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

Wowed by Rifflex

Rifflex is a web startup by my friend Abdallah Absi. He's eighteen years old and this is his first year at AUB. Regardless, he fully developed his company (he has many other companies by the way) and just released a new feature.

Rifflex is all about turning the internet into your tool. Basically, you can easily make an app that does practically anything on Rifflex then use it. The process looks a lot like making mind maps.

BUT! The new feature, which is a side bar that you can fully customize and can include apps that you made or you want to use. RSS feeds, notes, MTC balance, chat.... All of it just shows up when you click a small arrow on the right of your browser.

My Student Takes Over My Blog

Ahmad Moussa, I know I will see you tomorrow but I want to thank you for making the Better Than a Millionaire Blog.

www.betterthanamillionaire.blogspot.com


I think it's amazing that he is now the teacher. What Ahmad did is make a blog about the elective class I teach at the International College. He posts the main idea that was discussed in class. He now can share everything with his friends and I can learn from his blog too, to see what stuck and what didn't.

*Better Than a Millionaire is an elective class I teach at the International College of Ras Beirut. The class is about Entrepreneurship as a mind-set.

And here is a video he posted as a homework.

Today, Fashion Feeds Me

www.fashionfeeds.me

A website I've been working on for a while and I just launched it in Beta version. It's a website that shows all new updates on most fashion blogs. It's my first personally financed website and i want to know what you think of it.

What do you think?

Today, LBC came over

She told me they'll be here at eleven in the morning, but they got to my house at one in the afternoon. With all of their cameras, lights and mics, they ubiquitously set up camp and took over. They knew which TV to plug my computer in and which chair I should sit on. The goal was to explain the crowdmap I set up for Kalam el Nas which I hope, will be of great help for Lebanon.

(A crowdmap is a web-based map that visualizes people's reports and testimonies. I will telling you more about this later)

You sweat a lot when you are under the spot lights. And I got late to my class. Ms. Khishin called me and I told her to forgive me and she did. Ms. Rima Khishin is IC's elective co-ordinator and teacher and mentor and inspiration, among other things. My student's homework was to put a video on YouTube. Half of them did. Half didn't. So I decided to explain why I gave them that homework.

Rory spoke and they listened.


The moral of that talk was: small things are what counts and they are the ones that sometimes have the biggest impact. When they put a youtube video, they are contributing to the collective knowledge of the global community with small donations. And that doing good will bring to them good: google ads, fame, positive image, etc.

I hope I can sweat the small stuff.

Location:جامعة,,Lebanon

Today, I met with Marcel Ghanem

I skipped my statistics class because I had to drop off my sister. The cab didn't make it and she was late. I took her lateness and substituted it with my own. Today was the first day I take notes on my ipad and not on paper. I saved paper today. It took me an hour to get out of my house and onto the freeway, then fifteen minutes to get to LBC Adma. I had a meeting with the Kalam el Nas' team and we spoke out the upcoming episode and about how I can help them. Then I went to Dina's place and I had dinner with her. We fought. We fought because 150 women attacked 3 men in Dahye the other day. She tells me that she has the right to hit me. I tell her that if its the case, then I have the right to do that too.

I guess I don't. We're still fighting. I don't even want to hit girls. Even if they are stronger than me. But hey, sometimes you believe in things that are self evident because they are self-evident... like human rights... are they really self-evident? Like God you mean?