Queen Rania Center for entrepreneurship (QRCE) a not for profit organization based in Amman, Jordan and aims to spread entrepreneurship in Jordan has announced yesterday that it launched its 5th business plan competition: Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC.)

Unlike last year this year competition is aimed at students at universities and not open for non students except if they were teachers and applying teams have members who are students. Application submission is open now till mid-may 2012.

QRNEC awards amount to over $30,000, awarded to projects in the fields of ICT, Biotechnology, Agricultural Technology, Renewable Energy, Water, Life Sciences, and Advanced Technologies.
As part of the competition successful team will receive Entrepreneurship Development Bootcamp and Mentoring & Coaching.

Deputizing for Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah, Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, President of the El Hassan Science City and the Royal Scientific Society, today has welcomed the winners of the fourth round of Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC).

Founded by the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship in 2004, with the full support of El-Hassan Science City & El-Hassan Business Park, the competition aims to fuel the spirit of Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation across society in Jordan, and to help Jordanians to turn their entrepreneurial ideas into successful companies that supply innovative products and services to regional and global markets.

“I am confident that the outputs of this competition will add more life into Jordan’s Innovation Ecosystem by providing additional dealflow, investment and incubation opportunities,” said Princess Sumaya.

For his part, Farhan Kalaldeh, the Executive Director of QRCE, pointed out that the focus of this year’s competition was to attract investors and raise their awareness of the investment opportunities offered by emerging technology startups and the commercial potential of transforming ideas into products and services aimed at regional and global markets. Moreover, the focus was directed at strategic sectors of the Kingdom’s economy, such as ICT, Clean Technology and Life Sciences.

QRNEC had 400 participants in its fourth round, with more than 120 projects. The competition process involved comprehensive training in the areas of strategic planning, business plan development, project management and other topics related to starting and growing high impact technology companies.
Thirty teams were nominated for the final phase of the award in three categories: Startups; Projects under Development (Pre-Startup); and Universities. Project sectors were Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Clean Technology and Life Sciences. From these, 19 winning projects were selected:
In the Startups Category, the following projects were selected:

• First place: Mixed Dimensions (MXD) – a company that develops tools for gaming companies and online Interactive 3D applications developers.
• Second place: Naratech Labs – a company that assists pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, chemicals, food and beverages manufacturers to develop new products.

• Third place: TAQETNA – a company that develops smart renewable energy products and services.

In the Projects Under Development/ Pre-Startup Category, the following projects were selected:

• First place: Nitrate Production System – Developed a business plan for a company to design and manufacture an innovative new (patent pending) device for producing Nitrogen-based fertilizer in continuous and sustained quantities without the high cost of production associated with petrochemical-based fertilizers.

• Second place: Taltol – Developed a business plan for an online marketplace where users can buy and sell digital content & products.
• Third place: EduServ – Developed a business plan to provide online tools to establish better links between schools and parents.

In the Universities Category, the following projects were selected:
• First place: Mawdoo3.com from Hashemite University – Developed a business plan for the first Arabic website to offer high quality Arabic articles with automated Arabic keyword analysis service.

• Second place: Jordan Unmanned Systems’ from German Jordanian University – Developed a business plan to produce electrically powered UASs (Unmanned Aircraft Systems) for a variety of applications.

• Third place: Yadawi from Yarmouk University – Developed a business plan for an online store selling handmade items on regional and global levels.

It is worth mentioning that QRNEC awards amount to $50,000, awarded to projects in the fields of ICT, Agricultural Technology, Renewable Energy, Water, Life Sciences, and Advanced Technologies.

Our friends at QRCE along with other partners have organized an entrepreneurship week. The week started this Sunday with interesting speakers including Joi Ito CEO creative common and early investor in Twitter, Reid Hoffman founder and CEO of LinkedIn , Mitchell Baker Chairwoman of Mozilla Foundation,, Laith Al-Qaem CEO, Arabian Business Consultants for Development, Sami Shalabi team leader of Friend connect at Google and Habib Hadad cofounder of Yamli.

Unfortunately I was not able to attend as I was in Dubai via an invitation from Nokia. I wish though I could attend, as the topics of the event looks interesting and I wanted to ask Reid the founder of linkedin if he has better justification for Linkedin blocking Sudan than what his communication director told AC before.

The event which is still in ongoing started with a reception , forum and speed networking, sessions for kids and a market place.

During the forum and the reception speakers discussed many topics that revolve around entrepreneurship, in his part Emile Cubeisy managing director of I V Holding, the most active venture capital firm in the region, stated that it is important to build an ecosystem to fund entrepreneurs, which will ultimately benefit Jordan and the region.

Japanese VC, Joi Ito spoke about how the Internet has created a huge reduction in the risk that entrepreneurs take when starting a company, because internet-based technology resources have reduced start up and overhead costs. He also compared the culture of the Middle East to that of Japan, in terms of risk-aversion and fear of failure due to societal pressures around shame, and the necessity of moving away from “wasta” based power.

The American open source guru, Mitchell Baker spoke about the open source approach to product design and openness and transparency in running a business. In addition, she addressed the reactions she encountered when she started the Mozilla project- people told her she was crazy competing against Microsoft’s 98% market share.

Entrepreneur turned VC, Reid Hoffman – “entrepreneurship is like jumping off a high cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down. Financing is an updraft; it will give you more time, but you still need to build a plane or you will crash.” He gave other nuggets of advice to would-be entrepreneurs.

Full event schedule can be found here .

After many days of hard work, after over a year of full time dedication to help startups and techies like you, today AC reached a major milestone: ArabCrunch.NET First Online Social Platform in the Arab World focused on Startups & The Technology Industry. With this announcement, the social platform, was what you the passionate startup and tech community wanted AC to develop for you  and as I mentioned back on April that AC will do it! when I wrote about the ecosystem that we need to have in order to help grow the tech industry in this region and turn our economies into knowledge based economy. Today Our promise is delivered, Here is the ecosystem in one place

ArabCrunch.NET, Helping The Arab World Innovate

ArabCrunch Group Extends Technological Reach with First Social Network in the Arab World focused on the technology industry

Amman, Jordan and Silicon Valley, CA – Tuesday, November 10, 2009 – ArabCrunch Group announced today closing a round of funding and the launch of ArabCrunch.NET, the first social network dedicated to creating an environment that fosters innovation, entrepreneurship and mentorship for Arab entrepreneurs throughout the world. ArabCrunch.NET offers a dynamic platform for collaboration amongst the various stakeholders within the technological ecosystem from Berkeley to Bahrain.

The launch came during a press conference held by Arab Crunch in cooperation with Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship at the headquarters of the Royal Scientific Society.

“ArabCrunch.NET will facilitate knowledge transfer and enable veterans from Silicon Valley to work with and mentor young talent from the MENA region,” said Bassel Yassine Ojjeh, a former Senior Vice President of Yahoo!, Inc. USA, a serial entrepreneur and Board Member of ArabCrunch Group, who led the round of funding. “We’ve built ArabCrunch.NET to fuel innovation, create a knowledge based society and an environment for job creation in the region that will serve high tech professionals throughout the 22 Arab countries and the western hemisphere.”

“We’re thrilled at the opportunity to be the first dedicated group that focuses on accelerating the innovation cycle both here in Amman and throughout the Arab world,” said Gaith Saqer, Founder of ArabCrunch Group. “Ever since we launched ArabCrunch.com in 2008, we have been committed to finding the most compelling technological innovations that impact the Arab world – this next chapter allows us to help foster collaboration on a scale never seen before in our region. We have built a social platform that connects participants and helps them find crucial resources, build strategic partnerships and promote services.”

Since it’s unveiling in 2008, ArabCrunch.com has grown to one of the most widely read technology blogs in the Arab world with over 30,000 monthly visits. Founded on the principle of “professional blogging,” ArabCrunch.com has become the primary source of information about the latest technological advancements relevant to the Arabic world. An Arabic version based on “citizen journalism” was launched last month and has met with great success.

- END-

About ArabCrunch Group:
ArabCrunch Group’s mission is to inform, impact, inspire and create an Arab centric technology ecosystem that delivers information, and connects Arab entrepreneurs both in the region and throughout the world via its properties, ArabCrunch.com, ArabCrunch.NET and ArabCrunch.com/ar. About

Arab Crunch.NET:

The mission of ArabCrunch.NET is to help accelerate entrepreneurship and technology innovation in the Arab world by delivering an online social platform that connects participants of the technology ecosystem.
ArabCrunch.NET is the first online social platform dedicated to connect and support technology companies, entrepreneurs, techies, scientists, academia and investors in the Arab world. ArabCrunch.NET is a project from ArabCrunch, the publisher of arabcrunch.com and ArabCrunch Arabic Edition.

About Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship:
The QRCE is a non-profit, non-governmental organization established in October 2004 and is now a complement of El Hassan Science City. The center’s mission is to support economic development through offering a package of services to promote excellence and market technology. The centre particularly targets college students, researchers, inventors and initiators to enhance and build their personal capacities. QRCE offers this group consultation and works to develop their sense of excellence and initiative through a set of programs including Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Excellence Competition, Technology Commercialization Program, Connect Jordan and Princess Sumaya University for Technology’s Entrepreneurship Society (DART).

QRCE

The Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) is organizing two Interesting Blue Ocean strategy (BOS) events. The first one is a seminar and will be held on July 27, 2009 at Le Meridien hotel, Amman, Jordan. The seminar will introduce the concept BOS that lead to innovation and is open freely to the public. While the other event is BOS Workshop, which will introduce live action training, where the focus is on learning by doing and costs USD 570 with 60% discount for Jordanian SME’s by NAFES. Both the seminar and the workshop will be led by Mohammad Aljouni, one of 50 certified BOS practitioner in the world and is the managing director of the Middle East Defense Systems.

If this was the first time you hear about Blue Ocean Strategy here is a brief about it:

Blue Ocean Strategy is about making a new business idea a winning strategy. It is about following a strategy of value innovation and creating new market space instead of pursuing a conventional competitive strategy.

BOS is based on a business strategy book written by W. Chan Kim and Rene Mauborgne and is the result of a decade-long study of 150 strategic moves spanning more than 30 industries over 100 years (1880-2000). The strategy is based on red and blue oceans who both describe the market universe:

For more information about the seminar and the workshop click here and for more info about BOS check Wikipedia entry here and BOS official website here.

(Disclosure QRCE was an organizing partner to ARABCURNCH DEMO 09, and its Managing Director Mohammad Khawaja is friend to AC’s founder.)

#Wikipedia, BOS official website and QRCE.

MENA 100 Business Plan Competition, is organized by the MENA-OECD Enterprise Financing Network, in cooperation with the Islamic Development Bank and the MENA Center for Investment. and in partnership of MENA 100 regional Partners including QRCE.

The MENA 100 Competition addresses innovative entrepreneurs, from the 18 Arab countries participating in the MENA OECD Investment Program (Algeria, Bahrain, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen)

The primary objective of the MENA 100 business plan competition is to encourage existing and inspire potential entrepreneurs and connect the 100 best of them in the Middle East and North Africa region with potential sources of finance to generate business transactions.

The MENA 100 Business Plan Competition will recognize top performers with cash and in-kind services awards. In-kind services represent professional services donated by sponsors of the competition as well MENA business angels (BA) – venture capital funds (VC) for all participants

The 100 finalists will have the opportunity to present their projects at an event in Manama the capital of Bahrain.

There will be one winner per country and a selection of regional winners:

-The best three regional projects.

-Winners will be invited to participate in the MENA-OECD Business Day

-Networking opportunities in the region and worldwide.

-Possibility to share your ideas, develop them and enter new markets.

The MENA 100 is a competition for nationals from the 18 participating Arab countries in the MENA-OECD Investment Programme . At least one member of the applying team must be a national of one of these countries. Candidates from other nationalities are not eligible to participate .The competition is for new, independent ventures in seed (at the business plan first stage), start-up, or early growth stage. For more info about eligibility criteria go here.

Applications will be accepted until 31st August and MENA 100 event will be held in November 2009, for more information and to access the on-line application form which is available in French and English you can visit the competition website: www.mena100.org.

(Via Mohammed Khawaja)

UPDATE: More details of the deal at the end of the post.

WebProNews reports that Google and the Egyptian Ministry of Communications and Information Technology have signed a $10 million contract regarding business and workforce development in Egypt.  According to the site the deal was signed in Washington D.C during the Egyptian Minister of ICT, Dr. Tarek Kamel, visit this week along with a representative for the Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA) .

WebProNews news says that The Google deal was made for the promotion of Egyptian products and services using Google’s advertising platforms. And under the agreement, Google will invest 25% of the money back into the Egyptian economy. “Over the medium to long term, Google’s USD $2.5 million investment agreement may include: growing digital media start-ups, incubation venture capital, angel funding of the ICT sector and potentially training students in online advertising.”

So this seems like Google is winning a major advertiser for its Adwords (and possibly DoubleClick) in the region, however giving back 25% of the deal to support entrepreneurship in Egypt is something great for Egypt’s IT sector and the Arab region in general, and something that we at ArabCrunch applaud Google for. I’ve never heard of any International tech company giving some money it makes from government deals in the region back to help the IT startup seen of that country (excluding AMD). I know Intel, Cisco, and Microsoft offering many initiatives to support in bridging the tech divide. (Sun Microsystems donated several servers to universities in Jordan during the last years.) But these were not cuts from a deals they made, if anyone knows otherwise please let us know.

I encouraged before here on AC and else where; Arab governments to ask International IT companies to open R&D centers when they consider buying their solutions with millions of dollars. We need R&D centers in the region because they transfer technology and skills that are very much needed to take the IT industry in the region to its next level. I’ve heard that the Emirate of Abu Dhabi has plans to open a chip factory for AMD in UAE soon, since it has acquired about 20% of AMD through its sovereign fund vehicle Mubadala Development.

Google has been moving strongly in the region with new products and initiatives, such as Google Online Business Plan Award with Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship. That’s why ArabCrunch has added a new Category titled “Google” which marks Google’s related posts in our Category list.

I’ll contact Google to get more details of this deal and update you here accordingly.

Update 1: According to Wael Ghonim, Google’s Product & Marketing Manager, Middle East & North Africa, Egypt will promote by using Google advertising technologies the following sectors: Tourism, IT and Industrial Business.

Campaigns will have a global nature and will target audience in US & Europe as well as the Arab countries. He added nothing has been decided yet in terms of the details, but the ad campaigns are expected to be combination of text / display ads. Sources say MCIT will be managing this for all the different Egyptian ministries, and there will be different landing pages created to brand Egypt and specific businesses. Egypt has been doing a nice job online with sites such as Egypt Memory and Eternal Egypt web sites.

As for the $2.5 million reinvestment, sources say it is part of MCIT policies (so it’s not specific to Google), this is what Microsoft also do in Egypt .

“We are really excited about this partnership as we are committed to add value to Egypt.” Said Wael.

An email will be sent to Egypt’s MCIT to get a better understanding about the reinvestment policy.

Habib Haddad the cofounder of Yamli, the Arabic transliteration utility and search engine,  delivered an interesting lecture titled” Idea to Reality” on May 18th at Princess Sumaya University in Amman, Jordan, as part of The Entrepreneurs Week which was organized by Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) from the 16th  tell the 21st of may 2009.

Habib presented an interesting lecture in how to turn your startup into a real thing, he used his experiences in starting Yamli and growing it as an example that Arab startups (and non Arabs) can take lessons from.

I announced originally on my twitter that I ‘ll do a live streaming of the lecture on ArabCrunch Channel on Qik, however the WIFI connection did not work at the event location at the time of the lecture, even though I tested it a day before. Nevertheless the lecture videos were synchronized  latter to ArabCrunch Qik Channel. Only about 10 minutes of the begging of lecture were missing.

Here are the videos I shot using my Nokia 5800 mobile (I think Nokia should thank me for over publicizing Nokia 5800 on  ArabCrunch )

Under the patronage of Princess Sumaya Bint El-Hassan, the Emirati Al-Ahli Holding Group has launched, in partnership with the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE), the second version of the Global Business Opportunities program. The program aims to train a group of young entrepreneurs of various nationalities in order to prepare them for the launch of global companies. The opening ceremony was attended by a number of businesspeople, ambassadors and participating delegations from Jordan, Argentina and South Africa, 

There are 25 young men and women participating in this program from Jordan, Argentina and South Africa. They will undergo intensive training for three weeks, during which they will be introduced to administrative, marketing, financing, financial and human resources skills, along with others, presented by the Cisco Entrepreneurship Institute at the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship. Participants will be divided into a number of groups that include different nationalities who will provide a complete business project in which the skills and ideas acquired throughout the program will emerge.  

In her opening speech Princess Sumaya Bint El-Hassan who is a strong supporter to entrepreneurs in Jordan and beyond, expressed her pride in the regional and global initiatives launched by the Center with various institutions and companies, such as Al-Ahli Holding Group. Her Highness said: “The Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship, as a primary component in El Hassan Science City, has succeeded in playing an important role in the proliferation of entrepreneurship culture and training business entrepreneurs within a number of regional and global initiatives. It has also succeeded in launching the ‘Google Award for the Best Online Business Plan’ and is expanding its geographical scope to include numerous nations and continents.”  

In a speech delivered by Mr. Mohammed Khammas, the CEO of Al-Ahli Holding Group, he stated: “The efforts in this program and other specific programs have the effect of offering a better tomorrow for youth who will lead the development process in their countries. As a private sector, it is our duty to cooperate with our governments, NGOs and various training and educational institutions to train and enable youth.” 

Khammas added: “It is our duty to prepare the youth for the future. We must trust their ability to be creative and to develop. We must arm them with the tools and skills needed to launch their own projects and therefore enhance national economies and investment opportunities while creating more job opportunities as well.” 

The ceremony included the participation of Joi Ito, the CEO of Creative Commons, who presented a motivational speech for participants in which he emphasized the role of entrepreneurship in achieving comprehensive development and the significance of creativity in the success of companies starting up and increasing their ability to compete in global markets. 

The Director of Business Development for Google in the United Arab Emirates, Hosni Al-Khufash, provided a detailed presentation on the challenges facing entrepreneurs in their endeavors to establish global corporations, and offered solutions for these challenges. 

Princess Sumaya concluded the ceremony by thanking the volunteers including trainers and counselors, and honoring the speakers and representatives of delegations participating from Argentina and South Africa. She urged participants to move forward in competition and working with a team spirit to create successful global entrepreneurial companies. 

It is worth noting that the first version of the program took place in Argentina with the participation of 20 young men and women from the United Arab Emirates and Argentina. Preparations are underway to implement the program in Brazil and South Africa in an expanded capacity and with a larger participation of youth.   

The Entrepreneurs Week, is one of the most interesting events Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) is organizing this year. And ArabCrunch is proud to be a media partner for this event.

The event will last for a week starting at the 16th  of this month and ending at the 21 st of this month, where every day will have one speaker at a time. The event is open to the public for free and will take place at Princess Sumaya University Amman, Jordan.

The event will feature interesting and outstanding International speakers such as the Arab innovator Habib Haddad Co-Founder, Yamli.com and Joi Ito a Japanese entrepreneur and venture capitalist who invested in many web 2.0 icons, such as Flickr, Twitter, Last.fm, Six Apart and Technorati. The event will tackle important topics for entrepreneurs such as “how to make your idea a reality”,  and “the current world financial market situation,” which has a great impact on any new startup.

During the event interactive discussions are excepted to tack place between the public and the speakers, thus provide a richer knowledge sharing platform.

Here is the list of all events’ topics:

• BlueOcean Strategy: How to transform a new business idea into a winning strategy. Speaker: Mohammad Ajlouni (Managing Director, MDS)

• Identifying your Strengths as an Entrepreneur. Speaker: Ronald Evans (CEO, SIMA International)

• Idea to Reality. Speaker: Habib Haddad (Co-Founder, Yamli.com)

• Innovation in Open Networks – Perspectives from an Internet entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Speaker: Joi Ito (CEO, Creative Commons)

• Cross-cultural business issues as companies expand internationally. Speaker: Doug Christgau (Director, Cross-Cultural Development)  

• The current U.S. and world financial market situation. Speaker: Larry Hutchins (Certified Financial Planner, Wachovia)

• Insights into family-owned companies in regards to economic and human resource issues. Speaker: John Carmon (President, Carmon Community Funeral Homes)

For registration and further information, Please call +962 6 515 4892 or visit the events page here 

Under the kind consecutive patronage of  Princess Sumaya bint El Hassan, the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE)  is organizing the Fifth Annual Conference on Technology Commercialization , that will take place tomorrow at El Hassan Science City, in Amman, Jordan. The Conference will be part of the 14th Jordan Scientific Week (May 3rd – 6th, 2009). This conference is organized as part of QRCE’s continued efforts in commemorating the developing and dynamic process of generating intellectual property (IP), research and development (R&D) patentability, and commercialization.

The fifth conference will focus on how to generate patents through systematic innovation in technology and business domains; it will highlight an approach in systematic innovation known as TRIZ (Theory of Solving Inventive Problems), which has been recognized as a mean of generating considerable impact of innovations worldwide -especially by leading companies which apply it to solve both problems and produce concepts of new products and services based on more than 50 years of scientific studies. Also, TRIZ is considered as a tool that drastically accelerates innovation process by offering tools and techniques for systematic situation analysis, problem solving and new ideas development by combining system thinking and creativity.

During the opening session, a keynote speech by Mr. Valeri Souchkov -the co-founder of The European TRIZ Association and the owner of ICG Training & Consulting based in Netherlands- will highlight on TRIZ knowledge in a structured way to solve existing problems and develop innovative products and technologies. The opening will be followed by two technical sessions one for innovation in engineering & technology and another one for business & management innovation.

Within the conference, the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship will announce the launching of “TRIZmatic”; the specialized Institute for Systematic Innovation, which will focus on companies in the MENA region which are welling to increase their competitiveness in the global economy by innovating in their products, services, business models, systems and processes. in coinciding with the conference, TRIZmatic will conduct a special 3-day public training workshop about TRIZ-based systematic innovation in business and management

The Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) has recently announced that it has been selected to join the Microsoft BizSpark Program as a Network Partner. 

The BizSpark Program is a new global program launched by Microsoft in many countries of the world. The program is Microsoft’s answer to the growing use of free open source technologies by many startups; it is an attempt by Microsoft to lure startups to use its own technologies by offering them many benefits and free resources. 

The program is designed to accelerate the success of early stage Startups by connecting them to Network of Partners: active members of the global software ecosystem who can provide mentorship, guidance and resources to BizSpark Startups. BizSpark creates an ongoing, mutually beneficial ecosystem between Microsoft, Startups and Network Partners. 

The BizSpark Program provides Startups with software, support and visibility at a time when they are most valuable and least affordable—during their first three years, with no upfront costs and minimal requirements. 

BizSpark gives Startups fast and easy access to Microsoft’s current full-featured development tools, platform technologies as well as production licenses to bring to market innovative and interoperable solutions for the next generation of user experiences. 

To be eligible for the Microsoft BizSpark Program, Startups must be actively engaged in development of a software-based product or service that is a core piece of their business model, have been in business less than three years, and have less than USD$1M in revenue. Startups may enroll for the program by obtaining sponsorship from a designated BizSpark Network partner

Qualified startups will gain Free access to: 

Software:

• Design and  Development and tools for your development team (including Expressions Studio, Visual Studio 2008 and VSTS Team Foundation Server)
• Production licenses to run your software-as-a-service business on the following server products: Windows Server, SQL Server, Office SharePoint Server, Systems Center, and BizTalk Server.

Support :

• Professional support from Microsoft: 2 technical support incidents per Startup.
• Access to MSDN Premium: managed newsgroups, forums, download, etc.
• Community Support from BizSpark Network Partners: guidance, resources, and mentoring to help your Startup grow.

Visibility :

• Opportunity to achieve global visibility to an audience of potential investors, clients, and partners by profiling your company in the online Startup directory, BizSparkDB, on the Microsoft Startup Zone Website.
• Opportunity to be highlighted on the BizSparkDB as a featured company and be promoted as BizSpark Company of the Week on the Microsoft Startup Zone Website.

Any startup who wants to apply to the program can email Najeeb Jarrar , Senior Research and Development  Officer at QRCE, njarrar(at)qrce.org .

Sun Microsystems provides similar program called Startup essentials in only one Arab country: Egypt. Providing eligible Startups with: discounted servers, discounted on storage, Open source software, discounted partner hosting, free technical advice and training Co-marketing opportunities. 

ArabCrunch applauds QRCE continues support for Startups and thanks Microsoft for this program launch in the region. But we also encourage other Global IT companies to follow this path, like Zend and Adobe and we also hope that Sun Microsystems Startup essentials will be available in more Arab countries.

Jordan based, CIApple, is a startup that aims to work in the field of computational intelligence, has won The first place in the Arab Technology Business Plan (Seed Stage Category) which is organized by Arab Science and Technology Foundation (ASTF) in cooperation with Intel Corporation. (Disclosure: Hussein Al-Netsha founder or CIApple is a friend of mine, he is also Technology Transfer Program (TCP) manager at Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) which its DART was an organizing partner in the 1st ARABCRUNCH DEMO )

Computational intelligence is the area of technology that introduces handy applicable solutions to the market that utilizes artificial intelligence (AI) technology. CIApple specializes in artificial neural networks solutions as well as other computational intelligence techniques such as fuzzy logic and other technologies. CIApple first product would be a Data Mining tool, that does knowledge extraction from the corporate Database (DB) (Microsoft’s MSQL and Oracle), in order to help in business decision making.

According to Hussein who also has CI masters from Jordan University of  Science and Technology (JUST)- CIApple first product’s competitive advantage would be: in using a new algorithm, providing highly accurate results using its another product that measure the accuracy of the clustering result, applicable in more than one DB Oracle and MSQL, and a user friendly interface. The first product is expected to be launched within around 6 month. Hussien added that there will be other software and hardware solutions, such as optimization and control application using AI. The startup is currently self funded.

Four other companies won ASTF business plan competition: Localizer in 2nd Place, Eg Broker 3rd Place, Better Care 4th Place and Smart Tire 5th Place. And if you are asking what those startups do or  which Arab country they are from, the answer is I do not know since the competition’s website does not mention more than their names! However I will email Yasser Tawfik from ASTF and update you accordingly.

At the end of last year, 5 Winners were announced in Morocco In The University Category .  The top 2 winners of this category  traveled  with full support from the competition to the lovely city USA Berkeley,  to attend Intel + UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge which concluded in 20 November 2008.

The winners of the university category were given 21K grants, while also the seed category winners  were supposed to get the same amount, but for this year they did not get any, indicating the funding downside from Intel to the competition.  However the winners if the seed category will be present at the ASTF Investment in Technology Forum along with the university category  winners. The Forum is expected to take place sometime this year in Sharm Elshaikh in Egypt.

Arab tech startup companies got their chance at ARABCRUNCH DEMO to showcase new products on stage before an audience of press, investors, IT professionals and IT students.

ARABCRUNCH DEMO 09 EVENT was organized by ArabCrunch – a blog dedicated to profiling Arab originated startups and established companies, and DART- the student entrepreneurship society at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) one of the major programs at the of Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE).

Gaith Saqer Editor and Founder of ArabCrunch opened the event with a welcome speech where he said” ARABCRUNCH DEMO is a step forward to help create a regional ecosystem that supports technology entrepreneurs in the Arab world.” He added that by offering Arab tech startups a free platform to showcase their products, now innovative Arab tech ideas won’t die because nobody knew about them.

The first version of ARABCRUNCH DEMO was a one day event which concluded on Monday 23rd Feb. 2009 in princess Sumaya University, Amman, Jordan. The event is the only free launchpad platform for newly developed technology products and services in the Arab world. Besides startups’ demos, the event included keynote sessions by regional and world class experts from companies ranging from e-marketing, venture capital, and IT.

Zeina Tata, Main Coordinator of DART said” we at DART aim to link the student community with the business world; such an event is a milestone to achieve this goal and even exceed it.”

During the event, AlKhawarizmy Language Software an Egyptian startup, showcased KSearch Embedded Arabic Search Technology that provides: Morphological search in order to provide comprehensive search results. The search technology differentiates between meanings of Arabic words, thus providing the first Arabic semantic search. KSearch took 10 years in R&D and was released in the event with its three editions Enterprise, Web and Desktop, the latter being the first of its kind in the Arab world.

In the event Ishki from Jordan, also demoed its website, which is the first Arabic website that enables people in Jordan to share complaints or concerns online and search for solutions. The websites seeks to be the voice of normal citizens regarding public, private or business problems. Ahmad Kharbat cofounder of Ishki said “We will add channels for each company that is operational in the Arab world, so people can voice their concern and feedback”. He also promised to add more local versions of the website for more Arab countries.

Hamdy Khalil co-founder of eSpace from Alexandria, Egypt showcased weNear a location based framework that competes with Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, the platform is geared towards developers in order to use its API so they can develop location aware mobile applications in a range of devices including iPhone, Android and Symbian.

Another company from Egypt CitexSoftware, showcased AdHere the first Open Source Mobile Advertising Server built on top of the popular Online Open Source Ad Server: OpenX. Mohamed Elharty Software Engineer and Team Leader of CitexSoftware demoed AdHere rich targeting capabilities that can be based on profiles and geo-location.

MailPacks was the last to demo; the web based service is developed by Mahmoud Mehyar from Jordan. The startup is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) auto-responder and mailing list manager that enables websites to create, send and track newsletter. Mahmoud said “I have tested all my competitors; we differ by offering more features and by offering the follow-up service for free while charging a small fee for broadcasting.”

Mehyar is also the founder of Feedoor a feed content distributor for publishers and personal users.

After the demos the keynote sessions started from experts in their field in order to share their experience and provide advice and tips for the Arab entrepreneurs.

The first keynote was by Khaled Jabasini founder and CEO of e-Marketing MENA. He called Arab entrepreneurs to get help from experts and mentors from their industry. Khaled presented how his successful startup e-Marketing MENA uses its massive network of regional publishers to provide greater results to the advertisers and the much needed support for Arabic websites. Jabasini has express willingness to support Arab startups in many ways such as help them with new revenue streams.

In his keynote session, Hervé Cuviliez Managing Director of KuvCapital –a  seed funding Venture Capital (VC)-, said “we need to create a friendly environment in the Middle East to create successful startups, from universities to governments through VC and to spread entrepreneurship culture. All these parts are required in order to benefit from each other’s participation via symbiotic relationships (positive sum relationships) to create a friendly ecosystem.” He added that ARABCRUNCH DEMO 09 is a step forward for a stronger ICT Community in the Arab world. In his speech, Herve tackled topics such as what makes a successful entrepreneur and what is the right VC, he also talked about his initiative for incubators in Middle East and Africa.

The young and driven was the last Keynote speech delivered by Sumaya Kazi Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief at The CulturalConnect, and Senior Social Media Manager at Fortune 500 company Sun Microsystems. She spoke about her experience in starting CulturalConnect. Sumaya showcased intentional successful entrepreneurs who started successful startups along with other social entrepreneurs she had interviewed before.  She shared 8 tips for startups among them were “Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself and People sit on great ideas, Don’t be one of them”

The event, which attracted over 300 participants, was concluded with excitement and enthusiasm by both the startups and the audience. At the end of the event Saqer said he plans for another version of the demo event in the coming months or next year, he promised that the next event will be bigger and would open greater opportunity for outstanding technology startups in the Arab world.

To apply for the Next ARABCRUNCH DEMO fill the form here: http://events.arabcrunch.com/demo9/apply.html

My take is short this event was inspired by TechCrunch 50 and DEMO events and Mashable meetups, it is bringing a mix of both of them to the Arab World. Bellow is the press release pleas repost in your blog/website, and do not forget to embed the badges found here  in your blog too, to spread the word about this event and the great Arab startups who took the challenge .

ArabCrunch and DART Offering a Platform for Arab Startups to Launch at ArabCrunch DEMO 09 Event

AMMAN, Jordan – (9, Feb, 2009) – Arab Innovation is hardly spotted, but with ArabCrunch DEMO event it will be subjected to change. The event will give Arab startups the chance to present their newly developed products and launch it, in order to get good outreach to target customers and gain access to both investors and media.

 ArabCrunch- a blog dedicated to profiling Arab originated startups and established companies, and DART- the student entrepreneurship society at Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) one of the major programs at the of Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) are organizing the 1st ArabCrunch DEMO, which is a regular event that is planned to be the Arab world’s launchpad for emerging technologies. This event will take place on the 23rd of February in Amman, Jordan at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology and will include keynote speaking remarks form top regional and world class technology and e-marketing experts. It will be followed by a networking reception to ignite new relationships that can help the attendance in their business and to further deepen knowledge sharing. 

The event is organized as an effort to bring enthusiasm to newly launched companies and products, find great Arab innovation, spot technology trends, and learn from the experiences of emerging startups, current corporate players and from the expertise of world class keynote speakers. 

Gaith Saqer the founder and editor of ArabCrunch summarized the importance of the demo event “Unlike their western counter parts, Arab tech entrepreneurs and startups face many difficulties, such as lack of funding and marketing support. We are creating a platform to help them overcome those difficulties. The platform will allow the early-stage, and mostly unfunded innovative companies to take center stage and demo in front of fellow entrepreneurs, CEOs, venture capitalists, IT professionals, IT students, media, advertising agencies, and early tech adapters.” He added. “We chose these startups based purely on their innovation, without regard to their own financial resources. We try to help those startups thrive and succeed, as for the established ones, we help them gain further market momentum.” 

Saqer Concluded “We are able to organize this event because of the generous support of the following companies: e-Marketing MENA as a platinum sponsor, Maktoob as a gold sponsor, Ikbis as a bronze sponsor and great support from our media partners: Mashable, Addustour Newspaper, The Star Newspaper and CenterNetworks.”

This unique event will give the chance to five Arab originated startups to present their products and services. The presenters from Jordan are: Ishki, a Web 2.0 portal that aims to be the first Arab complaints platform, and MailPacks which is an auto responder system. The other three presenters from Egypt are: Adhere from Citex Software, which is an open-source mobile advertising platform, in addition to weNear from eSpace, a location-based framework that connects people’s Interest. And Al-Khawarizmy; which developed new Arabic search algorithms and solutions.  

Several discussions will be held after technology and business experts had presented their products. There also will be keynote speakers from the region and the world speaking at the event, to share their know-how and expertise in managing and running great innovative world-class companies, thus help spark vigorous discussions and debates during the event. The Keynote speakers are: from USA: Sumaya Kazi, Senior Social Media Manager at Sun Microsystems and founder of The CulturalConnect, she is an internationally recognized innovator, leader, speaker and award-winning entrepreneur. From UAE: Khaled Jabasini, the Founder and CEO of E-Marketing MENA, the leading digital Media consultancy in the Middle East and North Africa, with the largest digital reach in the Arab speaking world, serving more than 600 million monthly impressions and over 29 million unique users, and Lebanon: Herve Cuviliez, the Managing Director of KuvCapital the leading Pan-Arab and European seed investment venture capital firm with investment in both regions. 

Highlighting the main reason behind organizing the event, Mohammad M. Khawaja, Deputy Director of QRCE said on behalf of DART “we partnered with ArabCrunch, one of the leading blogs for Arab tech startups to further build a wider regional ecosystem to help spread entrepreneurial spirit and innovation across the Arab world, and help Arab startups innovate the next generation of products and services and succeed in presenting them to the market”

DART is the student entrepreneurship society developed by QRCE. It focuses on promoting the entrepreneurial spirit amongst PSUT students as a style of life, and have an ambitious expansion plan to establish DART societies in all other Jordanian universities. While QRCE is a regional player in entrepreneurship development and technology commercialization, with a mission of supporting socioeconomic growth by providing an array of programs and services that support startups and SMEs at different stages. 

ArabCrunch is a professional blog, that is dedicated to profiling and reviewing Arab originated technology startups and existing Internet and Mobile companies, and their products and services, especially in Web 2.0 and Mobile 2.0. The blog is currently in English, an Arabic version is intended to be released soon. In addition to more ambitious projects aimed at helping create a technology revolution in the Arab world.

The event will take place at Friendship auditorium Princess Sumaya University of Technology (PSUT) Amman, Jordan. Attendance will be free of charge, with previous preapproval. Registration can be done online by visiting the event’s website: http://events.arabcrunch.com/demo9/

Under the patronage of Dr. Adel Al-Twaysi – Chairman of the founding committee of El-Hassan Science City – the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) held a press conference to announce partnership with Al-Ahli Holding Group-UAE through which it will provide technical support to the 2nd round of the “Global Economic Opportunities” program. Mohammad Khammas –the CEO of the Al-Ahli Holding Group was present, while QRCE was represented by Mohammad Khawaja –the Deputy Director.

The “Global Economic Opportunities” program was launched last year aiming at expanding Arab youth capacity to work with peers from various countries and cultures in developing successful world-class ventures, as well as establishing newly-born companies that supply global markets with products and services of high economic value. A group of Arab youth and participants from Argentina took place in the program’s first trial, in which they underwent specialized courses in business development, which helped them acquire the entrepreneurial skills needed for venture success.

This year, the program is going to include participants from Jordan, South Africa, Brazil, UAE and Argentina. In addition to the specialized training courses, QRCE will provide seasoned mentors from leading companies around the world to support participating teams in enhancing their business plans and honing their abilities to seize global economic opportunities, as well as building successful global companies. The program will also include field visits to major companies and factories in hosting countries in order to expand the participants’ knowledge and increase their understanding of work environment in different countries, as well as understanding each country’s specificity, both culturally and socially.

This initiative is characterized by focusing on founding teams of various nationalities and cultures to create an environment of integration and teamwork as well as increase chances to learn through cultures and peoples. Participants will compete in marketing their ideas to members of an international judging committee composed of Arab and foreign investors as well as business administration experts, who will given the team a big chance to finance and materialize their projects after assessing the socio-economic feasibility and global impact.

Last year, QRCE established partnerships with many institutions that contribute in supporting it; namely: Google, King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau, Orange, Jordan Commercial Bank, Jordan Dubai Capital, Optimiza Academy, Jordan Business Magazine, and Royal Jordanian.

QRCE aims at developing business entrepreneurship in various sectors of technology in Jordan by focusing on such activities as: capacity building, consulting, and development of the local spirit and entrepreneurial personality. QRCE also oversees several local as well as international programs, including: Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition, CONNECT-Jordan program, the Technology Commercialization program, the Cisco Entrepreneur Institute, and the Student Entrepreneurship Society –DART- that contributes to promoting the culture of entrepreneurship among students of Jordanian universities, via diverse events and activities throughout the year.

QRCE is considered as an essential part of El-Hassan Science City, which includes leading national institutions, namely: Princess Sumaya University of Technology, the Higher Council of Science and Technology, and the Royal Scientific Society.

ArabCrunch DEMO (DEMOize) the launch pad event for emerging technology in the Arab world  that is being organized by ArabCrunch in cooperation with student entrepreneurship society “DART” at Princess Sumaya University for Technology PSUT (PSUT) -which is also part of Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE)- , has been postponed till early February 2009.

This postpone is due to popular requests by our readers and contacts who will be mostly off work and traveling away in the holiday season. 

The new date has been chosen after taking feedback from multiple sources including potential speakers and attendance. 

Stay tuned for the new date and the event’s schedule and website. We still have a room for one speaker and a demonstrator, and if you are also interested in sponsoring please contact editor@arabcrunch.com for more details.

So far, the Arab tech startups and innovation seen has been hard to spot, despite some events like GITEX, it is hard for the most promising Arab startups and for emerging technologies to be spotted in the Arab world, whether they are consumer or business applications.

GITEX is turning into an Enterprise IT exhibit, while other tech events cost great amount of money to attend and sponsor, leaving the little guy out of the spot, at the same time consumer tech apps have no place at these event!

What are the hottest startups? What are the great innovation happening in the Arab world? And who are the people behind them?

In order to know ArabCrunch is pleased to announce that we are organizing ArabCrunch DEMO 08 (DEMOize.)

DEMOIZE will be the Arab world’s launch pad event for emerging technologies, developed by startups or by established companies.

The event will be held on the 20th of December 2008, Amman, Jordan. At a state of the art auditorium at Prince Sumaya University, our  Organizing Partner is Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship’s  (QRCE) DART. 

The event is an effort to bring enthusiasm to newly launched companies and products, find great innovation, spot technology trends, and learn from the experience of emerging startups and current corporate players.

World class keynote speakers will be present at the event to give speeches, sharing their know-how and expertise in managing and running great innovative global and regional companies, thus sparking vigorous discussions and debates during the event.

The event ends with a networking reception to bring entrepreneurs, CEOs of established ICT companies, venture capitalists (VCs), corporate decision makers, developers and engineers, IT professionals, IT students, media, and early tech adapters, together igniting new relationships that can help everybody in their business and to further deepen the knowledge sharing.

The event aims to spread entrepreneurial spirit and innovation across the Arab world, and help Arab originated startups, and the existing Arab made newly launched products to thrive and succeed.

Stay tuned for the event website and on ArabCurnch.com for more details on the schedule, demonstrators and speakers. Meanwhile if are interested at speaking at the conference or for sponsorship details email: editor@arabcrunch.com

The announcement of the winners came few days ago, as this year competition was open for Jordanian entrepreneurs only, next year it might be open to all Arab entrepreneurs.

Last  Thursday, Princess Sumaya  said the Kingdom’s large pool of graduates “represents a tremendous value that Jordan creates every year”.

In her address at a ceremony to honour winners of the third annual Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC), the Princess said that the participants in this year’s competition represent “job makers rather than job seekers”.

The Princess, who was deputising for Her Majesty Queen Rania at yesterday’s award ceremony, added their success is “important to Jordan as role models for the next generation of entrepreneurs whom they will inspire, as future employers and as innovators who are solving valuable problems for society”.

The competition, which aims to encourage a business culture among Jordanian youths, focuses on launching new competitive products and services in various technical sectors, including the environment, information, communications, water desalination, energy and agricultural technologies.
In her address, the Princess stressed that Jordan’s human capital is needed at home to build the country’s economy and advance society.

“If we are to examine the numbers of Jordanians abroad, we learn that more than 500,000 live in the Gulf states alone, and nearly one million worldwide,” she said, adding that if the figures are examined “on how much it costs Jordan to educate these expatriates, Jordan is in fact a donor to the global economy in the form of billions of dollars worth of human capital”.
Mohammad Gawdat, Google’s MENA Emerging Market managing director, also commended the quality of Jordan’s graduates and human capital, describing them as innovative.

He added that the country’s human capital is well-known at Google for their inventiveness and success.
“I am responsible for 112 countries in the world; however, I haven’t seen enthusiasm and creativity more than in Jordan,” Gawdat said in yesterday’s ceremony.
The winners of this year’s award ranged from students to new entrepreneurs.

Hussam Salhab, who won the third prize in the Academia category said his project, “Medical Diagnosis on the Internet”, could never have succeeded without the help of the award organisers.

“I am grateful that I had the opportunity to participate in this competition… It was easy for me to develop the project, but I had no idea on how to work on a business plan without the training offered at the Queen Rania Centre for Entrepreneurship,” Salhab told The Jordan Times.

The QRNEC, which was first initiated in 2005 as the Princess Sumaya National Entrepreneurship Competition, is designed to promote the spirit of creativity and innovation among young people and highlight the significant role citizens play in social and economic development.

This year marked the first-time participation of Google, which awarded a $10,000 prize for the best online business plan, in addition to providing mentorship through online workshops.
The King Abdullah II Design and Development Bureau also offered a prize for the best security and defence business plan.

Starting with $20,000 in award prizes in 2006, the award has now grown to $70,000 in order to help encourage entrepreneurial initiatives in the Kingdom.

Award winners

KADDB Award for the Best Defense and Security Business Plan
YAMAMA: Developing vehicle monitoring systems, that can be used for detecting and reporting various vehicle traffic violations, and for tracking.

Google Award for the Best Online Business Plan

Populace Ads:  Ad serving technology for small businesses.

First Prize in the Academia category
Human Heater: from the name, a personal portable heater where users can control the degree of warmth needed.

Second Prize in the Academia category
JUST TEAM:  Interactive e-learning e-notebook that replaces  paper and pen.

Third in the Academia category

FRIENDS: A medical diagnostic tools for personal health record (PHR) project from Google Health.

First Prize in the Mature Entrepreneurs category
KEENWASH: waterless car washing technology.

Second Prize in the Mature Entrepreneurs category
TALASIM: Arab online comedy community.

Third Prize in the Mature Entrepreneurs category
MIDA: developing and manufacturing interactive non-solid free space displays that give three-dimensional effect, and reduce the complexity of interaction between humans and computers.

Best Financial Plan
Better Care

Best Marketing Plan
Advanced Security and Technical Systems

Speaking during “Culture of Google Life Inside, and How to Apply?” Lecture which was held in Amman, Jordan last week, Husni Khuffash  Google Country Business Development Manager, UAE,  said that Google’s official  answer  to whether they will open an engineering office in Amman or not, is that Google  does not comment on rumors and when they decide to open an office in the region, they will inform every body. He also said that UAE Googlers will  move to a new Dubai office  after mid September. Google also has an office in Egypt, But as I said before that Amman will be the location of the engineering office, as multiple sources has told me.

The event had huge application from people who wanted to attend, but due to the limited space only 150 people attended.

Husni was the sole  speaker in the lecture, where he presented Google’s philosophy and work culture to the crowed.

Fortune magazine called Google the best working place environment, which is also shared by Opera Winfry according to Husni, where he displayed a video of Opera show regarding this matter.

Husni displayed many adverts for Google, all the people on them were actual Google employees. He cited an example of the loyalty Googlers have to Google, where every on in its Mountain View  Silicon Valley’s  head quarter around 5,000 agreed to go out in the rain to record a video advert for Google.

Husni said that Google received 1 million CV last year, in which they hired a couple of thousands.

Husni  also showed many videos displaying the luxury Googlers enjoy in its head quarter in Mountain View in  Silicon valley and its regional HQ in Dublin, Ireland. Where Googlers can bring their dogs to work, enjoy free gym, a wide rang of food choices. and access to many nice toys among other things.  Husni said that  Google wants to make the work place for its employees feels like home. He also said googlers work less hours but produce more.

One of the interesting things he mentioned is that Silicon valley Googlers are invited to eat free food in San Francisco, CA, USA and Arabic food is served to them once a month.

Husni will email me the links to some of the videos he showed during the event, and I will post them when they arrive. Mean while I picked this one after a fast search on Youtube (Note: I did not see the video since my net speed is down, but this video has 124,890 on Youtube Update: here are the Videos:







I asked him whether these facilities which are available at Google HQ and Ireland branch, would be also available in Middle East office, he said the office in Dubai will reflect the Google life style and culture.

Moreover  he said that Google offers many benefits to its works worldwide, such as free gym membership, and 50% subsidy to learn a new language.

Husni mentioned odd things about Google “inspiring” work environment where he said Dublin HQ had a pajama day and in other offices the ugly dress contest, but these days were optional to Google’s employees to participate in. Which is funny in my opinion, and my take is that the conventional business dress code of a the formal tie uniform should be abolished to any type of dress as long it is neat and covering the body in a respectful manner:) .

Husin mentioned how he got to work with Google. In which around 4, 000 applied to his position, but he was head hunted, and they chose him for many reasons. He said they looked at his experience, his education, and entrepreneurship spirit and social activities he did during his life. He also added that his work in the a restaurant during university was also a helpful factor, that  showed that he sets plans on early stages and has been working hard to achieve his goals.

You can look his linked in profile here.  and here is an interview with Husni that dates to 2004 when he was Regional Manager for Maktoob.com.

Husni said he left online business few years ago and started a small consultancy firm for several industries in Dubai, but he joined Google because he has a passion for what it is doing, and for the online industry.

Husni also touched in his own work experience with Google, he said he used to work for 14 hours a day, but the HR called him and told him “you have been working too hard” and gave him a vacation and told him you only work 8 hours a day. This is unfortunately not a common practice among Jordanian IT companies.

Every new employee at Google has to go through a series of interviews before joining. In an answer to how Google would keep the ego of their employees down, he answered that every new employees that joins after the person is smarter than him/her, so it is impossible to be the smartest.

When asked whether Googles’ founders share the (humbleness ) of Google’s employees, he mentioned this: After having few weeks experience with personal secretaries which was suggested to them by the Google’s CEO, they told him they do not want to have secretaries and asked him to transfer them to other departments inside Google. He also said that they have a culture of sharing and participate with many employees activities for example they get their daily meals in the office with the employees at the restaurants Google Plex. I also remember reading that they go to work with very normal cars. But in my opinion, there is nothing wrong in buying luxury things as long the persons earnings are from legitimate means.

Husni said that Google chose allot  students from around the world for its internship program every year, and they do not have a quota for any country, they simply chose the best CV. Moreover they also have Google Ambassador program for students.

As for Google’s philosophy he said Google first focus in the user, and everything will follow (like business model) among other remarks, he also said Google believes in “do business with no evil”.

He also said that Google is an engineering company, and they never relax because they know that somewhere out there in the world there are two engineers developing the next big thing.

The lecture was organized by IEEE Gold and Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE).

To apply to Google jobs go to here .

Note: I had few pics of this event, but unfortunately someone corrupted the memory card

UPDATE: Husni Khuffash Google Country Business Development Manager, UAE, said that Google officially has not made final decision regarding the location of its upcoming engineering center in the Arab world. But I have other sources who say Jordan will be the place.

Google is being active lately organizing seminars and lectures in Amman/Jordan, and posting Job vacancies on different regional job recruitment websites. First it was “The Art of online Advertising (covered here)”    and  “Online Advertising in the Arab World: Impacts and Opportunities” Seminar  which will commence next Thursday.

“The Culture of Google Life Inside, and How to Apply? “  will be held on Wednesday the 20th of August , 2006, Amman / Jordan at Sham Hotel between 6:00 and-9:00 pm.

The speaker will be Husni Khuffash Google Country Business Development Manager, UAE.  In which he will give an insight into Google’s work culture. The lecture will be followed by a networking evening gathering professional and senior executive.

The title of this lecture points out that Google that wants to recruit in Jordan, and it has been confirmed to me by multiple sources that Google is in the process of opening an office in Amman, Jordan.

The lecture is organized by IEEE Gold and Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE).
To register you can email khawaja@ieee.org.

Participation fees:

IEEE member: JD 4.
IEEE non-member: JD 6.

The Seminar is organized by Google and Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship  (QRCE). The speaker will be Husni Khuffash Google Country Business Development Manager, UAE. Where he will give an insight into Online Advertising in the Arab World.

The seminar will be held on Thursday, August  21th 2008, from 5:30-6:30 PM at the Friendship Auditorium- Prince Sumaya University For Technology.

ArabCrunch will be there and will provide you dear readers with nice coverage, InshaAllah.

To register you can email google@qrce.org

TechCONNECT is a yearly networking event orginazed by Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE ). The Event  brings together entrepreneurs, leaders in the technology industry, and those with a demonstrable interest in technology, with the aim of increasing Tech entrepreneurship.

This year event commenced last Monday with around 40 attendees. At the Green Garden in The Princess Sumaya University for Technology in Al Jubeiha, Amman , Jordan.

At least 2 of QRCE sponsors attended the event, Wassef Masri Managing Director, Telecom and IT Service of Optimaiza Solutions the first publicly traded IT company on Amman Stock Exchange. And Elias Darwish Google Account manager MENA who was the speaker at the Art Of online Advertising Seminar I covered here.

I managed to talk with few participants, not with everyone because I had other meetings,  so in this post only 5 companies are crunched.

Akhtaboot , it is a Jordanian based social recruitment website from Middle East. 3 of Akhtaboot team attended the event: Yousef Shamoun Co-founder and head of sales & marketing, Kamle Al-Asmar ROR web developer, and Mais Gousous Marketing coordinator.
According to Al-Asmar and Shamoun Akhtaboot launched a CV writing service recently, but soon they will enhance it with new version that will categories the CV writing service according to career level: Beginning, intermediate and advanced. Entry Level, Mid Career and Senior (UpDate: CV writing is launched see my post here) The other information I got from them is that Akhtaboot team will launch in few weeks, online gaming for middle east built using Java-Script.

As of Today CV Writing service is live fees range from 50$ to 200$, I ll write another post about it.

Moritery Systems: is a participant in the second face of Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition (QRNEC) in the security category. This startup is developing Transit vehicle tracking solution that will be deployed by the custom department of Jordan, it replaces the old method of stamping trucks with red wax, with a device that uses RFID and GPS which enables custom officials to know where the truck is  in Jordan at anytime, and it could be accessed with a web interface, the tracking system is integrated with the government mapping system. The startup is co-founded by Ahmad Nausra and Tala Izahran and is currently self funded.

Generic is the company that provides IT outsourcing and has its own product called OneEd, which is a web based school Management Systems ( OneEd) that helps educators perform grading, attendance-taking, reporting, scheduling, health administration and other vital tasks. It is designed for teachers, principals, office staff, technical coordinators, guidance counselors and school nurse. The system is built using Microsoft .NET platform.
When I tried to access OneEd website  today, it  was not operational and gave me the following error:

Server Error in ‘/’ Application,

Object reference not set to an instance of an object. !

Generic has also developed Virtual Reality Systems for Middle East Defense Systems (A KADDB Company) providing virtual prototyping of the company military products.
Generic is founded by Mahmud Shalabi who has many years of experience working with Microsoft in USA in MS CRM and other products.

JO-ALTEN: With the recent huge increase in oil prices JO-ALTEN http://jo-alten.com the Jordanian Russian Company for Alternative Energy Co. wants to provide cheaper solutions using solar energy and wind. The company website claims 70% saving for heating and 80% saving in energy consumption for industrial companies. JO-ALTEN general manager is Dr. Yaseen Al-Husban and it is based in Amman-Jordan.

ELSIRAJ an Online Community Platform, is another participant in QRNEC second face,  the online business category. ELSIRAJ founder declined to provide me with info about the service saying its confidential, he said they will be launch in about a month.

I managed to get some other news from other startup and I will publish them very soon in separate posts.

To read about the last year TechConnect go to Mohammad KHawaja’s post here

In an answer to my question whether Google will add demographic targeting to Google Adwords, Elias Darwish Google’s Account Manager MENA ( Middle East and North Africa) region, said that there are no current plans, but he said that in YouTube, google identifies demographic info, for example age groups of certain types of videos, which advertisers can target.

Talking during a seminar titled “The Art of Online Advertising, Adwords and Analytics“ Darwish added that YouTube demographic data is collected from the users profiles and offline studies.

The Seminar which commenced yesterday in Amman-Jordan, was organized by the Queen Rania Center for Entrepreneurship (QRCE) and Google (Do you need a link to goole? then google it ), where Darwish gave an overview of Google’s Adwords and Analytics.

Adwords is a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) self service advertising solution from Google, where advertisers can advertise using text ads displayed on Google search results in context to the keywords they chose after bedding on them. Ads can also be shown on Google partners of publisher and on other search engines such as Ask and AOL.

Adwords which is responsible of most of Google’s revenues( $16.4 billion in 2007 ), has many targeting options, such as language (including Arabic), and country, while in Europe the targeting can be up to the city. Adwords also offers image and video ads with CPM bases.

Google Analytics which ArabCrunch use, is a free service to websites and blogs owners, that offers visitors behavior and analysis.

During the seminar Darwish said that Google’s online human police–the guys who monitor and ban spammers- will be in operation soon in the Arab world, .

Here are some of the other important points Darwish mentioned in the seminar:

• One year ago there were only a couple of thousand of ads on Adwords in the Arab region, but today it has increased dramatically.
• Internet users in Jordan in 2006 was 715 k, in 2008 they will be around 1.4 million.
• Google serves 1 Billion Search Query per day.
• 118 billion email and IM sent per day using Google’s Gmail and GTalk.
• 10 hours video uploads each minute to YouTube.
• Arabic is part of Google’s 40 languages initiative and it ranks 6th.
• Adwords supports Arabic and has a growing publishing partners in the Arab world.
• Click-Through-Rate (CTR) -CTR is ad clicks rate to impressions- for Adwords in the Arab world is over 20%.
• DoubleClick the leading advertising platform which Google bought last year, will be integrated with Adwords.

Darwish also give some Adwords optimizing techniques, for example the advertise should chose keywords relevant to his business and the ad text, and if an advertiser chose many keywords, and his CTR is low he will be charged higher rates.
Google has an algorithm that checks the keyword, the ad’s words, and the words in the landing page of the ad, which all should have matching word.

In the Arab world, Adwords compete with 2 of the regions home grown self service advertising solutions: Kalemat (Arabic for words), from Araby a leading Arabic search engine owned by Maktoob group , and AynaAD from Ayna,  the first search engine in the Arab world.

E-commerce has not taken off in the Arab world mainly for two major factors: There is no merchant service that allows Arab-based e-commerce merchants to accept and process payments, and shoppers in the region are hesitant to trust any and reveal their financial information to any online shop, especially if it is not well known.

In the US this problems has been solved many years before with PayPal (owned By eBay) and most recently Google Checkout .

Paypal services are available in around 15 countries that allow its members to send receive, or withdraw money online to a local or U.S. bank account or a card.

In most Arab countries PayPal allows users to send money only, but UAE is the only Arab Country that PayPal offers send, receive, or withdraw money online to a U.S. bank account or a card.
Google Checkout on the other hand is only available to U.S. and U.K. merchants. For payments Checkout supports many countries, for example in the Arab world: Jordan, UAE, Saudi, Morocco, are supported. Yemen, Egypt and Sudan are not ( I did not check the whole list to see which other Arab countries that are not supported).

When sending money PayPal and Checkout solve the trust and security issues, by not sharing your financial information with the merchants. Another benefits of both: They help you track your online spending, and you do not have to enter your billing information each and every time you shop online.
It’s free to sign up for a PayPal account and Google Checkout to send payments. But unlike Google Checkout, with PayPal you can send money to friends and family if you are from the qualified country (Both offer more services to know more checkout their websites.) But for merchant accounts both PayPal and Google Checkout charge a transactional fee.

There are currently two solutions available for Arab based e-commerce merchants to process payments:

1- Register the company in USA or any other country that PayPal and Checkout merchants’ services are available, setup a bank account in that county, open a PayPal or Checkout Merchant account and go with the integration process.

2- Use a third-party payment processing solution that handle the online transaction and charge fees for payment processing. But that is not fully integrated with the e-commerce web site. Examples: 2Checkout and ShareIt.

Groosh@t a stealth Jordanian startup, would be the third and best option for merchants and buyers a like in the Arab world.

Groosh@t would be the real online payment solution that will fill the online payment and payment processing gap in the Arab world and make it easier and more secure for all parties.

Groosh plural of (Grsh) the Arabic pennies, will enable anyone to use it to pay and to get paid.

Some of the ways to use Groosh@t:
• Pay for online purchases.
• Accept credit cards.
• Send and request money worldwide.
• Track your online spending.

When Groosh@t is fully launched, the service will allow anyone to pay in any way they prefer, including through credit cards, bank accounts, buyer credit or account balances, without sharing financial information just like PayPal and Checkout.

According to Groosh@t it will make online payments possible across different locations, currencies, and languages. I suspect they will have currency conversion service similar what is found on PayPal and Checkout, but I think Groosh@t will have Arab and other major international currencies.

To pay for online shopping you can use Visa, MasterCard and American Express with Groosh@t. Thus solving the other e-commerce problem in the region: Trust and security, because when you make a Groosh@t payment with your debit or credit card, your card details are not revealed.
According to Groosh@t:

Also, you’ll get Groosh@t’s exclusive fraud prevention and security tools.

We will wait and see how these tools will work.

While PayPal and Checkout are Free to signup and send payments, the cost of paying through Groosh@t is 5% Transactional fees.

As member of the Groosh@t Network you start the cycle by filling up your online pockets with Groosh@t by buying 1 or many of the Groosh@t Packages (5,10,20,50 Groosh@t which will be available through online purchase)

5 Grsh@ :
Costs 5.27 USD , online purchasing power of 5.00 USD.

10 Grsh@:
Costs 10.53 USD, online purchasing power of 10.00 USD.

20 Grsh@ :
Costs 21.06 USD, online purchasing power of 20.00 USD.

50 Grsh@ :
Costs 52.64 USD, online purchasing power of 50.00 USD.

Once you’re online pockets are filled with Groosh@t you can start shopping around the Groosh@t supported merchants.

I do not have information if Groosh@t will charge merchants to accept payments, but that model should be used, and for sending payments it should be free, other services i recommend offering for buyers to add the shipping info to the Groosh@t buyers account, so they do not need to fill them up every time a purchase is made, and the ability to track delivery progress from GrooSh@t.

Over all I will wait and see how Groosh@t service will look like exactly when it is full launched. But I can say their Services are really needed in the region and would be an enabler for e-commerce in the Arab world.

Now Groosh@t has a competitive advantage over PayPal and Google Checkout in the Arab world, in terms of localizing the online payment service. But when they enter the Arab market that advantage will diminish. Though Groosh@t can keep being competitive in this case if it achieves a critical mass of sellers and buyers in the region before the they enter the market. while keeping their charging fees close to PayPal and Checkout.

As of Today Groosh@t has been qualified for the Second Face of (QRNEC ) Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition ( Which I reviewed before here), and since it is an online business it will be automatically qualified for Google Online Business Plan Competition part of QRNEC. But will Groosh@t be treated justly by the Google Competition, since it competes with Google Checkout? We’ll wait and see.

Groosh@t is a service from @Your Service Group a Jordanian Based company.