Hi Everyone,
This is a speech I delivered at Cairo ToastMasters club on June 23, 2009. The speech title had been “reaching out” and it was my 3rd speech at the competent communicator track, where the speech’s objective is “get to the point”.
In the last 3 years with DSL connections going mainstream and increasing consumption of online video content and with YouTube is the hub for video content in the region, I interestingly tracked down some of the popular YouTube channels for number of subscribers and views, here I provide a quick comparison in numbers between some of the popular TV Shows for talent discovery in signing.
Alright,
A bit over a year ago, as I went through From Good to Great for Jim Collins, I was inspired by the topic to research more of what makes outstanding performances, the book talks to CEOs about building resilient companies, finding the hedgehog concept of their companies and flow in greatness…
As I reflect on my almost 4 years of intriguing and challenging research into balanced human behavior, my seemingly random choice of flight movies seemed to trigger more thoughts, but not this time, this time, I will go all the way to an animated feature, something more light and less philosophical.
It’s an ongoing challenge for most of us to remain organized, using 37Signals suite for all my organizations and project management efforts, I’ve created couple of projects to both manage my executive tasks across all organizations and another one to manage my personal life.
These projects helped me to put everything I should do in one place for a while, till it became quite hard for me to follow-up with both of them in a timely manner, having the New Basecamp introduced, I’ve decided to merge both projects in one relying on the fact that both include tasks and discussions that I’m the only one should have access to.
I’ll be experimenting with using the project to organize both my personal life and executive tasks and will keep you posted on how things go, how do you stay organized yourself?
Life goes on, as usual, tough, troubling and confusing, but extremely incapable of changing few things, those who’re noble enough to love a concept, idea or a piece of land when they have absolutely all the right not to, will be the ones to stay with it longer and perhaps forever.
It’s very rare for crowds to move in the right direction except either when it’s absolutely as clear as the sun for the -80 IQ or when they’re inspired by a leadership, let it be an individual, character or an idea.
When it gets confusing everyone returns back to where he/she belongs! Don’t follow the crowds, either be among them when it’s absolutely right or lead them when it’s turbulent and you have a vision.
Recently, I got disappointed with a few individuals and organizations who did what would normal people call preaching trust, but I’m really wondering what’s that called in the entrepreneurship sphere.
Don’t we speak day and night about the positive energy entrepreneurship brings to society and that everyone and anyone involved with such positive energy activities should be a reliable, trustworthy person or organization; while you can practically see a completely different image in your day to day dealings with different people and organizations
Understanding what “shit storm” might start referring to exact events and individuals. While I was advised that I don’t mention it at all, believing that such actions will go no where, I find it a good opportunity to learn a few lessons from.
Calling it “business”; individuals and organizations alike are expected to behave in their best interest. Starting a partnership can be really tricky and deciding what to mention and what not to mention at every communication can be really a hard job especially for those new to the “game”.
Getting information about something struggling to become can present an extremely valuable opportunity to pursue and if you have the opportunity to, come on why not to start this already, probably unethically pointing the middle finger to someone but who will ever know, let alone proving this.
“Claims” and “disputes” are usually the word to be used in such situation and let’s find away to be nice and work together leaving this aside would be a typical response. But still such experiences affect values like truthfulness, trustworthiness and directness that’s extremely hard to regain as it goes away and it’s a direct testimony about how a person or an organization behaves.
A straight forward approach and direct response when you’re faced with such allegation would be the solution if you have something to say, wouldn’t it? But provided there is nothing to respond with a generic response would be the only possible choice.
Finally, sometimes in life we find ourselves getting back to basic values we had been taught as kids, doing business is no different than any other human behavior and it’s governed with the same ethical principles, the value of what’s being done and what the dispute is all about is usually less important that the human experience.
And you find yourself saying: whatever things will turn out to be; at least, I won’t be unoriginal!
Facebook/Connect Ads Partnership
GeekFest 1.0
AUC TTO Inauguration Event
Ideavelopers – The Web Angels
CoE2010 – Celebration of Entrepreneurship
Ideavelopers – Mobile What’s Next?
Google Days 2 & 3
While expanding your business, getting more people aboard to be in charge of specific tasks, the question pops up. What should be their job title.
Different companies choose different job titles to describe the same thing, here is my 2 cents about that.
If I consider when someone to be in charge of marketing, business development or finances. We would have to choose between “Manager”, “Executive” or “Officer”.
Manager manages people, if someone’s task is managing people working on the same thing, then Manager is to be used.
If you run a startup and a single person is to be responsible of specific tasks, I’d personally not choose manager; no structure to manage. It could make sense though if it’s about managing the process. But that’s not good enough to my taste.
Executive is being very specific in execution, so someone described as executive implies – for me – not being involved with planning.
A startup describing someone as executive, seems like an insult to me. A guy who have no idea what he’s executing. just execute.
Officer, officer implies responsibility, power and I see include both managing processes + executing it. Officer = Planner+Executive+Manager
For a startup where an individual is responsible of a complete process, Officer is to be used. responsible, decisive, creative, manager and executive!
It had been more a month now since I attended the Celebration of Entrepreneurship and I can say that the couple of days really charged me with a good amount of energy and opened my vision to opportunities I didn’t know exist before.
Since then I had been concentrating on Egypreneur and finding ways to move it forward as a content-centric project and integrate it with Wamda and still working on it.
I made some progress with Al-Adham Web Solutions too, starting to work on some mobile applications projects and faced an unpleasant situation that I started the company and marketed it as Web Solutions. So, it’s hard to be running a mobile apps business after this business name, so, you can imagine what I’m thinking of.
As my entry in the contest to win a trip to Celebration of Entrepreneurship conference in Dubai, I posted the following video asking Mr. Arif Naqvi CEO of Abraaj Capital about supporting a network of shared workplaces in the region. I had been using the Hub Cairo and discussing its vision, objectives and future with Ulrike the founder of the Hub Cairo.
I firmly believe that the idea can be transformational not only in Egypt but in different parts of the MENASA region as Abraaj Capital defined it.
Hope to meet Mr. Arif Naqvi for our 5 minutes interview and discuss it further and very much looking forward to expanding my connections during the conference and get more information and experience about entrepreneurship in the region that will come in handy while working on Egypreneur
Also, very much looking forward to be a part of the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Egypt through Egypreneur. We’re having some progress that will be announced soon.
As the views does count in winning the contest I’d appreciate your RTs, likes and spreading the video as much as you can.
FreeRangeLife on Flickr
قد حان الأوان .لا تعلق بناء حياتك على أمنية يلدها الغيب فإن هذا الإرجاء لن يعود عليك بخير . الحاضر القريب الماثل بين يديك و نفسك هذه التي بين جنبيك ، و الظروف الباسمة أو الكالحة التي تلتف حواليك ، هي وحدها الدعائم التي يتمخض عنها مستقبلك ، فلا مكان لإبطاء أو إنتظار
Inspired by the above statement by Sheick Mohamed El-Ghazaly and my recent life experience:
Don’t wait; don’t wait for investment to get your business rolling; just do it ..
Don’t wait; don’t wait to relocate to live the lifestyle you want; shift your mind ..
Don’t wait; don’t wait for this special moment that will transform you spiritually; live it ..
Don’t wait; don’t wait for “credit” or “gratitude”; make it a part of the “deal” ..
Don’t wait; don’t wait to be understood and then respected; make it the only option ..
Do not wait .. do not wait .. do not wait ..
During July had been my first experience directly communicating with investors to raise funds for my business, I had been having my friend Karim from Easy-up do it for me and we already got 6 investors interested but per the regulation of the Nilex I needed 25 to incorporate based on the model we had been working on. But to accelerate things up, I had the chance to be in the position myself.
I consider the experience to be overall positive and I learned a lot from it. made a few mistakes; but normal for first timers I presume.
I did postpone launching the business web-site and start executing the business model till I get the funds I need – as I might need to optimize or even change the business model during negotiation , which put me in the position of doing “nothing” for the time I was mainly focused on raising the funds only.
Also role playing, looking at the situation from the investors’ point of view and asking myself the questions I’m expected to be asked during the meetings could have made a difference. Something I need to work on for upcoming opportunities.
As a big fan of ReWork I completely believe in their point of view expressed in “Outside money is plan Z”. Yes, I wish I’d go forward with no outside money, but it’s just feels exhausting for a long time. ReWork state the following reasons on why to consider outside money your plan Z:
I really believe in these points even stronger now, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need plan Z sometimes.
Tech Entrepreneur, engineer, teacher and researcher.
