaceCard’ holders (FaceCard is Emirates Airline’s staff discount card), while tickets were Dhs100 for the blokes. Which, in the cold light of day, does strike one as delightfully sexist.

However, there was a minor problemette with the concert. Sheikh Ahmed bin Zayed Al Nahyan died in a glider accident in Morocco earlier in the week. He was the brother of the UAE’s President, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed and also the head of ADIA, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. Although not a major seeker of the limelight, he was a greatly respected man with a major role in the national economy. His death was announced and a three day period of national mourning started yesterday – the radio stations (talk and music stations alike) cut over to classical music and flags flew at half mast. His funeral took place last night and was attended by the UAE’s rulers, their representatives and a large number of key figures in Emirati society.

There was some doubt as to whether the Vanilla Ice gig would go ahead, but that was soon cleared up when Barasti sent out a text message at around midday:

STOP! COLLABORATE & LISTEN! VANILLA ICE AT BARASTI IS GOING AHEAD TONIGHT AS PLANNED. NORMAL OPERATION. WE ARE NOT DRY! NICE, NICE BABY! 5PM-3AM C U ON THE SAND

This was sent out seemingly at random – recipients included a colleague who had never signed up to any Barasti or Le Meridien mailer programme. And it caused offence, of varying degrees depending on the recipient. Among UAE nationals, it caused grave offence and sparked an outraged reaction which was immediately communicated to a wide audience on Twitter by a furious Mishaal Gergawi, an influential newspaper columnist.

Although I wasn’t personally offended to the same degree as Gergawi, I had to agree that Barasti’s text seemed remarkably ‘off colour’ given the nation was in mourning. If it had been sent to a list of Barasti ‘regulars’, it would likely have caused little or no comment. Sent to a wider audience, shared on Twitter, it caused considerable comment.

Word spread quickly, as it does on Twitter, and something of a feeding frenzy developed. I have to confess to finding mobs ugly and it’s likely that at least some degree of the outrage being expressed wasn’t born out of truly offended sensibilities as much as it was from people finding voice in their pursuit of Renard. However, that’s just human nature and reflective of the tide of any strongly felt opinion – it’s just that on Twitter it moves very fast.

One thing I thought was interesting was that we could actually share in the reactions of the wide range of people that make up our strange multi-national community – we got to feel, for instance, the pulse of the Emiratis among us in their reaction to the whole affair. That’s not a voice we usually get to hear.

The news broke later in the afternoon that Barasti had decided to cancel the concert, with a cunningly worded story on ArabianBusiness.com, which took the smart angle of crediting Twitter with the cancellation, thereby playing to a considerable gallery. There’s nothing humanity likes more than to be confirmed in its beliefs and Twitter certainly lost no time in celebrating its seminal role in changing the world.

Judging from what we saw develop on Twitter, it’s probably safe to say that a similar reaction was making itself felt offline and that it was more likely this offline development that caused the cancellation. Twitter’s ability to share information, and reflect opinion, at blinding speed certainly meant that thousands of people were aware of this whole incident within minutes and so it’s likely that a combination of opinion shared online and action taken offline resulted in the cancellation. I don’t really see Barasti’s management saying ‘Wow, Twitter’s not happy! Better can the gig, chaps!’

But we’ll never really know.

Personally, I’m more interested in the text that sparked the whole thing. Insensitive, ill thought through and badly executed, it’s symptomatic of so much of the lazy, drab marketing that takes place in our world today. SMS spam was never a clever idea. When you combine that with the sensibility of someone that has forgotten we are actually living in a foreign, albeit highly multicultural, country and that there is some respect due to that nation, the result was always going to be disastrous.

If that text hadn’t gone out, I do tend to think the concert would likely have gone ahead. And done so largely unremarked.

April Fool

Sorry. I simply couldn't resist.

Bicycles are Evil - Official

Image by DenzilJr via Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tantalise Your Tastebuds!

Image via Wikipedia

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

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

Let us imagine the conversation.

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

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

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

“So are all the others.”

“With beverages.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

FNC Committee Slams TRA, Telcos Bigtime

Image by bbcworldservice via Flickr

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mum, What's An ArabNet?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More fool them.

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