Lebanese Entrepreneurs Know How to Party

November 27, 2010 - Karaj Beirut witnessed Lebanon's first dedicated party for entrepreneurs. The occasion? Global Entrepreneurship Week's closing event. Dubbed the Small Wins and Ecosystem Party, it called for all entrepreneurs and those who are active in the entrepreneurship community to meet up, mingle and tell everyone what they have been up to.

Managed and launched by Seeqnce's Samer Karam, the event was able to bring together around two hundred attendees from every corner of the Lebanese creative world. People from all walks of life - freelancers, CEOs, creative directors, university students, design gurus, programers, entrepreneurs, Non-Profit program managers, etc. - were, for the first time, in a non-proffesional atmosphere: a party.

Beer, wine, whiskey

food and good music are perfect ingredients for any party. But when you add entrepreneurs to the mix, it's different. Networking and meeting new people was suddenly natural and ubiquitous. People were pitching their ideas left and right. Entrepreneurs stood on packs of red bull to speak and both, men and women, shared the same passion in exchanging business cards.

Small wins not so small

Among the ten speakers who got the opportunity to speak for 30 seconds are Samer Nakfour from Nodio, Mackram Raydan from Cuevox and Fadi Bizri from Iltaqi. I also spoke about the TEDxBeirut that I'm helping in organizing and will happen sometime in 2011.

What's a party

without dancing to good music? When the clock hit 1:00 am, the dance floor, previously known as Karaj Beirut, was filled. Developers danced with designers and CEOs had dance-offs with freelancers. Well not specifically the case but you get my gist. Somehow, Beirut always gives good people great nights.

The event was such a success, that the organizers have decided to make it a quarterly event. GEW Small Wins Ecosystem Party, definitely a big win

Interview with YallaStartup Weekend Winners

YallaStartup and YallaStartup Weekend Winners interview on Future TV.

YallaStartup Weekend - Future TV interview with winners from YallaStartup on Vimeo.

Participated in YallaStartup Weekend

There are three things that you musy know
about last weekend,

1. YallaStartup is an NGO founded by three inspiring entrepreneurs: Elie Khoury, Habib Haddad and Sami Shalabi. They all founded their diffrent companies like Woopra and Yamli. YallaStartup focuses on helping startups. And last weekend, on November 12, they brought to the Middle East
   
2. StartupWeekend,
   
   which is a global event that happens in cities all around the world where developers, businessmen, graphic artists, entrepreneurs, engineers... etc. meet up and build a working prototype of their ideas in 54 hours (1 weekend). For the first time, it happened here, in the Middle East, Lebanon. More specifically at
   
   
3. Berytech's amazing center in Mansouriyeh, right outside of Beirut. Berytech is a Lebanon-based incubator for SME as well as startups.
   Now I could narrate how 300 hundred people from Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt and Syria met, pitched their ideas, made teams, worked with people they've never seen before and presented a WORKING PROTOTYPE of their ideas in 54 hours... But I'm going to let you watch it instead
   

Read the tweets through the hashtag: #YSWLB
Check out the picture on Flicker on: this
And watch the whole thing here, on the video below! (Beware, its two hours long!)



As to what I did, I worked as a designer for Kazdoor by Hassan Baydoun. I designed the iPhone App that will allow people to have all of their loyalty card on their phone. On the video above, you can see me presenting at: 1:50:00. More about Kazdoor coming up

Tonight, Geeks United. Damn.

• Samer Karam, founder of Sequence, will be going from Beirut to China in 2012 in 2 Jeeps and 2 Bikes. He will take Marco Polo's tradition and make it high-tech. Samer and his team will travel to China by hardcore blogging their way through the tundra!
• @JimRamK spoke about our AUB Online Collaborative and how we will be having the Blogger's online convention soon. 
• The lovely Naeema spoke about YallaStartup Weekend and how we will rock and battle against othe Startup Weekends.

OH! And by the way, there is this new thing called Rifflex. It's the future, and it's made by the Lebanese Brilliant, Abdallah Absi. Just saying.

• Shankabout spoke about shankabout and how they're shankabouting all over the place. 
• A guy from beirut.com told me to go on beirut.com
• Antoine Online said it's cool to be a geek.
• Lynn el Bizry introduced us to the wonderful world of photography and that there is a club that meets every Tuesday to take photos and experiment in photography.
• LE Gustave, a french bakery that will conquer every mankouche joint in Lebanon.
• Octavia Nasr thanked all of her fans. She googled "How to give a speach to Geeks".
• East Marketing spoke about their success, almaza, doritos and videos being dragged in 3D space. They said something about something, I forgot what it was called.
• A girl spoke about mozaic-ashrafiyeh.com where you take pictures of ashrafiyeh and then you might win a 8,000$ camera.

I also smoked 3 cigarettes and met the guy who gives alcohol to most night clubs in Mono. He said he's going to get me a box of Ras el 3abed tomorrow and we can discuss Six Degrees.

I am now purchasing www.fashionfeeds.me. Will let you know what that is soon. Real soon.