Awesome

Image by Getty Images via @daylifeI know I'm a grumpy old man, but I do have a number of pet hates. You know, things that any reasonable human being would rail against like grocers' apostrophes (Avocadoe's 2 for £1) or the awful American habit that has crept across the Atlantic of referring to everything as awesome. It's all too often accompanied by a specific pronunciation, AWESUUUUM! It helps to assume the expression of a particularly stupid chihuahua presented with a chocolate a moment before it has been smacked on the back of the head with a cricket bat.

It's like a linguistic background radiation. That Kit-Kat was awesome! You breathed in and out again? Awesome! This is all so totally, awesome! Wouldn't it be awesome if they have fish on as a special today?

No. It wouldn't.

I think my least favourite thing about this over-use of the blasted word is that if a Kit-Kat is awesome, what is the sight of two million Egyptians gathered in brotherhood in Cairo's Tahrir Square? What is the sight of them praying together, Christians and Muslims alike? What is the sound of two million voices raised in unison demanding that Hosni Mubarak resign on this 'Day of Leaving'? What is all that hope, that joy and that peacefully expressed, human want for justice, peace and freedom?

Yes, people. This is awesome. Mind-bombingly, thrillingly awesome. I have the feeling, the first time since that awful low of the early hours of Thursday morning when it looked like it might all be over after the terrible violence from Mubarak's thugs throughout the night, that these voices might, finally, be heard. I'm supposed to be editing, but I'm glued to AlJazeera, whose team must surely now win every award in television, journalism and sheer bloody minded determination this year. They're using satphones to broadcast their images - cameras stolen, office closed, license withdrawn and journalists under threat and yet they're still maintaining world-class non-stop programming. Awesome.

Have a flip through these when you've got a moment. The amazing images of photojournalists Samuel Aranda and Iason Athanasiadis that bring this all home. They're awesome too.

Benihana Kuwait. What you can do.

I'm sorry, I know I'm going on about this but I believe strongly that it is wrong and should be addressed by the very public that Benihana Kuwait has shown such contempt for in its actions.

I sent this message to Benihana Tokyo, the company responsible for the international Benihana franchise,  tonight. You can do the same - cut and paste mine, write your own, whatever. Just use the contact form linked right here.

Hi

I'm contacting you to let you know that I, and very many others across the Middle East, am angry and concerned that one of your franchisees has seen fit to issue suit against a blogger who posted a negative review of a poor experience in Kuwait's Benihana franchise.

The resulting online outcry will not go away, more and more mainstream media are picking up the story and it is highly likely to be covered by international media. It's a landmark suit - not only against Kuwait's most popular blog, not only unfair but also the first time that a company in the Middle East - a region with its own issues with censorship and repression - has sued a blogger.

Benihana Kuwait's maladroit handling of this issue has already created a social media case study that will run and run. It's time to stop this.

I urge you to pressure your franchisee into dropping this unwise suit. It has already caused untold damage to the Benihana brand in this region - you can act before it does so internationally.

The guys at 2:48AM shouldn't have to defend an expensive, scary and vicious - let alone frivolous - suit from a corporate company in this way for expressing their opinion as consumers. It's got to stop.

Thanks.

PS: A chronology of this goof-up is now up over at the UAE Community Blog.

Why The Benihana Story Matters

Image via WikipediaIt's been amazing to watch the Benihana Kuwait story spiral into the stratosphere. That the story has such a strong pair of legs is squarely down to the fact it matters deeply to very many people in the region and around the world - consumer opinion expressed in a blog crushed by a lawsuit filed by a company.

The story(I posted this yesterday which has more detail) was carried across a number of blogs yesterday (and will be in more today, doubtless). As SeaBee pointed out: "I wonder if they're beginning to understand how business works in the real world. You know, the place where customers have a say too. Where bullying and threatening creates a backlash."

It got taken up by a fast-growing community on Twitter (use the hashtag #BenihanaKUW to see the conversations) and then someone found that Benihana Kuwait had a Facebook page. The resulting flood of comments made it quite clear that public opinion was 100% against the idea of a company suing a blogger and expressed shock, outrage and a deep rooted anger.

Later in the day, the papers picked up on the story, The National, Gulf News and 24x7 all ran stories which, at least in the case of the first two, ran in print today. And now million-subscriber website The Next Web has picked it up - which is the start of what, IMHO, is an inevitable move into the international media.

Why so much outrage? It's a complicated mixture - most of the online people who have commented know perfectly well that Benihana's reaction is unacceptable today. Consumers have a new freedom to express their views and opinions in ever-expanding forums and it's a right we're not willing to give up easily. We're not going to tolerate being bullied or seeing the truth repressed. On a larger scale, that same sense of empowerment and fairness is driving some reasonably large collections of people, a million of them on the streets of Cairo today. Without wanting to 'big up' the Benihana story, I do believe it is a microcosm of the bigger one we're watching unveil in Tahrir Square.

We're talking to Kuwaiti blogger Mark on the Dubai Eye Techno Tuesday show today at 11am Dubai Time. If you're Dubai-based, you can catch it on 103.8FM or if not you can listen to the livestream at http://www.dubaieye1038.com  and follow the hashtag #DubaiToday.

Update: Here's the AudioBoo of today's talk between Jessica Swann, myself and 2:48AM's Mark  As many will know, this afternoon Benihana Kuwait chose to delete the comments from its Facebook page, one of the most obnoxious gestures of absolute contempt for the views of the general public - its customers and potential customers.

Benihana Bashes Bloggers

Image by Okinawa Soba via FlickrKuwaiti blog TWOFOURTYEIGHTAM (2:48AM to you) is a lively and wide-ranging affair put together by bloggers Mark and Nat. It's respected, popular, well-written, pretty objective and, as both are designers, is clean and easy to read. The B-side to 2:48AM is 2:48PM, which is a community blog and is pretty big as blogs in Kuwait go (and Kuwait has a lively blogging scene).

In the middle of December last year, Mark posted a review on the 'A sides' of Kuwait's newly opened Japanese restaurant Benihana Kuwait. It's linked here for your delectation and delight. Mark wasn't terribly impressed by his experience at the restaurant. Although he pointed out that, "The service wasn’t too bad for a restaurant that’s just been open for a few days and the staff were really friendly." he also went on to say: "The problem with my experience last night though was with the food, it was disappointing to say the least."

Mark  then explains the reasons for his disappointment in detail, concluding, "Would I go back to Benihana? No I wouldn't.'

He also took a video of the 'show' the chefs put on while cooking. The acrobatics at Benihana are apparently something to behold, but this is a very ordinary looking display of, well, cooking.

So there we go - a bad experience at Benihana Kuwait gets a bad review from a customer. And there it ended. Or not quite. Nested in the 74 comments (I said it was a popular blog, didn't I?) are several 'happy customer' astroturf comments that came from, as Mark pointed out, the same IP address. And then there's the comment (linked here for your listening pleasure) from a geezer called Mike Servo, who claimed to be the general manager of the Benihana management of Kuwait and who threatened to sue Mark. A couple of quotes:

"...our rights and name is being used in a wrong way and broadcasting the video without a proper consent from us is really annoying specially Benihana is just opened up its doors to the public. We are seeking and consulting our legal dept. on how we can form a type of law suit against your website to be brought up to the Kuwait authorities."

He goes on to trill: "We want you to give us your information, your name, your number and your address so our lawyer will take it from there and be sure that you in Kuwait were the jury is 100 % clean and fair."

And then for some bizarre reason starts talking about elephants: "We also expect that you might be sending people to Benihana to make a play and that is why we have informed the CID about that, In the past we encountered your add in Subway and it is one of our companies franchise, we really didn’t give it any attention, and it very clear now that Subway is an elephant while other competitors are closing down, however this time we will not let it go and we will follow you legally."

Not terribly nice, in all. He ends the comment by asking Mark if he's Lebanese!

"A comedy classic" says one following commenter.

"I have a feeling that your restaurant will be closing in no time at this pace! I’m planning to try it out to see how bad it really is, and if it is bad I’m going to probably write a worse review" says another.

"I was going to visit Benihana .. but after seeing how you treat customers reviewing your restaurant, I plan on avoiding it at all costs." Is another comment.

This comment neatly sums up the considerable outpouring of anger at the management of Benihana Kuwait - for astroturfing, for its furious reaction and for threatening a lawsuit. "As a representative of such a well known brand it is shocking that you would conduct yourself in such an unprofessional manner. I am sure the franchise policy of Benihanas is not one of engaging those who are not satisfied with its product by posting baseless claims and threatening frivolous lawsuits that serve no other purpose but discredit any legitimate concern or issue you may have."

Mark posted up on Twitter yesterday that he had received the lawsuit. Benihana Kuwait actually went ahead and sued a blogger for writing a bad review of their restaurant. I have the feeling this won't end here...

UPDATE: This is the Benihana Kuwait Facebook Page. A truly stunning read.
(You'll have to click 'Just others' to see the comments)
Update to update: They deleted the comments. Grief.

When Egypt Stopped Laughing

Image via WikipediaOver the years, I have watched Egyptians laugh at themselves and the regime they live under. It's a particular type of humour I have noticed most in the Levant - a sort of gallows humour that makes a joke out of the lack of freedom and the ubiquitous mukhabarat.

Every time elections would come around, people would laugh about how he was going to lose this time. When he polled the upper 90 percentile of votes as usual, people would laugh at that. Jokes would be cracked about the lack of freedom, respect and hope for the future (or the rising price of food) because, well, what else could you do?

It struck me the other day that the Egyptians simply stopped laughing.

Colleague Marwa got out of Alexandria on Friday - her eyewitness account of the journey she and her husband took is the stuff of adventure novels - roadblocks, burning tyres and the fear of driving through teeming, excitable crowds as people bang their hands against your car roof, an awful din that makes you cringe and fear the metal will cave in. The guttersnipes burning tyres, unaware of why the world has suddenly gone mad, but capering around in great glee at the sudden anarchy.

As we can all see from Al Jazeera's stunning coverage, the situation is deteriorating and looters are roaming the streets. Communities are coming together to protect themselves, rather in the face of a strategy that appeared to be built around pulling the police out and letting law and order break down (even giving it the occasional shove in that direction, apparently) - Marwa's mother's apartment was saved at the last moment by a neighbour, the men have come together now and blocked the street so that the residents are safe. The army, she reports, have been unfailingly polite and pleasant and have refused to use force against the protesters - something that Al Jazeera's coverage has also shown.

But it would appear to me that things are inevitably going to get worse before they get better whatever the outcome - food supplies will come under pressure as travel around Egypt is rendered nigh on impossible by roadblocks and gangs of thugs (including those carrying government issue firearms). Medical supplies will be stretched and a wide range of basic services are already going to be under pressure, which will only increase the longer the protests carry on.

Everyone I know is quietly hoping they'll be able to laugh again soon - a different, more carefree laughter, perhaps.


One minor triumph to have come out of all this has been Al Jazeera's. I have been watching their coverage of events and it has been very, very good indeed - BBC quality reporting with an authoritative voice and a wide range of viewpoints rather than constantly repeated reports and whole minutes of text snippets with a repeated sample of the same parping theme tune. It has also focused on the news - not constantly nipping off to talk about how some footballer sprained his earlobe or some manager was 'sick as a parrot' but thought it was 'the rub of the green'.

If you're interested in what's happening in Egypt, give AlJaz a spin. It is streets ahead of anyone else.

Egypt's Tweets of Rage

Image by National Media Museum via FlickrEgypt's Day of Rage unfolded yesterday afternoon, the news of gathering crowds and images of protesters heading for Tahrir square shared over Twitter by activists and people in general in a fascinating, blow-by-blow (later on, literally) account. I can't find Ramadan Al Sherbini's lead story from Gulf News online today, so here's a link to another of his stories on the protests.

As before, with events in Iran (which I wrote about extensively in relation to the role of social and mainstream media, you can get the backstory here if you like), the information flow quickly became cluttered with a mixture of retweets, Twibbons and other outside voices clogging up the #Jan25 and #Egypt hashtags.

However, as before, those of us following a number of people in Egypt had access to reliable, first-hand information and were able to watch the story unfold. As the afternoon wore on, mobile networks went down around Tahrir - the government was blamed for the outage, but operators are insisting it was their networks at fault - and vendors around the square, cafés and the like, took the password protection off their wireless networks so people could continue to get word out. There were widespread reports that the government had blocked Twitter, but this is a technically aware generation, people - access was obtained using different clients and proxies.

Mainstream media got access to events through Twitter too - sometimes even quoting the Tweets of journalists on the stweets such as this example from the Wall Street Journal. Such a huge repository of eye witness reports makes for a fascinating account of events - and, importantly, creates awareness and publicises the protest. This post, from Global Voices, shows how Tweets can be used with devastating effect in reportage. There were a lot of brave journalists among the crowds, including Al Jazeerah's cameraman, who was hospitalised with four rubber-cased bullets lodged in his arm as police tried to break up the demonstrations.

Twitter was also being used as an organising tool, with people able to share information widely - when you tweet to a popular and timely hashtag, you're effectively multicasting. And it's being used to get word out this morning, as a second day of demonstrations appears to be on the cards.

There has been a lot of debate over the role of social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter, in Tunisia and, prior to that, Iran, both in terms of quite how fundamental both were to events and how reliable reports were. Without a doubt, the closer you are to an event, the more reliable Twitter becomes - by closer, I mean that you have established relationships with people of reputation on the ground or, at the most, at a second remove. Once you get past the third degree of separation, you're losing eyewitness credibility and getting bogged down under the hashtag traffic. But you're also seeing a world that has had its attention brought to the Jan 25 protests and reacting overwhelmingly in support of the protestors, something that Tunisia hacked Facebook to stop and that Egypt appears to have blocked Twitter to stop.

Blocking Twitter won't stop word getting out. You're as well to try and stop grains of sand falling through marbles. Here, for your amusement, is the official word from the Egyptian State Information Service. Compare it to #Jan25 and enjoy.

Fatal

Image via WikipediaNice story in today's jolly The National claims the Gulf's road safety record is 'appalling'. They're right, too. According to the piece, which quotes figures from the 2009 Global Status Report on Road Safety, you're seven times more likely to be killed on the UAE's roads than the UKs.

If you don't like it, you know what you can do, people...

Speakers at the Road Safety Middle East conference, speakers appeared slightly baffled that the Middle East bucked global trends in that the wealthier the country gets in the region, the worse the fatality record. Traffic accidents are the leading cause of death for the 15 to 29 age group, apparently. And the UAE averages 37.1 road fatalities per 100,000 people compared to a global average of 18.8.

The story's linked here. It's statistically sobering stuff.

Torches

Image via WikipediaDon't forget young Jan Palach
He  burnt a torch against the Warsaw Pact

Modern history has been changed by men who chose to demonstrate against repression by taking their own lives in the most painful way I can imagine. The one I remember from history at school, and an abiding image of the '60s, was the Vietnamese monk Thích Quảng Đức, who burned himself to death to protest the oppression of Buddhist monks. In 1969, Czech student Jan Palach (the couplet above is from Stranglers' bassist JJ Burnel's 'Euroman' solo album just in case you wondered) set fire to himself in front of the Russian tanks as they rolled into Prague, bringing winter back to the Prague Spring. I visited his memorial and it did make me terribly sad.

Palach died in January - the same month as Mohammed Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose act of final desperation was to lead to the overthrow of the government. You're reading this because I was listening to the radio yesterday and heard the presenters mispronouncing his name, 'That Tunisian chap, you know, Booazzi or something.' It seemed odd to me that anyone living in the Middle East should be unaware of this man and why he was driven to do this to himself - particularly given the consequences of his action.

I find it hard to even think about what would drive a man to contemplate the act - the acrid stink of petrol, vapour shimmering, a scratch and whiff of phosphorous. The lazy whoomp of the flame. How could anyone with a shred of imagination even contemplate doing that to themselves? And yet Bouazizi was not to be alone - like Palach, his act has inspired others to follow the same course. There has been a spate of copycat immolations around the Middle East, five in Algeria, one each in Mauritania and Saudi Arabia and four in Egypt. In all, four of these people have died.

None of these men is likely to be remembered beyond a family's grief and a listing in the obsessive Wikipedia list of political self immolations (it's here - an odd list of lost causes and forgotten martyrs). But Mohammed Bouazizi, like Jan Palach and Thích Quảng Đức, changed history. Uniquely, he is the only man to have directly caused a government to fall by taking his life in this way.

The GeekiFesto

This updates the earlier version I posted last year - the Geekifesto is the document that we share with anyone who wants to do their own Geekfeest and, as much as anything, defines the event. This should help with the discussion that will be taking place tonight:: where are we going?

GeekFest is intended to be an offline social for online people and should be interesting to anyone who's involved in the online world and in using technology to create, educate, entertain, inform, drive change or just play around.

It’s a purely social event (not a networking event – it may serve that purpose but does not aim to) and is purposefully kept organic, free and easy.

GeekFest must never actually matter to anyone. If you’re holding a GeekFest and five people turn up, you should be able to shrug your shoulders and have a chat with the five people rather than die a million deaths that your attendance was low. If people don’t come, they don’t want it and we’ll simply stop doing it.

There have, to date (and to our surprise), been GeekFests in Dubai, Beirut, Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus and  Amman. Each one has been different in style and content, reflecting the diversity of our region but also reflecting how the very loosely defined template of GeekFest allows people to do their own thing the way they want to. Only Dubai has kept to a (very rough) two-monthly calendar, but that’s part of the beauty of it. It gets done when people feel like it.

GeekFest Ramallah is happening on the 16th February 2011 and there are plans and intentions for GeekFest Abu Dhabi, Doha and Khartoum. Each regional GeekFest has happened because someone liked the idea and wanted to give it a try in their community. Nobody owns it, nobody sets rules – the only guiding principals have been shared in iterations of this very Geekifesto.

We are very proud of the fact that GeekFest is, as far as is practical, UNorganised. There are no officials, gatekeepers or people telling attendees what to do. There are no rules beyond the ‘no corporate behaviour, selling and stuff’ one. The only reason there is a start and finish time is that people insisted. There’s no registration or entry requirement. There are no badges, tags or wristbands, but we do put stickers and marker pens by the front door so that people can label themselves if they so desire.

However, there are some guiding principles that we’ve established, mostly by trial and error.

GEEKFEST ELEMENTS

Guiding principles
No corporate stuff, no bossing people around, no gatekeepers, no hassle, no drama. In general, a major guiding principle is no commercially motivated activity.

GeekFest consists of four elements – GeekTalks, TechnoCases, GameFest and ArtStuff. Other than that, it’s just a room full of smart people who have stuff that is interesting, engaging and even possibly visionary to discuss. We have added Beanbag Workshops to the mix, but they haven’t been terribly successful in the environment we use in Dubai (The Shelter). We might revive these in the new venue.


GeekTalks
These have evolved as a series of four 15-minute talks/presentations on areas/issues of interest to the audience. They take place in an area separate to the main area (in The Shelter we use the private screening room, a 40-seat cinema) and can be wide-ranging, with no real theme laid down for them other than that they should be interesting and engaging and user-generated content (ie: we’re interested in an iPad user, not in hearing from Apple).

GeekTalks in Dubai have covered contemporary mosque design, trekking in Nepal, HDR photography, the future of publishing, Arabic rap, small children with cancer, wearing niqab and gigapan imaging. It doesn’t have to be (although it tends to be) technology driven or related.

The speakers are responsible for sorting out their own technology requirements between them (we provide an LCD projector and screen and a slightly rocky Internet connection) and for their own time-keeping. Nobody tells them when to start and stop talking. They are also responsible for bringing their own audience – there’s nobody to tell people they have to attend a talk.

A year and more in, we’ve learned some lessons here. We’re introducing an (analogue) alarm clock to help with timekeeping!

We started out with the idea that talkers nominate their successors, but that has actually required so much organising that we’ve dropped the idea. But talkers are more than welcome to suggest successors for the next GeekFest. We try not to be gatekeepers.

Holding a TechoCase at GeekFest absolutely DOES NOT include, ever, a talking slot. Talks are user views and never, ever, ever sales pitches. Beirut and Jordan gleefully broke this rule.

GeekTalks typically take place from 8pm-9pm at GeekFest Dubai.

TechnoCases
The Technology Showcases give companies a chance to interact with the attendees at GeekFest. It’s a dialogue – they’re not an invitation to scream slogans or brand the event, let alone run competitions -  they’re a chance to show funky stuff and engage with an audience of highly influential online thought-leaders.

Companies can bring a bunch of laptops, a gadget or 15, a display case or free-standing display. Whatever is sensible, really – and doesn’t dominate the event, get in the way or otherwise be an irritant or eyesore.

Within those sensible constraints, companies mounting TechnoCases can use areas within GeekFest as they see fit – but do sign a contract agreeing, literally, not to hassle the Geeks.

Mounting a Technology Showcase at GeekFest does NOT confer the rights of sponsorship. We’ll include companies generally in promotional stuff and take care of them when we remember to, but there are no branding elements, logos or other promises made. They’re coming to the party to talk to people interested in engaging with them and that’s the deal.

GeekFest Dubai has been charging companies $1,500 for a TechnoCase. The venue partner raises invoices and manages settlements and maintains a separate GeekFest account. The proceeds are mainly spent on food and drink, although last year we ended up with a surplus, which was donated to the fund for Ola Abu Jarmous. GeekFest paid for my FlyDubai air fare to attend GeekFest Beirut last year, and I’ll be expensing my trip to GeekFest Ramallah. We also use the GeekFest fund to pay for stuff like our Vimeo account.

GameFest
This sprung out of nowhere but is basically a network set up at the event where gamers can bring their ‘rigs’ (or just notebooks) and hook up to play multiplayer games. In Dubai, which is the only GeekFest to have a GameFest so far, it’s usually put together by the chaps behind websites LochalArchade.com or MEGamers.com. The gamers like to ‘frag’ each other, but otherwise tend to behave quite well for gamers and we’ve had no bitings or other attacks.

Beanbag Workshops
This is a neat idea which we’ll try again in the new Shelter venue, but hasn’t really worked in the open area of the ‘old’ Shelter in Al Quoz. The idea is to gather a bunch of people around a subject expert who can share knowledge – we’ve had them on how to do HDR, how to build your SEO and stuff like that. The content and interaction have been great once they got going, but the problem has been starting them in the noisy room environment and getting people to sit down for them without organising them. In the new venue we can set up a sideroom  for them, so we’ll try restarting the idea.

Art Stuff
The art stuff at GeekFest has happened spontaneously but we’re now careful to try and include an element of art ‘happening’ at each event – wherever possible of a digital variety. This would be a graffiti artist, a digital artist, a photographic display, an installation or some such, filming video – the more the merrier – and accessible to everyone, too!

GeekFest Dubai has a back-beat, a funky soundtrack selected by Shelter DJ Simone Sebastien. We’re fine if other people want to contribute a playlist.

Branding
GeekFest’s strong and dazzling iconography is down to the work of Lebanese graphic artist Naeema Zarif, whose guiding hand has provided GeekFest with a unique ‘feel’ that somehow was part of a whole brand strategy of mad glasses, green and blue artwork and geekinees. That’s changing in 2011 as she redesigns those elements, moving in line with her own artwork, a juxtaposition of calligraphy, images and visual design elements.

Yes, I know. It does rather sound like bullshit. Naeema does great art for us. Howzat?

Food and Drink
We use the TechnoCase revenue to subsidise/fund the food and drink (pass-around food like quiche, kebabs, pastries, sandwiches, cakes and fresh juices) at the event.

When GeekFest started in Dubai, The Shelter had a mOre cafe, but that’s gone now. In the meantime we’ve been using The Lime Tree Cafe’s excellent outside catering service – they have been marvellously flexible given our refusal to take organising anything seriously.

We don’t have alcohol at GeekFest Dubai in deference to Muslim attendees. Each GeekFest will have its own cultural environment, however. Beirut has a bar (the last one there was IN a bar!), which is fun.

Social Media Accounts
We do set up accounts centrally and generally try to help promote them, but the volume’s too high to do it well, so effective ownership by each GeekFest has been critical. Beirut put together a nice site based on a Wordpress blog. At some stage we might need to consider something serious like a website, but that’s getting scarily organised! Right now, each event has a Facebook page, Twitter account and some have blogs. Alexander’s blog is generally abused for GeekFest stuff. Insider Emirates and Mideastposts.com have been very supportive, as have others around the region.

Promo
We promote GeekFest Dubai using FaceBook, Twitter (an important platform, actually) and blogs – Alexander’s in particular, but also the UAE Community Blog, Insider Emirates and Mideastposts.com. Some blog partners with solid ‘geek reach’ or even an ongoing blog (if you can maintain it!) is a great scheme. GeekFest isn’t about any one group (Bloggers, Gamers, Twitterers – it’s NOT a Tweetup!, FaceBook) but about integrating everyone regardless of the platforms they use.

There has been quite a bit of media interest in GeekFest Dubai but we haven’t ‘pushed it’ or made formal announcements or anything – word of mouth has been very strong. We have done a number of interviews ‘on demand’ with media but don’t actively pursue any media outreach.

We’ve found that making announcements closer to the event is best – although we set the date early. GeekFest Dubai is now running on a steady-ish two-month cycle, typically the last Thursday of the month or so – 2011 will be Jan, Mar, May, Jul, Sept etc – Ramadan and Christmas etc obviously require some judgement calls.

Last minute excitement runs quite high, particularly on Twitter. We tend to stoke this a bit by holding back speaker announcements and other stuff. Being tarts, basically.

UNorganising
GeekFest Dubai was originally a two-wo/man team – Alexander and Saadia. Alexander looked after promo and the geeks, Saadia owned and looked after the venue (including F&B etc). Saadia’s moved on now and is living in New York, so it’s just Alexander and the guys over at The Shelter, who have continued to be fantastically supportive. Perversely, GeekFest has become one of the biggest events held at The Shelter!

There’s no pre-registration or anything like that. This makes placing the food orders interesting, but we’ll live. We try not to talk about the great over-ordering pies disaster for GeekFest 3.14.

A quaint trend of wearing especially geeky t-shirts has started, BTW.

The best way to UNorganise a GeekFest, we think, is that two wo/man team – someone to take care of the geekiness and someone to take care of the realities. UNorganising the venue isn’t hard – book the date, book F&B for a broad estimate of attendees. Arrange a speaker area and projector. Err. That’s it. We think the geek/blogger and venue owner combination is tops, but a geek/blogger and event organiser would do job just as well. It really helps if the venue cost doesn’t eat all the  budget – a venue partner is ideal. Beirut’s Art Lounge, for instance, was a fantastic venue, but charged an amazing $650 for the use of the venue (and it had a busy pay bar for the events! Cheek!) and so we’ve had to strike out in search of venues new.

Regional expansion has been interesting – events have happened all over the place, but they haven’t turned into regular calendar entries. Without a central organising intelligence, GeekFest tends to happen in fits and starts, but that’s just fine. One of the decisions awaiting us in 2011 is whether to actually take this all seriously in some way, or whether to let it carry on being an utterly UNorganised phenomenon.

Either way, GeekFest is there purely for enjoyment and for its community. Whatever and wherever that is!

GeekFest - The Lineup

Image by KayVee.INC via FlickrHere’s the final GeekFest Dubai 2011 lineup for this Thursday. It’s looking like a whole heap of fun!

Please do note that Dubai Television wants to come along and film this GeekFest for their Out and About programme, so don't be surprised at strange people poking big cameras in your direction! The fashion bloggers will be the ones dancing around in front of the TV cameras shouting 'Me! Me! Me!', by the way...

GEEKTALKS

Held in The Shelter’s ‘cosy’ private screening room, GeekTalks are perennially popular and this time around there are three really cool talks to look forward to – and one guaranteed duffer. Starting at 8.00pm sharp, we’re covering charity, animation, blogging and the future – you could hardly want for more than that!

Steve Sosebee
Palestine and Social Activism
Steve Sosebee is the founder and CEO of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. Steve is a highly respected man doing important work to alleviate suffering among the innocents sidelined by a conflict we all know too well. This is going to be about how social media can help work such as Steve’s, about social activism online and perhaps even a little bit about what we can all do to help. Many will recall how we cleared the GeekFest coffers last time around to help little Ola Abu Jarmous, as well as the amazing generosity of those who bid for Gerald Donovan’s stunning GigaPan poster of the Sheikh Zayed Mosque in Abu Dhabi and the many others who gave online. Her appeal closed in record time and she was treated successfully by surgeons in Florence.

Mohammad Fikree 
Animation - The Girl & It
Steve will be followed by Emirati animator and composer Mohammad Fikree, who’s going to be giving an exclusive preview of his new (and literally, just finished) animated short ‘The Girl & It’. Mohammad’s animation work is as delightful as the soundtracks he creates are innovative – what’s more, the tunes are catchy as hell! The Girl & It is a painstakingly created work, a demonstration of the love of imagery and sound combined to create emotional reactions.

Maha Mahdy
The Rise and Rise of the Fashion Blogger
Prominent UAE-based fashion blogger Maha Mahdy will be taking a hard look at the incredible rise of fashion blogging, possibly the bleeding edge of vertically based, professional blogging – where a multi-billion dollar global industry has reacted to blogs by embracing them and literally treating them like royalty. That trend is being mirrored in the Middle East as major brands scramble to cuddle up to bloggers who make the cut – but what does it take to make the grade and get taken seriously? Geeks note, this is the time to shuffle out of the cinema and make way for the well-dressed babes in heels who’ve turned up to this GeekFest!

Me
The Future of GeekFest
I seem to spend my life talking at things, but I've managed to stay silent at GeekFest Dubai until now. To tell you the truth, I’ll have little enough to say for myself, except to ask the audience this one question: what is the future of GeekFest? It’s been a mad little journey given that we started out to walk around the block for tea – there have been GeekFest events around the Middle East, though few have been as regular as Dubai. We look like we're going to welcome GeekFest Ramallah, Abu Dhabi, Doha and Khartoum to the fold soon – and yet what IS GeekFest? Does it deserve to be formalized and how? What do we want to make of this event that seems to have happened around the pure desire for innovators, commentators and social talkers to meet? I really don’t know, so I thought this would be a good chance to ask you!

FLEA MARKETS
GeekFest regulars will remember the GeekTalk from Mita Ray and her co-conspirator aiming to trek across Nepal for charity. They’re holding a flea market in Fujeirah to raise funds and there’ll be a collection box at GeekFest Dubai for anyone who wants to bring in any unwanted clothes, books, gadgets, toys or other stuff for the guys to sell at their fundraiser. More details here.

GAMEFEST
MEGamers.com is the fell force behind GameFest this time around and they’re going to be gathering the usual group of murderous, twisted lunatics in the specially constructed and highly secure caged-off gamers’ area at GeekFest…

VIDEO
We're going to be wandering around videoing people's messages to take to GeekFest Ramallah.

TECHNOCASES
We’re going to be welcoming Eros Group, the uber-retailers of electrical trickery and gadgetry, who will be holding a TechnoCase of superlative things that go tinkle, blip and boink. You can follow them on Twitter at @erosgroup or find them on Facebook at www.facebook.com/erosgroup. They’re going to be going big on funky Flip cameras as well as other things with LED lights on them…

And in a rush of last minute dramatic news-type stuff, Lenovo has decided to launch its U260 ultra-light notebook at GeekFest Dubai. The little 12.5" screen minx will be on show in a sneaky previewy kind of way. You can follow Lenovo on @lenovomeep for updates.


EATS
As before, back by popular demand in fact, posh nosh will be provided by The Lime Tree Café.

DEETS
GeekFest2011 takes place at The Shelter in Al Quoz from 7.30pm on Thursday the 20th January 2011. There is no registration, no formality, no requirement of you other than to turn up and even that's optional.You can follow @GeekFestDubai on Twitter or find us on Facebook. If you've never been to The Shelter before, there's a map (as well as a funky GeekFest video) on The Shelter website here.