A Synopsis: Webit Congress 2012

In October 10 and 11, apart from the amazing time I spent in Istanbul, I had the pleasure of attending Webit Congress. Seeing many professionals from across Europe & the Middle East gathered in one place for the purpose of sharing and exchanging knowledge of the digital world was quite refreshing.

Here are some statistics about the 2012 Congress, as stated by Webit Expo:

• Visiting countries: 72
• Number of speakers: 187 (see all of them here)
• International and local exhibitors: 50 (see list)
• Worldwide supporting media and partners: 130
• With the strategic support of: IAB Europe, EACA, EGTA, OPA, Arab ICT Organization, European Commission.

HE Minister Binali Yildirim (Minister of Transportation, Maritime Affairs and Communications of the Republic of Turkey) opened the Congress on 10 October together with Plamen Russev (Chairman of eAcademy/founder of Webit), Alain Heureux (President and CEO IAB Europe), Dominic Lyle (Director General EACA), Dr. Tayfun Acarer (BTK Chairman) and other officials.

The major conferences within the Congress were:- Marketing and Innovation Conference- Entrepreneurship Conference- Telco Conference - e-Commerce Conference and e-Commerce SEO Master Class- Apps Development Workshops- Free Seminars on Digital & TechnologyThe only global Webit Awards Ceremony for digital marketing effectiveness and technology excellence for the Word's New Digital Markets also took place on 10 October.  

I was of course mostly interested in the Marketing and Innovation Conference, particularly the social media stream which came first. I got in half way through, Facebook's Regional Directory, Diego Oliva's presentation on the future of Social Media where he spoke of the importance of Facebook Fans and their friends to brand pages, calling them "real fans" given the value they present to businesses in terms of sales. The image below showcases some of the percentages of sales from Facebook fans and their friends for big brands on Facebook pages.

 It was Guillaume du Gardier, Head of Digital Media at Ferrero, whom I really liked. He firstly disagreed with Diego on the statement that Facebook fans are real fans, considering the number of inactive, fake and duplicate accounts. He urged for a feature that allows brand pages to discover fans who haven't been connected with a brand in the last 3 months by hiding the updates from their ticker/feed, not visiting the page anymore, and never interact with it, and allow them to automatically take these fans off the page as they failed to provide them with an attractive brand experience. He urges brands to care about active fans, not about "accounts". He explains that having thousands of fans is not as important as having a "scaled" number of fans. Scale is the percentage of fans from the number of consumers reached through sales. So, for example, having hundreds of thousands of fans on your Facebook page is not that impressive if your weekly sales are per millions. He also suggested that Facebook introduces a way that allows brands to connect with fan-made pages in a way that is mutually beneficial for both of them.

Among other interesting seminars at the conference, I quite liked the concept of Wakoopa as presented by its CEO Piet Hein Van Dam, compromising of allowing it to track our own digital footprint (websites we visit, apps we use, ads we interact with, etc.) in return for rewards. Many websites already track our digital footprint and sell it for huge profits and we got nothing out of it. Through Wakoopa, we control what it tracks and when, and we benefit from it.

 
One presentation I very much enjoyed was by the energetic and lively Rina Onur, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy Officer at Peak Games, who spoke about the importance of gaming in our life and how it's getting more and more integrated in other sectors like business and education and will continue to grow into more sectors in the future.

All in all, it was a great event with many valuable seminars, some of which were running at the same time so it was hard to follow up with all of them. It was only brought down by the terrible internet connection which made it difficult for bloggers like me to enjoy the event by live-tweeting and connecting to others during it. It's certainly an experience worth attending though.

Follow Webit Expo on Facebook or Twitter to stay updated with when they make the presentations available for download. However, I think they would only be available for those who have already been registered, in which case I'll be able to get them for you. You just have to remind me and ask me for them! 

What Startups Need: An ArabNet Community.

Photo credit: imthiaz blog

When you work in the social media field like I do, it becomes inevitable to run into startups that are eager to launch the newest idea, the most tech-advanced service or the best-specialized network. As a startup, it is perhaps important to believe that the product you’re developing will be a success, will bring you fame, and help you cash in, hopefully sooner than later.

I do not claim to be an expert on entrepreneurship and startups, but if there is one thing that I can deduce by common sense, it’s that every successful business needs a COMMUNITY!nAn interesting definition of a community is by Michael Wu, the Principal Scientist of Analytics at Lithium Technologies Inc.:

A community (both online and offline) consist of people from all walks of life that seem to have no relationship at all but is a very robust social structure. What holds a community together is common interest. It maybe a hobby, something the community members are passionate about, a common goal, a common project, or merely the preference for a similar lifestyle, geographical location, or profession. People join the community because they care about this common interest that glues the community members together. Some stay because they felt the urge to contribute to the cause; others come because they can benefit from being part of the community (source).

Building a community may or may not be a long daunting task depending on what your product is, but it is a known fact that it is never as easy as “Build it and they shall come”. Growing Facebook from a small college community to the largest global community did not happen in a day. It wasn’t that the idea of Facebook was so revolutionary, in the simplest terms, it succeeded in capturing a fraction of a community with common interests (college students who wanted a social way to get to know each other), then gave way to that community to create other sub-communities with other common interests that others joined in, until everyone else felt they MUST be part of that community. According to Matthew Shampine, a serial entrepreneur, as a startup founder, you should not “be too focused on your product, because if you’re not building a community for it, it may never get off the ground.” He gives 2 successful case studies on how building a community the right way can help your idea or product (Source).

As a startup in the MENA region, your best chance is to find opportunities where early adopters, fellow entrepreneurs and potential investors... For you, that means the digital MENA event of the year, ArabNet Digital Summit. It’s the biggest event for web and mobile in the region! Last year’s summit brought over 1000 attendees, 100 speakers, featured 18 panels and 17 talks, in addition to 20 entrepreneurs pitching their ideas and startups. And this year’s summit is less than 2 months away so you better start working on your pitches and hone your skills in building your community! This year’s event is going to be even bigger. Cutting-edge panel discussions, specialized workshops, exciting competitions, focused networking sessions, social activities and more, spread over 5 action packed days including:

• Two Developer Days with technical discussions and workshops for programmers. Even though I am not a developer, but I did enjoy this day as you can read in my post from ArabNet Digital Summit 2011.
• An Industry Day about how web and mobile are transforming traditional industries like healthcare, travel, education and banking.
• Two Forum Days, the largest gathering of digital business leaders in the region featuring over 100 globally renowned speakers covering the latest trends and technologies in web and mobile.
• A Community Day raising public awareness about the the power of digital.

The Digital Summit will also include ArabNet’s annual competitions: the Ideathon and Startup Demo. The Ideathon aims at turning bright ideas into functional products will introduce the top 20 entrepreneurs and startups in the region, exposing the latest in digital entrepreneurship and giving entrants the chance to win big cash prizes and the attention of investors, incubators, and developers, not to mention the media! You’ll for sure have a better chance at exposure if you actually participate in the Ideathon. So you put your entrepreneurial hat on and get ready to network!

As one of the official bloggers of ArabNet Digital Summit 2012, I'll be bringing you more news about the conference and will be live covering it from March 27 till March 31. So don't forget to subscribe to my RSS, and follow me on Twitter if you aren't already ;)

The 1st Arab Social Media Forum: More Social, Less Forum Please!

 On December 11th, I had the pleasure of attending the 1st Arab Social Media Forum in Amman, Jordan. The forum was the 1st of its kind in the region to target only Social Media topics and share both clients' & agencies' experience dealing with Social Media platforms & different social engagement approaches / show cases (according to their website). 

The event, held in Regency Palace Hotel (which, on a side note I must say, has AWESOME beds XD), was under the patronage of His Excellency Mr. Marwan Juma, the Minister of ICT in Jordan, who was introduced by Mr. Malik Shishtawi , the man behind it all, a social media expert in the Middle East... A rarity indeed.

Now honestly, knowing the agenda beforehand, I wasn't looking forward to the introductory speeches (and I know that not many of you do either so don't give me the stink eye >_>) because I figured they're just going to be boring, bureaucratic and seem too lengthy. Fortunately, to my surprise, they were very casual and interesting. Mr. Marwan, as shockingly as it is for a politician, was actually a pretty cool and laid-back man. He started his speech off by talking about the significance of such an event to the Arab region and to the future of Jordan, specifically. He admitted to being a geek and reminisced about the days "Email" was the new big thing.

Next up was Rashid Al Balla from National Net Ventures; he shared a lot of interesting, if not shocking, insights on social media in the Arab world. Apparently, only 2% of Arabs online are comfortable using English. That makes you wonder of the amount Arabic social forums out there in the world wide web that are only in Arabic. Speaking of which, there was a huge debate throughout the event on whether forums are considered a part of social media or not. I would rather think they're not, but one can not deny the significance of forums in the Arab world, and how they are still the number one Arabic source of information.

Brightening up the forum with his sense of humor, Mark Comerford  spoke of Social Media in a Changing Media Landscape. What perhaps most caught the audience attention was Mr. Mark's habit of... swearing. Oh, he swore a lot. Although, kids, that's not a good thing to do :P, but it lighten up the professional business world that tend to get over-serious. You can find Mr. Mark's presentation from the forum on Slideshare. You'll love it!

The following speaker was Mr. Sameer Issa speaking on "Practical Strategic Approaches to Social Media" (found here); his presentation, although very useful, lacked one thing... enthusiasm! Let aside the fact that as a public speaker, you should engage your audience with your tone of voice and body language, but when you're talking about Social Media (and it's part of your job and who you are as a professional), then you should do it with so much passion that the entire audience can be motivated to listen. At the end, this isn't a boring academic lecture... THIS IS SOCIAL MEDIAAAA! < Mimicking the This Is Sparta meme, if you don't know what I mean then, know your meme.  "Listening & Monitoring: The New Way to Market" (found here) was up next with Mr. Patrick Atallah. Unfortunately, you will not find many tweets on Mr. Patrick's presentation because by then, there was panic and frustration in the room, by the social media addicts & bloggers, due to internet difficulties that left us all unfocused. Not to make this very long, I'll urge you to look at the forum's agenda here search for the rest of the amazing speakers who shared lots of wisdom on that day, of which, Silvia Cambie is most worthy of mention, being the only female speaker at the forum and spoke highly of women's role in Social Media for Social Change. Yes, I'm a feminist. 

What I'd like to share with you most was how great it felt to be among the "ambassadors" who were there specifically to share the event happenings on Twitter. I went to the event as a regular attendee, and being the twitter addict that I am, I was surely tweeting like mad about the event. By the end of the event, that earned me -to my surprise and delight- a place among the ambassadors on stage with a special thanks from Mr. Malik. Darine Sabbagh, who was one of the only two people I knew on Twitter before the event (the other being the amazing Noor Al Hajri to whom I'm very thankful for helping me), spoke of her journey with the other Lebanese bloggers who came specifically for the forum.

At the end, I'd love to thank Noor, (most sociable!), Darine (most adorable!), Ali AlHasani (a real sweetheart), Ata AlQadi, Muoffaq Qabbani, Mohammed Azzam, Mahmoud AlDwairy (who's apparently a big shot and I didn't know :P and was part of the panel discussion as a representative of Jordan Open Source Association, Assaad Thebian (who introduced us to Jafra of the Palestinian culture and is quite an interesting person), Zamil Safwan, Kamel Al Asmar, Eleena Korban, Bernard Sadaka, just to name a few of the many many people I met in Jordan who made me feel to be among a big cool family!