The Euro-Mediterranean School (EMS), which is an initiative that aims to offer young entrepreneurs from the Euromed countries an opportunity to follow a learning program in the field of business management and entrepreneurship, has opened up applications for the fifth “Introduction to Entrepreneurship” course taking place this year.
EMS was founded by the Milan Chamber of Commerce, the Lombardy Region, and the Fondazione per la Sussidiarietà (‘Foundation for Subsidiarity’). These sponsoring bodies offer full scholarships to all participants covering travel costs, room and board, tuition fee and teaching materials for the entire duration of the course.
In 2010 EMS will host the fifth edition of the course “Introduction to Entrepreneurship”, in which the Chambers of Commerce of Naples and Reggio Calabria will also participate.The sponsoring bodies offer full scholarships to all participants, covering travel costs, room and board and teaching materials for the duration of the course.
EMS 2010 aims to offer young managers from the countries bordering on the Mediterranean Sea an opportunity to obtain the entrepreneurial and managerial skills necessary to start and/or develop a business capable of operating in multiple markets within the Mediterranean Basin.
EMS 2010 is divided into two phases:
A. Distance Learning (from October 19th to November 26th, 2010), compatible with one’s work responsibilities, in which each student participates via web. This phase consists of an on-line course intitled “Business Strategy, International Growth and the Business Plan”.The course will be made up of video lessons, business testimonials, exercises, case presentations and group discussion forums. A tutor will follow the progress of the course and guide the group discussions.
B. Business Education and Networking, (from February 14th to March 11th, 2010), in which the top students from the distance learning program will be invited to spend 4 weeks in Italy.
This part of the program will involve an extention of the course of study already undertaken online, and will add an intensive business networking experience.
The program is designed for young people with strong leadership and business potential who desire to open new business ventures, assume a leadership role in their company’s or country’s international strategy, or create opportunities for foreign businesses to establish commercial relationships within their country of origin.
From among the Arab countries, participants are invited from the following countries: Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, and Tunisia.
Among the entry requirements: At minimum a bachelor’s degree in business, economics, law, or related subjects; An excellent command of both spoken and written English; A maximum age of 35 years; and a disposition toward international and multicultural teamwork.
For more details about the program, you can check out this pdf file: EMS 2010
Book Trader is a project that was launched by two students at the American University of Dubai, Alexander Fuchs and Jamal Al Bloushi. It’s a website that allows students to buy and sell their used textbooks, the idea being to enable students to save some money on books and make some money out of their used ones.
The website is only available within the AUD (American University of Dubai) campus for the time being, but the founders hope to be able to expand it to other universities and publicly for all students.
As is the case with other online trading services, students can go onto the site and add the books they have and want to sell, putting in all the details for them and how much they want to sell them for. On the other hand, users can search through the site for books they have to buy for their courses and find what available options exist, what their prices are and pick what they need..
When a book is to be sold, the buyer and seller’s contact information is exchanged and the transactions is carried on offline.
The following is the Book Trader presentation at DemoCamp Dubai last week.
Twtrtales is a new project that was launched out of the UAE, which aims to enable collaborative story writing through tweets.
Users would basically get to start a new hashtag for a story, and then they’d start contributing to writing the story one tweet at a time by appending that hashtag. On the site, readers would be able to say whether they like a specific contribution or not, and through that decide what goes into the story and what doesn’t.
So in essence, it’s a new kind of publishing platform that hopes to unite tweeters/writers of all kinds, to create and tell stories, which could be general stories or written for a specific cause.
Twtrtales was founded and built by Kedar Iyer, Rami Kayyali and Nagranee Channa.
The team were at DemoCamp Dubai last week where they presented twtrtales. The presentation they gave can be found here, and the following is the video of their presentation.
[Sorry for this video being of lower quality than other ones from the event.]
Loomni is a new service for the region that aims to empower continuing education, making it more accessible and affordable to everyone. The service was previously reviewed here.
The overall idea of the startup is to fill the existing gap and provide learning opportunities for people who can’t afford expensive courses, nor have the time to spend locked up for long hours in a training venue somewhere.
It aims to do this by providing focused practical courses delivered in 90 minutes, at a fraction of the price available in the market, by working with another profile of instructors, mainly experts on certain fields who can share their knowledge and experience, educating people about their areas of expertise, but also helping market themselves and their services along the way.
Loomni’s founder Nagi Salloum was one of the presenters at DemoCamp Dubai last week, talking about Loomni and how it works.
Below are videos of the Loomni presentation at DemoCamp Dubai.
Part 1:
Part 2:
[Sorry for the videos being of lower quality than other ones from the event.]
AdGoing is a Saudi based company that bills itself as an online ad marketplace, aiming to make it easy to buy and sell advertising online, giving advertisers and publishers a platform to find each other.
The service supports both banner and text ads, as well as their variations. The system is mainly targeted at smaller publishers and bloggers who want to make money out of their advertising spaces, as well as advertisers who want to tap into the system for cheaper advertising rates and to have their ads go on a variety of sites and blogs.
Ads served up on the system are on a CPC (Cost per click) basis, and the system displays ads on a real time auction basis.
Now for people who know the online advertising space, something will seem very familiar when you view the AdGoing site, a bit too familiar in fact, and that’s normal as the site is basically a copy of AdBrite down to the last tiny detail. Even the text describing the service, how it works, the company and all is basically lifted off the AdBrite site.
The difference is that AdGoing also has an Arabic interface for it.
AdGoing was founded by Saleh Ali from Saudi Arabia and was one of the startups presenting at DemoCamp Dubai.
The deck that was used for the presentation can be found here, and below is the video of the presentation.
The Question Company is a UAE based company that provides a question and answer sms-based service, that enables users in the UAE to sms any question to them and get an answer back in a few minutes time.
The guidelines to use the service are really simple, you basically just think of a question, text it to the number 4644 and then wait for them to send you the reply back. The target on their side is to have replies sent out in less than 10 minutes, and they say their current average is 6.55 minutes.
The service is available for both Etisalat and Du subscribers and costs 3 Dirhams per question, answering all types of questions, but refraining from providing any legal, financial or medical advice.
SMS messages sent to their Dubai office go through a bespoke computer system, and are passed on to the first free person in the team, with six people available in the team at any time around the clock.
All asked questions are also saved in the system for future reference, even though the company aims to have a good level of personalization for every answer they send out.
The Question Company was launched at the beginning of April 2010, and is run by Andrew Meikle (Founder, Managing Partner) and James Oliver (Sales & Marketing Manager).
The Question Company was one of the startups presenting at the last DemoCamp Dubai, and the following is the video of their presentation.
O-Minds is a Jordan-based IT company with a focus on open source and web development. They’re active participants in the Drupal community, and work on advanced Adobe Flash development.
Ashraf Amayreh from O-Minds was the first startup person to present at the DemoCamp Dubai event that was held on June 23rd at Dubai Knowledge Village’s Auditorium, and the main focus of the demo and presentation was a tool called FlashFirebug that the company built to help Web and Flash developers.
FlashFirebug is inspired from the highly popular Firebug add-on for Firefox that enables developers to go under the hood of their web pages and debug them straight from the browser; However Firebug hits a wall when it comes to Flash, and that’s where FlashFirebug comes in.
FlashFirebug was built to go on and cover that specific area of weakness for Firebug, giving a similar set of debugging possibilities for Flash files that are embedded on web pages, and enabling developers to dig into the details of these Flash files and debug them on the fly right through the browser.
For the time being, for FlashFirebug to work there are a couple of lines of code that have to be included in the original Flash file before it is compiled into a swf file.
Another topic that was touched upon in the presentation is the use of Unity to create rich virtual 3D environments that can be accessed online through the web browser, and how the company is looking at diving more into this area to create rich experiences around places and more.
The following is a video of the O-Minds presentation at the DemoCamp event.
The second DemoCamp Dubai event to be organised by Dubai Internet City took place at the Dubai Knowledge Village Auditorium a few hours ago, and I have to say the reaction I had and the one I saw and felt from the people in the auditorium was a lot better than it was at the previous one; the presenting startups were interesting, and the setup felt a bit less formal, which was a good thing.
If there’s one thing I still think needs to be addressed in future editions it’s that the presenters should spend more of their time on stage showing us how their projects work instead of taking us through powerpoint slides.
The event kicked off with a non-startup presentation by Marwan bin Haider, the CIO of DEWA (Dubai Electricity and Water Authority), who talked about DEWA’s iPhone, BlackBerry and iPad apps as well as the process of building such mobile apps and how developers could go about creating apps themselves.
The startup presentations kicked off after that in the following order:
O-Minds: An open source and web development company, who presented their free FlashFirebug tool that allows developers to debug Flash files on the fly through the browser. They also talked about the use of Unity to create rich virtual 3D environments that can be accessed online through the web browser.
Presenter: Ashraf Amayreh (Founder).
Book Trader: A university project launched by two students in the form of a website that enables students to buy and sell their used books, in order to make and save money.
Presenters: Alexander Fuchs, Jamal Al Bloushi (Founders)
AdGoing: A platform that is basically an ad marketplace, enabling publishers to put their text and display ad spots up for sale, and making it easy for advertisers to find and buy them. A new feature that was announced at this DemoCamp was the notion of Agents, whereby other parties would be able to setup their own marketplaces based on AdGoing’s platform, with a cut of their revenue going to AdGoing.
Presenter: Saleh Ali (Founder).
twtrtales: A project that enables collaborative story writing through tweets. People would get to start a new hashtag for a story, and then they’d start contributing to writing the story one tweet at a time, with users being able to say if they like the additions and through that deciding what goes into the story and what doesn’t.
Presenters: Kedar Iyer, Rami Kayyali, Nagranee Channa (Founders).
The Question Company: An sms-based service that enables users in the UAE to sms any question to them and get an answer back in a few minutes time. The service is available for both Etisalat and Du subscribers and costs 3 Dirhams per question.
Presenters: Andrew Meikle (Founder, Managing Partner), James Oliver (Sales & Marketing Manager).
Loomni: A new project that was recently reviewed here, attempting to make continued education and learning cheaper and more accessible to everyone through shorter, better targeted courses given by specialists.
Presenter: Nagi Salloum (Founder).
Stay tuned for more about this DemoCamp Dubai event and the startups presented at it. There’ll hopefully also be some videos from the event too.
The MENA ICT Forum is an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) and Information and Communications Technology Enabled Services (ICTES) industry event for the MENA region, that is held in Jordan on a bi-annual basis. The event was previously known as Jordan ICT Forum in it’s previous incarnations.
This year’s event is scheduled for October 10-11, 2010; and expands to focus on the whole region’s ICT and ICTES success stories, trends, opportunities, and future outlook and plans.
The MENA ICT Forum 2010 will be held at the King Hussein Business Park in Amman, a modern and high-tech business park dedicated to the ICT and ICTES industry.
The forum features an agenda that covers a number of current and future issues of interest, covering things like Arabic content, social media, mobile applications, cloud computing, business process outsourcing and emerging trends and technologies among other topics.
The event aims to address all these issues in a context that is highly relevant to the MENA region, hoping to provide the business community, decision makers, and stakeholders with a holistic overview of the region’s current position, opportunities on hand, and recommended approaches to capitalize on those.
Some of the listed speakers for this year’s event are: Ahmed Nassef (VP and Managing Director for Yahoo! Middle East), Majied Qasem (Co-founder and CEO of d1g.com), Cathy Rodgers (IBM VP of Global Opportunities), Hosam Sokkari (Head of audience at Yahoo! Middle East) and Mike Baldock (IT Management consultant).
Later this month, the U.S. Department of State will be leading a delegation consisting of venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and pioneers in startup acceleration to Jordan, as part of the ongoing push to foster entrepreneurship in the region by the US Government.
The event will be held on Monday 28th of June, 2010; at the Friendship Auditorium of the Princess Sumaya University for Technology, from 6:00pm – 7:30pm.
It will offer a chance for attendees to hear from and engage with members of the delegation, as well as other entrepreneurs, investors, educators and government officials.
In hopes of supporting emerging entrepreneurs and furthering President Obama’s vision for a “new beginning” between the United States & the Muslim world, the members of the delegation have committed to provide venture & seed capital, offer high impact mentorship, share their expertise, and learn about the economic and entrepreneurial environment in Jordan and the region.
The members of this delegation follow below:
- Magid Abraham (President, CEO and co-founder of comScore)
- Saeed Amidi (Founder, President and CEO of Plug and Play Tech Center)
- Mike Cassidy (Co-Founder and CEO of Ruba, Xfire, Direct Hit, and Stylus Innovation)
- Court Coursey (Managing Partner of TomorrowVentures)
- Usama Fayyad (CEO of Open Insights, Executive Chairman of Oasis 500, and Chairman of D1G)
- Ossama Hassenein (Entrepreneur, mentor and venture capitalist)
- Tom Keller (Managing Director of TechStars)
- Shervin Pishevar (Technology entrepreneur, published researcher and incubation expert)
- Greg Behrman (Member of the Policy Planning Staff, U.S. State Department)
- Steven R. Koltai (Senior Advisor for Global Entrepreneurship, U.S. State Department)
The event is open to everyone for free, on a first come first seated basis. No registration for the event is required either.
Dubai Internet City has announced another edition of DemoCamp Dubai, the event enabling tech entrepreneurs, students, professionals and engineers to showcase and launch their new products in front of the tech community.
The event will be taking place June 23rd at the Dubai Knowledge Village Auditorium from 6:00PM to 9:00PM.
From web to mobile applications, English to [...]
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Following TechWadi’s entrepreneurship conferences in Silicon Valley in March and Washington DC in April, they’re organizing their first Global Entrepreneurship Forum in Beirut, Lebanon, on June 23 2010 at the AUB Olayan School of Business.
The goal of the conference is to build the necessary bridges between business leaders in the US and the MENA region, [...]
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The MIT Arab Business Plan Competition is a competition designed to encourage all entrepreneurs in the Arab world to start their own company and, ultimately, create a nest of leading firms in the Arab world.
The current version of the competition was officially launched on October 12th 2009 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The competition went through a number [...]
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In just a couple of days time, a new series of tech oriented events is kicking off in Amman (Jordan), in the form of Amman Tech Tuesdays, which is an initiative to bring engineers, business people, experts, investors, marketers, entrepreneurs, students and regular enthusiasts from the technology community together on the first Tuesday of every month in an unconference style setting, with the main goal being to organically strengthen the ties between the tech community in Amman, open up doors for collaboration and encourage the sharing of ideas.
The first event will be taking place at 7PM this coming Tuesday, May 4th 2010, at the Friendship Hall of the Princess Sumaya University For Technology in Amman, Jordan.
The idea is for Amman Tech Tuesdays to be a flexible platform, with the possibility for a different group to manage and host the event each month, in order to cover more specialized areas and get to know about innovations from across all tech fronts.
The first event’s sessions are as follows:
Open Tech Session
Usama Fayyad, Phd. (CEO – Open Insights, LLC.; Exec. Chairman – d1g.com; Ex. Senior VP & Chief Data officer – Yahoo! Inc.)
In hopes of weaving ties between industry experts, inspirational and renowned figures in technology, Dr. Fayyad will be delivering an open tech session, throughout which he’ll also be accepting attendants’ tech & business questions.
Get Inc.’d!
Omar Al-Taweel, Lawyer (Al-Taweel Law)
Having trouble with registering your business or idea? Afraid of making mistakes? Omar will be taking everyone through the process of incorporating your companies and ideas in Jordan; he’ll also be addressing the new Cyber Crime Laws in Jordan.
What’s Up With E-Commerce?
Ibrahim Manaa’ (Wheels-express.com)
In this interactive session, Ibrahim will be presenting his experience and findings on E-commerce in Jordan, and the discussion will be opened on what difficulties exist in this space in the region, and what can be done by the community to push things forward and open up doors for e-commerce startups.
These events are also a great networking opportunity to meet the different players from the Jordanian tech scene, and get to share experiences as well as exchange thoughts and ideas.
The Amman Tech Tuesdays events are free and open for everyone to attend; all you have to do is show up at the event’s venue on the right time.
As previously announced, the fifth DemoCamp Dubai will be taking place today at the Dubai Knowledge Village Auditorium on March 8th 2010 at 6:30PM.
The following six demos will be taking place at the event:
Hyzonia.com: a web platform for creating, customizing, publishing games and sending dynamic ads within games, to be played by target audiences.
FURNISHMarketplace.com: a web2.0 social B2B network, serving the needs of interior designers, hospitality industry professionals and real estate developers.
ShopMidEast: an upcoming online retailer with a big vision to become a comprehensive online retailer.
InTheLoop.me: a professional social network focused on the Middle East and North Africa.
Mysalbum.com: a service allowing users to create urls for their images and specifying number of views, geo-targeting and timing.
Yebab.com: an Arab online wedding services directory catering to the whole wedding industry.
The format will be the same as the previous events, with the presenters giving 10 minute presentations of their work, with 5 minutes for Q&A.
The presenters will also be available to answer any further questions, receive feedback and share some thoughts after the event.
Startups and web applications presented at DemoCamp Dubai, and that haven’t already been covered, will be reviewed here on StartUpArabia over the coming days.
Book Trader is a project that was launched by two students at the American University of Dubai, Alexander Fuchs and Jamal Al Bloushi. It’s a website that allows students to buy and sell their used textbooks, the idea being to enable students to save some money on books and make some money out of their used ones.
Later this month, the U.S. Department of State will be leading a delegation consisting of venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and pioneers in startup acceleration to Jordan, as part of the ongoing push to foster entrepreneurship in the region by the US Government.