ArabNet Forum Day 1: What you’ve missed
WithArabNettaking place this week in Beirut, the first forum day started with a lot of optimism and ended with higher expectations for the following day.
ArabNet Shift Digital Summit this year the is a four-day event. In addition to two forum days, The first day was open to developers and the last day will be open to all. Forum Day 1 was rich with panels similar to last year. In addition, it included stat talks and one-on-one interviews. What was also different this year is parallel sessions taking place in up to three lounges simultaneously.
Today started with various panels on entrepreneurship, followed by marketing, mobile, and media related panels. While some of the content presented was quite informative, engaging and uplifting, some were also excruciatingly painful.
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An hour and a half delay across the major part of the afternoon did cause some frustration and confusion amongst audience and speakers alike. But this is what usually happens in this type of events.
The Startup Demo allowed ten startups to present their business case and budgets for judges to vote on with the Winners to be announced tomorrow. This year’s demos in a nutshell were, and in chronological order of presentation, as follows:
The mobile apps and ads panel unfortunately focused more on the Nokia/Microsoft discussion and we wanted to know more about the four million apps that are downloaded from the Ovi Store, we had to be part of trying to answer if Nokia did the right move and what the consequences were going to be.
While moderating The Venture Capital Investing panel, I was personally surprised by the dynamism of the speakers and the encouraging level of assistance they have been providing to the entrepreneurs of today. With such a positive attitude, you cannot but rejoice knowing that are being encouraged, and by the right people, everywhere around the Middle East.
A couple of disclaimers must be included! While I did and will be moderating and speaking at three of the panels, and while a member of TNW ME was involved with one of the startups in the Startup Demo (Toosal), the opinion herein is unrelated to either.
Story byFawzi Rahal
Based in Dubai, Fawzi Rahal is the Editor of The Next Web Middle East and Regional Communications Director at G2. Follow him via Twitter. Yo(show all)Based in Dubai, Fawzi Rahal is the Editor of The Next Web Middle East and Regional Communications Director atG2. Follow him viaTwitter. You can reach Fawzi atfawzi@me.thenextweb.com.
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