posted by Mohd Khawaja in amman, business, Entrepreneurs, innovation, jood, Jordan, media, success, technology, twitter, Voluntary Work, بالعربي @ 2:40 PM

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As many new initiatives and movements are taking place in the region and even globally, the BIG question remains unanswered for many observers is: what does it take to start a movement?

In a previous article I posted on the QRCE Blog about how we can use the social web to bring real social change, I mentioned how new initiatives are transformed from ideas to reality through a blog post, a video on YouTube, a facebook group or even a single tweet and how such social media platforms reduce the startup cost to be almost "ZERO".

But what is the secret recipe behind the success of these movements? what does happen before they become trending and well-known in some or every part of the world? I found the answer in the following creative TED talk by Derek Sivers who highlighted on the importance of 1st handful of followers who change the situation from being so risky and unpredictable to join to become unfordable to avoid and neglect.

As Derek said, the most important part is how the leader or champion deals with the first few followers as they join; would he/she nurture them as equals who shared the same dream? or make them feel useless and less important! Derek concluded with a great lesson: They should feel that their presence is as valuable and needed as they increased his/her ability to attract more supporters to grow the initiative as the leader of a group not as a single individual. Enjoy the video!

posted by Mohd Khawaja in video @ 3:13 AM

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As I have inspired by most of the speakers in Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship, I've collected these 10 quotations during the second day of the summit:

Muhammad Yunus, Nobel laureate and founder of Grameen Bank:

• “Our Banking systems are designed to give money to those who have it, not to those who need it!”

• “All humans are entrepreneurs!”

Fadi Ghandour, Chairman and CEO of Aramex:

• “Talent is very mobile; if you don't put an incentive to keep it home, it will fly!”
• “Entrepreneurs are builders, you should not think of exits before you fulfill you missions in building a successful sustainable model.”
• “Talent is learned through practice! Nobody is born talented!”
• “I wish to see Arabs considering brains as the energy that is worth to invest in, as it will give higher ROI than oil; I believe, it is our renewable energy!”
• “As we speak about talent, These two books are must-read: 'The Talent Code' and 'Talent is Overrated'”

Larry Summers, Director of the National Economic Council and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy:

• "Entrepreneurship isn’t just new technologies, it’s new ways of doing business, new perspectives, new organizational methods".

Sheikha Hanadi, Founder & Chairperson of Amwal:

• "Our major problem that 50% of unemployed in the Arab world are first-time job seekers".

Hafez Ibrahim (poet): Mentioned by Dina Powell, Global Head for Corporate Engagement at Goldman Sachs:

• "when you educate a woman you develop a whole nation"

posted by Mohd Khawaja @ 4:57 AM

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The first day of the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship concluded with lots of excitement!

Secretary Gary Locke started the Summit by talking about the history of Muslim Scientists who changed the world with their inventions.

The first panel “Perspective on Successful Entrepreneurship” was full of outstanding entrepreneurs and great storytellers! Sandiaga from Indonesia described how failure motivated him to succeed; After losing his job in 1998 he switched to “survival mode” and started a company that grew from 4 to 15000 employees. The youngest participant Waed Taweel from Palestine spoke about her student-based venture “TeenTouch” that offered event management services in Palestine with the support of the Arab Bank as part of Injaz program in Palestine. While Mumpuni was eager to speak how her business is helping in providing electricity to hundreds of thousands of poor people in remote villages of Indonesia.

Right before lunch, Jerry Yang -the icon of the summit- has addressed the participants about his personal story starting Yahoo! while he was a student at Stanford –which has been of many other world-class startups (Google, Cisco, HP, etc..). His speech included sincere advices to Muslim Majority Countries. Gerry urged participants to focus on building an eco-system for Entrepreneurs that focuses on transforming R&D into business opportunities to creating wealth and prosperity as part of a sustainable knowledge-based economy. He was also kind to speak about what Yahoo found special in Maktoob and how that led to the acquisition deal sealed last year. Chief Yahoo pleased me when he mentioned Arab Crunch and how the famous it is becoming a great resource of aspiration for Arab Entrepreneurs.

During the “Access to Capital” Panel, Arif Naqvi of Abraaj Capital highlighted on the importance of social responsibility for Entrepreneurs saying that they should not only serve their shareholders, but also their stakeholders including their community! During the same panel, Fadi Ghandour of Aramex was advocating microentrepreneurs as statistics shows that 98% of them payback their loans on time. Fadi concluded his comment saying: “We should b proud as most of those microentrepreneurs are women who play a great role in supporting their families”.

I have to go to join my colleagues at the summit as activities of the 2^nd day is about to begin! Stay tuned for more! Salams :)

posted by Mohd Khawaja @ 4:48 PM

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I was looking for an outstanding video telling the story of Gaza from an optimistic point of view and I can't find better than this one! :)

Despite everything happened in Gaza, Gaza lives on..



If you are viewing this post via email you go to this link on Youtube to enjoy the video!

posted by Mohd Khawaja in gaza, palestine @ 11:52 AM

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Our little angel Mahmoud has celebrated his first birthday last night with a small crowd of family kids!

365 days ago, Mahmoud came to life to change the world in his own way! :)

As passionate parents, we can't wait to see Mahmoud growing up and becoming an independent mature man who takes decisions on his own and chooses his own path for life. I think that would be the best day all along our lives!

I think the Mahmoud's charming smile can say a lot, so I just want to conclude with this nice short quote for John Bowring. It says: "A happy family is but an earlier heaven."

Happy birthday, little Hammodeh... keep growing :)

P.S. a previous post predicting the future of our kids is posted here. enjoy reading it!

posted by Mohd Khawaja in amman, Eid, family, Jordan, Love and Passion, Mahmoud, My daily life, passion, Photos @ 12:14 PM

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100+ online fans rushed after Iftar time to join the 2nd Amman Twestival on the evening of 13th of September and at the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship. The event was co-organized by Malik Shishtawi and sponsored by Aramex.

A Twestival or Twitter-Festival is a global series of events organized by volunteers around the world under short timescales, which bring people offline for a great cause. Twestival is run 100% by volunteers and independently from any not-for-profit; although the organizing teams do work closely to outline an achievable and measurable fundraising target. Twestival also sets out to identify key skills of volunteers and match these with the needs of the cause; particularly communications strategy, tech integration and social media training.

Twestival this year took place in over 140 cities around the world, Amman was not just another hosting city, but the capital that produces the most prominent Arab entrepreneurs in the domain of social media.

The discussion about social media was very interesting. I started by introducing the panelists: Razan Khatib, Zeid Nasser, Laith Qasem and Laith Zraikat. after that we went into and open discussion about the current situation and the future of social media in Jordan & the Arab world.

Lina Shehadeh -CMO of Aramex- talked about the value of twitter for a big corporate like Aramex and how is it utilized by the customer service department when it comes to B2C services aiming to resolve any raising issue with customers in effective manner in order to vent frustration quickly.

Hana Ramli was there as well. Her story was about how social media (facebook) helped her to recruit over 3000 volunteers in her impressive initiative "Ketabak Ketabi" and it is now becoming a regional initiative for Palestinians in refugee camps in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Co-founder of Nakhweh, Kamel Al Asmar, talked about how Nakhweh is utilizing social media in promoting volunteering opportunities announced at Nakhweh.com and how people trust social media leads over other means of marketing.

The active blogger Osama Romoh described his fan page on facebook as primary source of traffic to his blog. He also believes that twitter functionality is embedded in Facebook feed, and that makes him more excited to use facebook over twitter.

Sabri Hakim -the co-founder of Talasim- shared his story during Amman bombs and how his photo was featured on CNN. According to Sabri, Talasim is now utilizing twitter as an alert/reminder for latest updates on their portal and this creates more traffic & interactivity.

Mohammed Alzubi - the managing partner at Arab Seed Ventures, a venture capital fund focusing on seed stage investments in the Arab region & Silicon Valley - elaborated on what attracts Angel investors to invest in the business of social media in the Arab world and how web startups are becoming a sizzling opportunity for VCs and Angels specially after the Maktoob-Yahoo deal.

Majd Shwikeh -CEO of Orange- talked about her personal experience with twitter and how she became addicted to it! :). Generously, Majd promised to send a special iPhone offer to all participants of Amman Twestival. The offer is available here.

I was so glad to see the audience interacting by talks and tweets, which were displayed live on the big screen behind the panelists (check #AmmanTwestival). I think that setup kept everyone active until the last moment and even after that during the "Qatayef" (Ramadani Sweets) reception! :)

The last and most important portion of event was announcing the donation from Aramex to Al Aman Fund. The donation was followed by a mini-speech through which Maha Saqqa -Director of the Fund- invited attendees to volunteer their time to support & empower orphans in Jordan.


Enjoy this short video about the best tweets during the event.



I also recommend visiting the following interesting blog posts about the event:

• iReport : Twestival in Amman,
• Ali Dahmash's blog,
• And Then There Was a Tweep,
• Top 10 Quotes at Amman Twestival

posted by Mohd Khawaja in amman, business, donation, Entrepreneurs, innovation, Jordan, Love and Passion, media, Photos, qot, Royal Jordanian, startups, success, technology, twestival, twitter, Voluntary Work @ 12:03 AM

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Before 27 years, Israel invaded Lebanon and killed over 2000 innocent civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps with cold blood on the 17th of September, 1982. The striking thing is totally ignored by the west. Try a web search for "Sabra and Shatila" and look for western sources. For example, the Time Magazine website just headlines the invasion as "Israel Strikes at The PLO" and barely mentions the massacre!. Yet everyone agrees that it took place.

The massacres at Sabra and Shatila provide an clear comparison to the September 11th tragedy. Both killed thousands of innocent people (although the exact count at Sabra and Shatila may be slightly higher). Both were probably guided by men with a history of terrorism. However, while Sepember 11th is remembered in the west -and all over the world, Sabra and Shatila are largely ignored. why?

I leave the floor for your elaboration, and share a short report from Al Jazeera English Channel that illustrates what happened..

posted by Mohd Khawaja in blood, Islamic, lebanon, massacres, palestine, Politics, video @ 5:12 PM

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Last Tuesday, we were were invited to a special Iftar at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology organized by the IEEE Jordanian Student Branches.

The event was really very exciting and full of entertainment and fun activities. Members of DART -the student Entrepreneurship Society- joined the event and spent great time with others. The nice weather, dynamic audience and interactive program contributed to make it such a remarkable event! :).

The title of my potion was: "Your Path For Life". Basically, I talked about the choices you may have after graduation and what the best decision to take. The most interesting part was when I invited a jobless fresh graduate to share his daily life with the audience -with some sense of humor :-D.

As per the request of the audience I share the presentation here...



Few other photos are available here.

Interested to join IEEE or DART? drop me a comment here to guide you where to go!

posted by Mohd Khawaja in amman, Entrepreneurs, IEEE, innovation, jood, Jordan, My daily life, passion, Photos, success, Voluntary Work @ 2:13 AM

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Early this year, we took a great decision to go for a full week of adventure, fun and entertainment in the charming Sharm! (Egypt)... the 30-second video can tell you the most exciting parts of story! enjoy :)



Wait for more special "short" videos.. stay tuned!

posted by Mohd Khawaja in beach, dontsend, egypt, family, innovation, jood, Love and Passion, passion, Photos, Royal Jordanian, vacation, video @ 7:32 AM

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