Google Play has announced today that The Android Dev Submit is back. Taking place October 27-28, the annual conference celebrating the Android developer community – the latest updates in Android development directly from the Android team and participate in the virtual fun with your peers.
The event is a good opportunity to connect with Android team and Android developers around the world.
RiseUp Summit 2019, MENA’s leading entrepreneurship event, kicked off Thursday at the American University in Cairo (AUC) New Cairo Campus, with deep dives into the #JourneyToGrowth of the regional entrepreneurship ecosystem.
Featuring speakers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Dell Technologies, SAP Egypt, IBM Egypt, an early-stage venture fund and seed accelerator 500 Startups.
The Summit highlighted the status of innovation and entrepreneurship in MENA, with a special look into local, regional, and international companies that have followed their own growth journey.
With a total of 11 sessions on the first day, RiseUp Summit 2019 was inaugurated with an opening ceremony hosted by President of the AUC Francis J. Ricciardone Jr and Cofounder and CEO of RiseUp Abdelhameed Sharara, giving an account of what is planned for the three-day event.
Ricciardone welcomed the audience to the university’s campus: “This is the beating heart of energy and creativity in the Middle East, and I cannot think of a better place to begin our three days of RiseUp together than AUC. We as AUC bring the world back to Egypt – and bring Egypt to the world – not only for tourism but for learning, creating, researching, developing projects and products that will improve lives.”
With RiseUp expanding its regional footprint further every year, this year’s top speakers include Founder of Orascom Development Holding AG Samih Sawiris, TV Personality Raya Abirached, Executive Chairman of the Egyptian Exchange Mohamed Farid Saleh, Cofounder and Managing Director of Fawry Mohamed Okasha, Co-Author Blitzscaling and Co-founder Global Scaling Academy Chris Yeh, Editor-at-Large at TechCrunch Mike Butcher, and Cofounder and President at F6S Matt Philippe.
RiseUp will also host the African App Launchpad Cup, in partnership with the Telecommunications Ministry’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) and several satellite events in different locations all over Cairo. The regional Pitch will follow the Summit by the Pyramids competition, in which 15 startups from MENA will pitch for various prizes.
Co-founder and CEO of RiseUp Abdelhameed Sharara say: “Every year, we ask ourselves how to grow. In 2013, we started as a Summit, hosting only around 1,900 attendees at the Greek Campus in Downtown Cairo. Slowly, we turned into a company, and last year, our summit was held on over 2,000 square meters with 6,100 attendees from 48 countries. The most suitable place for us this year to pursue our Journey to Growth was the AUC New Cairo Campus, especially as the university celebrates its Centennial.”
During the Summit, business credit card Tribal Credit – founded by serial tech entrepreneur Amr Shady – announced that it closed a $5.5 million seed round to bank startups in emerging markets and helped
them break free from local financial barriers. The round was led by BECO Capital and Global Ventures, with other backers that include Endure Capital, 500 Startups, Valve VC, AR Ventures, Off The Grid Ventures, Rising Tide Fund, RiseUp, and Tribe Capital. Tribal is also opening its waitlist for the first time during RiseUp Summit, allowing startup teams to sign up to be first in line for access.
Additionally, the Egyptian aggregator of outdoor advertising AdMazad announced its latest product, AdMetrics, which allows advertisers to assess any out-of-home ad-space or campaign’s effectiveness. AdMazad’s AdTech has revolutionized the outdoor advertising market by bringing data and analytics to a traditional and chaotic industry.
RiseUp Summit 2019 will convene from December 5-7, hosting four main stages: Tech, Capital, Creative, and Growth. The seven tracks that the content focuses on are Creative Culture, Creative Economies, Smart Capital, Growth Hacks, Emerging Tech, FinTech, and Tech 4 Humans.
RiseUp has completed its selection of 15 startups from seven cities across the Middle East and North Africa to pitch at Egypt’s first multi-stage, regional startup pitch competition, “Pitch by the Pyramids.
Amjaad, Makwa, PaySky, and PayNas won RiseUp’s Cairo qualifier on November 8th, 2019, and will join the remaining cohort for the final pitch event at the Great Pyramids of Giza on the 8th of December, aligning with RiseUp Summit 2019.
“Bringing all these startups to the Great Pyramids of Giza has been a dream of ours since we started RiseUp,” CEO of RiseUp Abdelhameed Sharara says. “The Pitch by the Pyramids program is not only a MENA-wide pitch competition for early-stage startups, but also a value-driven experience for participating entrepreneurs.”
Regional partners from each of the startup ecosystem hubs – Cogite Coworking space in Tunis, Wamda in Dubai, Social N’ Tech in Amman and Ramallah, The Space in Riyadh and Startup Grind Beirut – organized local qualifier events for selected startups to compete, selecting the best, most innovative startups to proceed to the final event at the Pyramids.
“We’re really excited to participate in Pitch By The Pyramids in Egypt and gain exposure to the investors in the community,” said Hamdi Tabaa, CEO of Abwaab. “I think the Amman qualifier event was really beneficial and I’d recommend every early-stage startup to take part in the Pitch by the Pyramids programnext year.”
The finalists will pitch to a hand-picked audience of over 500 attendees, including local and regional Venture Capitalists and investors, as well as an extensive media presence that guarantees wide regional exposure for the up-and-coming businesses.
Finalist startups are assigned a relevant expert mentor with experience in their industry to support their development throughout the competition, leading up to the final event in Cairo on December 8th, 2019.
In addition to the event’s competitive element, Pitch by the Pyramids will also feature a prominent keynote speaker and an entertainment program aimed at celebrating the region’s thriving start-up ecosystem.
There are a few brands that are more beloved than Apple. And when it comes to leadership, few inspired me more than Steve Jobs. One person who had a front-row seat at Apple and who worked alongside Jobs was Cameron Craig.
A look into Apple’s iPhone X Marketing Strategies
Cameron worked with Apple for 10 years during the company’s dramatic turnaround period under Steve Jobs. Starting in 1997, Cameron led Apple’s agency efforts with Porter Novelli Australia before moving to Singapore to lead Apple’s communications in Asia-Pacific. The company then relocated him to California, where he played a senior role on the product PR team.
Cameron will be heading to the Middle East to speak for the first time at IABC’s EMENAComm communications conference this February in Bahrain. He spoke to us about his time at Apple, the lessons he learned from Steve Jobs, and why communications were central to Apple’s turnaround.
Event: IABC’s EMENAComm communications conference / February in Bahrain
Cameron: I worked on the agency side in the mid-1990s. We won the Apple business, and I joined Apple a couple of months later as the Asia Pacific lead. I was there for three years, and then they transferred me to Cupertino’s mothership in California. I was part of the product communications team during a fascinating time for Apple. I started at Apple a year after Steve Jobs returned. The first thing I worked on was the Think Different campaign, and my last project was the iPhone. I got to see a company’s journey from the brink of destruction to this massive company that emerged.
Cameron: I will be talking about five lessons that I learned during my ten years at Apple that I reapply every day. Since Apple, I’ve held several senior global roles, including Yahoo, Paypal, Visa, and Polycom. These five lessons are the basis on which I’ve succeeded in my profession.
Cameron: Keep it simple. You look at the press releases for Apple’s products, and they were so easy to understand. Take, for instance, the communications around the iPod. It was all about” 1,000 songs in your pocket. Listening to music will never be the same again.” Short words and short sentences, packed with emotion and meaning. There were no clichés, no jargon. As Steve Jobs used to say, if a mere mortal couldn’t understand our communications, then we’d failed. And you didn’t want to fail if you worked for Steve Jobs. Simplicity is a lost art. I get distracted and tempted to use complex wording, techno mumbo-jumbo, and it’s not easy following this rule. I’ll be sharing tips on how to do this during my talk at EMENAComm. The issue of simplicity was my biggest learning at Apple. And that is even more true today when we live in a world where English isn’t everyone’s first language. Please keep it simple, and your communications will be more effective.
Cameron: Steve Jobs was an amazing storyteller, and he put so much effort into getting these keynotes right. There was always a villain, be it a rival operating system. There’s always a hero, which is Apple, and there’s always tension in the story. Steve had great storytelling techniques. Look at Think Different; here is Apple at the brink with no products on the horizon, yet this campaign is packed with emotion and hope, which resonates with people worldwide. You can count that day as day one of the rebirths of Apple. A story that is rarely told, which I’ll be sharing at the conference, is what this did for Apple’s employees. I don’t think that Steve and the team at Apple get enough credit for their employee communication.
Cameron: I believe firmly that everyone has a great story to tell. One example of this is Polycom, and I met the company’s founder a couple of days into my new role. It was at kids at workday, and he had these 11 and 12 year-olds completely engrossed. When he walked into a RadioShack store, he talked about buying a 99 cents book on how to make speakers, and that book led to the creation of this two-billion-dollar company. Every single company around the world has a Polycom speakerphone in their conference room. It’s an incredible story, and yet it had never been told. We changed that, wrote a Havard Business Review article, and started sharing his story widely. To repeat, we all have a story inside of us.
The hackathon is an open invitation to software developers and innovators… those tech enthusiasts who are excited to shape the future of Egypt with Vodafone.
Can you code like a boss? Do you have a new untapped idea that will shape the future of a Digital Egypt? Are you looking to bring your idea to life? Then look no further! Vodafone Egypt’s “Developers 010 Innovation Hackathon” awaits you to nurture and foster your innovative and challenging spirit for the duration of three days.
The 010 Innovation Hackathon – set to take place from 13th to 15th December, in its HeadQ, Smart Village – comes in line with Vodafone’s strategic goal to become one of the key digital enablers of Egypt’s vision 2030.
The 010 Hackathon also coincides with the #1 Network’s 20th Anniversary in Egypt.
Empowered by Egyptian innovators’ great potentials, Vodafone aims to unlock new tech ideas in education, health, energy, transportation, environment, or any field that can enable a “Digital Egypt”, by stimulating the creative and problem-solving juices of developers!
Participants are in for a treat, as the total prizes of the hackathon amount up to EGP 210,000 to the first three winning teams:
Besides, NanoDegree Scholarships from Udacity, potential internship and job opportunities at Vodafone for Undergrads & Grads.
Egypt’s software developers who are 18 years old or above can take part in the three-day event. To join the hackathon, you will need to have a team of 2 to 4 members. Ideally, the idea would be developed using one or combining some of the Technologies such as, and not limited to, Artificial Intelligence, Application Development, Web Development, Big Data, DevOps, Robotic Process Automation and IoT.
Sky is developers’ limit when it comes to the 010 Innovation Hackathon, as the final product can be a prototype, product concept, a software, a hardware, blueprints, or a working model.
Vodafone will select the final participants upon filtering their ideas on first-come, first-served basis. Winners will be chosen by a panel of judges based on set criteria. What is the criteria, you may ask? Well, Vodafone is keeping everyone on their toes, as it will be announced to accepted teams on the Hackathon’s first day.
If you think you are the next big thing – perhaps the next Mark Zuckerberg – then don’t miss the application’s deadline on December 9th. You can find more details and register at hackathon.vodafone.com.eg
Roll your sleeves up, developers, and up your game for this challenging hackathon! May the best idea and working prototype win and may the odds be ever in your favor.
Facebook hosted its first ‘Boost Your Business’ event in Cairo, which took place on Oct 22 at the Nile Ritz hotel, welcoming 400 small and medium business (SMB) owners to learn from businesses that have used Facebook to grow, establish connections, meet with Facebook experts and participate in training.
In Egypt, 23 million people actively use Facebook daily, while 37 million actively use Facebook each month via Mobile. The majority of these – 71 per cent – are connected to at least one local SMB, according to FB data.
“Today, marks the beginning of an exciting journey for Facebook in Egypt. We plan to invest in more people, technology, and programs to help local businesses grow and help people enhance their digital skills. Together we look forward to doing so much for our communities,” said Nashwa Aly, Facebook’s Head of Public Policy for MENA.
“We are proud to host ‘Boost Your Business’ for the first time in Egypt. This is a country rich in talent and we are truly inspired by the tremendous success we’ve seen so many start-ups and entrepreneurs achieve,” added Aly.
“We want to play a bigger role in taking that success to even higher levels. We believe that small and medium businesses have transformational potential and we are here to help them unlock that potential. When they flourish, they brighten economic prospects by creating stronger, more vibrant and more cohesive communities, and this is what Facebook is about.”
Today tens of millions of businesses around the world have harnessed the power of Facebook and Instagram to get started, connect with customers to grow, trade and hire.
Facebook’s diverse and free tools supporting business growth and enhancing digital skills include its new Jobs tool allowing businesses to post new openings, while helping candidates find jobs more easily and allowing them to apply directly on Facebook. They also include solutions like Pages, training programs like Community Boost and free e-learning tools like Blueprint, as well as new digital skills training programs like ‘Boost Your Business’.
On behalf of Amr Talaat, Minister of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), Hossam Othman, Advisor to the Minister for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, delivered the keynote speech highlighting the role of startups and SMBs in driving growth.
“Egypt values the innovative thinking of its youth who are aware of the present and future challenges and work diligently to meet them head on. I am pleased to be here today, witnessing firsthand the evolution and development of the entrepreneurial framework. You are building your own future and the Egyptian government fully backs and supports you. We are fully aware that SMBs are a vital element in the growth of any economy or market, and we consider them our essential partner in our efforts to shift to a digital economy and build a knowledge based society,” according to a statement by the Ministry of CIT.
“The MCIT is working on creating an environment that fosters the growth of a digital economy through several programs and initiatives. Those include setting up a supporting legislative environment through the recently passed IT crimes law; regulating the gathering and use of Egyptians’ personal data and information; encouraging investments in data hosting centers; as well as working on a draft law regulating electronic transaction service providers. All of our efforts are geared towards achieving the necessary balance between digital data protection, driving companies to invest, while preserving the rights of the government,” according to a statement by MCIT.
The fourth edition of the Marketing Kingdom Cairo will occur from 17-18 October at the Royal Maxim Kempinski Hotel in Cairo. With cutting-edge presentations by marketers from Facebook, Snapchat, Twitter, Microsoft, and Shell, to name but a few, the event promises to provide solutions to today’s most important marketing challenges.
This year’s Marketing Kingdom also includes an interactive discussion on what today’s marketers want from their agencies with Khaled Shokry, PR & Communication Manager, OPPO Egypt, Heba Barakat, Marketing and Customer Experience Senior Manager, General Motors Egypt, and Ahmed El-Nakeeb, Senior Marketing Manager, Egyptian Resorts Company – Sahl Hasheesh.
The organizers have just announced that registration for the event will be closing next week, so make sure you buy your tickets on the event’s official website as soon as possible.
25,000 tech professionals, entrepreneurs, engineers and developers from all around the world gathered in the Moscone Center in San Francisco for the three-day Google Cloud Next ’18, listening to topnotch speakers from Google, sharing experiences and staying abreast of the latest about Google Cloud Platform (GCP), machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and even more.
We sat down with Sherif Kozman, CEO of Extreme solution, Google Cloud Partner in Egypt to share some takeaways from the conference as well as tell us more about Google Cloud Platform and how businesses in Egypt can utilize it.
Extreme Solution has been a leading tech shop since 2001 taking on software Development & Digital products as a craft and art. Building success for their clients through innovation, software and cloud technologies, The company has expanded its arsenal by aligning itself with Google as a “Google Cloud Partner” offering various cloud solutions for startups and enterprise.
I believe the common misconception between the cloud or cloud computing versus traditional web hosting services is one of the main reasons why lots of business are yet to realize the true benefit or potential the cloud may offer to their business either in scalability, cost reduction, security or collaboration.
In a traditional web hosting model a company will rent a shared or dedicated portion of a server within a provider to host or manage their web services or software. You may not utilize all of those resources equally or to their maximum scale depending on the nature of your service because they are part of a plan or a package.
Cloud computing breaks down all aspects of computing resources individually so you can rent and utilize only the resources needed upon need while being able to scale up and down almost instantly with virtually no limits and without having to invest in a huge infrastructure, hence the cloud.
While all major cloud providers essentially offer computing resources at scale for everyone, GCP’s (Google Cloud Platform) approach has been unique towards businesses, developers and startups.
Whether you are a startup with a few developers and a product that will scale to millions or your IT operations is running within a legacy on premise data center or you are business analyst with virtually no tech or code knowledge that have got access to huge amounts of data that you need to crunch to offer business intelligence reports, GCP offers a huge set of tools and technologies that help you launch, test and scale your business or infrastructure while being in control of your costs.
You get access to the same resources Google uses to run services such as Google.com, YouTube and Gmail. This includes Google-grade security, access to technology innovation built by google in machine learning, analytics, data warehousing, development tools and Global network built and managed by Google.
As Extreme Solution our role is to help you identify and build solutions addressing the problems your business may be facing using the GCP suite of technologies.
NEXT18 has unfolded with lots of new products & technology announcements that were cutting edge for both enterprise and developers.
However personally a few of the most appealing were:
Today marks the first day of Jordan Food Week, the biggest culinary spectacle the kingdom has yet to witness. The event features over 100 local artisanal producers and 30 of the kingdom’s most unique restaurants showcasing delicious traditional Jordanian dishes.
Jordan Food Week is supported by the USAID Jordan Local Enterprise Support Project.
Jordan Food Week will highlight great local dishes such as labneh, Dibs (Molasses), Sumac, and several other Jordanian Flavours by local producers including; Namliyeh, Kama Local, and Alchemy by Omar Sartawi.
You will also be able to enjoy the unique takes on Jordanian cuisine by restaurants Like Atr, Sufra, Kebdeh o 3arayes, and Shannab Shawerma.
EntertainmentThe Lineup includes live cooking demonstrations by Jordanian Chefs such as Chef Taimour Mauge and Chef Leen Abu Al Ragheb. Healthy cooking tips by Royal Health Awareness Society and For Life Plan, And live music by local performers, Atef Malhas, Hargett Kart, and Water Sol.
The Jordan Food Week will take place in Hangar Ras AlAin from the 18th till the 24th of July. A nominal entrance of JD2 for adults will be charged at the door (Children under the age of 12 enter for free). The good news is parking is covered by the great municipality of Amman, and Careem has a special promo code for the Event JFW18
By Visiting Jordan Food Week, you also play a role in supporting local artisanal food producers that work passionately to produce the most high-quality products. Sponsored by USAid local enterprise support project due to their many contributions to local homemade products from local ingredients.
The Jordan Food Week represents a great incentive for Jordanians and tourists to enjoy and be surprised by the great and varied gastronomic varieties offered by the capital and its surroundings.
Silicon-Valley based 500 Startups, the most active early-stage Venture Capital Fund in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, has announced it is gearing up to host Investor Day, which marks the culmination of 500 Startups MENA Dojo Series A ‘growth acceleration’ program.
This high-profile event will be held at the Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre, Kuwait on 10th May 2018. Venture capitalists, VIP delegates, government officials, accelerators, financial organisations and entrepreneurs from across the MENA region are expected to attend.
The key sponsors for the event include: Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), Program Partners; Kuwait Achievers and Future Opportunities (KAFO) and Sirdab Lab as Organizing Sponsors; and Faith Capital, Microsoft and Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Cultural Centre as Event Sponsors.
The keynote and panel speakers for the event will feature Venture Capitalists and Investors from across the MENA region, including Hasan Haider and Sharif El-Badawi, Partners of 500 Startups.
12 startups who were hand-picked and mentored by a team of international experts from 500 Startups will pitch their business concepts as part of an exciting fast-paced agenda. The aim of this high-profile event is to showcase the latest and greatest startups that have successfully completed their mentorship sessions and help them to pitch their business concept to the investors to raise the next round of funding.
Commenting on the announcement, Hasan Haider, Partner at 500 Startups said: “We are eagerly looking forward to host Investor Day and would like to thank our sponsors for their invaluable support. Our strategy, at 500 Startups is to bring our Silicon Valley honed Series A program to the MENA region, and equip our invested companies with international-grade skills, knowledge and perspective to operate at a pace that will help them dominate on a global scale. To this effect, the program was taught by a 500 Startups team of growth experts from all over the world, all of whom are former entrepreneurs themselves, having built and grown technology ventures, many of whom have successful exits.
“It has been an exciting journey over the past few weeks preparing for the pitch process and delighted by the drive and determination shown by the startups; the growth improvements which has surpassed our expectations yet again. We are very excited for them to share their progress at Demo Day and are confident that we have found more future unicorns to add to our portfolio, he added.”
The MENA Dojo Series A growth hacking program was held in two modules for the 12 seed and post-seed regional companies in Kuwait. The first module was held from April 1-12 and the second module is currently underway from April 29-9 May. The topics discussed during the intense training program involved developing a scale-able growth machine to boost exponential growth.
With the first investment in the MENA region in 2012, 500 Startups has since committed to investments in over 80 startups across the region. With the launch of 500 Falcons, a MENA focused fund in 2017, 500 Startups plans to invest in approximately 100-150 companies over a three-year period in addition to follow-on investments into the top performing companies.