The Media Supermarket

 While learning a new language (Turkish), and deeply getting involved in understanding the whole culture, I had some great realizations.
First of all, learning a language is not only about learning its words, and knowing how to formulate sentences. There is a deeper understanding of culture and values that is necessary to be able to really speak and interact in a certain language. During learning, and while developing an understanding for that culture, it struck me that a new person is also developing inside me. That new person was born the day I started my quest, and just as a native baby would be, I started mingling in that culture and a “Turkish personality” somehow evolved in me. When you go deep in a certain culture, you not only assimilate with them, but the words, phrases, values and norms set forth a certain way of functioning that you don’t use while speaking other languages. You can observe this with people who lived abroad and are really familiar with that country. The funny thing is that you become German when speak German, and you become Japanese when you speak Japanese! Of course this depends on how deeply you understand the language/culture.
The learning could also be applied to learning in general, and we can also see that the more one spends time on a certain activity or trade, the better they are at it. I also realized the importance of family businesses and the inherited knowledge that comes with it, based on decades and generations of experience. 
Being in the third generation of a family business, I can immediately identify with this. I have naturally learned the trade, and was able to slowly grasp the values under which our business is run. I didn’t need excessive training, I just went there whenever I had the time, and was able to make my own mistakes, and learn in a safe environment. The discussions at home and the general outlook on work was also teaching me how to run the business. But since our industry as a whole is not developing, I’m not involved in it any more. But I can immediately go and start working tomorrow if needed.
Although I still beleive in the importance of stability in a person’s life, and its role in hard-wiring all the things he has to learn, I’m starting to question the validity of this thought. At least in some situations.
The Family Business Conference has validated my idea through the different speakers an dspecialists who showed how relevant this type of business still is. One of the charts proved the effectiveness of family businesses by showing the superior performance of family-owned businesses over other ones, which was depicted on a graph that showed that the former out-performed the S&P ratings in the last decades. This is the result of the long-term focus, ownership, and the deep learning and lifelong understanding that came with being raised in a specialist family. By the way, Beethoven and Strauss came from musical families, and Picasso’s father was an artist too.
The conference that was attended by Jordan’s prime minister Dr. Maarouf Bakhit, had several international contributors who specialized in this field. Several were actually spending years with certain families and their businesses working on how best to devise the structure, how to deal with the technical and legal issues, and most importantly how to make a smooth transition from one generation to the next.
It was really surprising to me how relevant and timely these issues still were. Some speakers stressed the fact that the issues faced by family businesses are universal in nature, and are almost the same across cultures. Haluk Alacaklioglu made a good comparison between the general practices in different cultures.
Two very interesting consecutive speakers gave us an in-depth view of Gezairi, a second generation company transitioning to the third generation. The first was by Dr. Renee Ghattas, outlining her scientific study of the company’s different struggles and challenges throughout the years, and it was great that we had the director of that company, Mona Bou Azza Bawarshi, to give us the personal side of the company and how she manages it.
To me the general discussion was about familiar things, but the approach of dealing with the different challenges was totally new to me, not to mention the legal aspects of family businesses!

One of our local radio stations is providing its listeners with the option of recording their voice for special song dedications. One of the listeners, actually speakers now, has turned this into a real offline Web 2.0 application.
Most of the people recording their dedications just do that, they say to whom they would like to dedicate this song, and how much they love that person, blah blah blah.
One of these people took this service to a really new level. She started recording certain messages to certain people. Talking to one of her friends, she would wish him a safe trip to his destination, and wish that he accomplishes the goal of that trip. To another friend of hers, she would apologize for the things that she said yesterday and ask for forgiveness. She would have two friends who are not really understanding of each other’s differences, and talk to both and try to find a compromise or a midway where they can communicate again together.
All this is done publicly, and all listeners would listen to this. It is becoming more like an interesting series of stories related to this one person, who they have never met, but started to know and identify with!
Next? She became a star! Other listeners who are familiar with her messages started recording their own messages just thanking her and complementing her on how great a job she is doing to get friends closer to each other!
One person decided to use the platform her own way, she used it for her own interest. She became famous, others start to complement her, and eventually new ways of using this recording service will be used by other people.
The radio station is only providing the context for people to record and publish their messages (and they get paid for each sound recording). The users are finding creative ways of using it, and since they are given the chance to publish their voice, they are doing the word-of-mouth advertising for the service since it makes them famous.
This is a really great example of how any application can be utilized in a context where the users can find ways to actively participate in the creation of content, and they will definitely do the marketing for that service or experience provided.

While thinking about the different applications Web 2.0 is bringing us, I have been also thinking about how this might be implemented offline, in media that are not based on the Web, and more importantly, applications where the media are not involved at all.
The main aspects, or components that make any application a Web 2.0 application are user-generated content, community empowerment (where the community decides what is and what is not acceptable), and the service provider acts merely as a platform for these activities to happen. This platform is a passive aggregator of whatever the community chooses to produce, and works only on making the platform easier to use, more efficient and effective at realizing the goals of the users and the community, and finally, works on marketing that platform.
In other words, I like to think of Web 2.0 as a new phenomenon of doing business, community activities, and transforming any aspect of our lives and work.
An application I imagined was having a city without a police force. That was my opening example for my presentation on this topic, in an attempt to make it familiar to the audience, and to show them that it is not that technical or complicated, it’s just a really new way of doing things.
The police department of city X decides to empower its citizens by allowing them to photograph all the cars that are violating the law, and sending them via email to the department. The officers there will take a look at the photos, and if there is sufficient proof that the car is actually violating the law, a ticket will be issued, and sent to the car owner.

Why would anyone take photos?

I first thought that only people with nothing better to do than pick on other people’s mistakes would be engaged in such a thing. But I immediately remembered the frustration I feel when some people park in front of our parking and stop us from getting in or out of our own house. Sometimes, we are in a hurry, sometimes guests are coming, and it is really frustrating to have to deal with it. In such a moment, I will definitely pick up my mobile phone, take a picture of that car, and immediately send it for him to receive his ticket. The beautiful thing is that there are other people also living in the same street who are frustrated with this, and probably one of us will take the picture.
A basic principle of Web 2.0, is that people engage in it for their self-interest. I would really be interested in doing this for our street, and might do it here and there occasionally, but I’m sure the people living there will make sure nobody intrudes. Since everyone will be using the system to protect their own street, almost all streets will be protected this way.

What benefits does it have for the police department?

This method provides much greater coverage for the department. Police officers cannot be everywhere all the time, and people will eventually learn that to take care of their neighborhood, they have the means for that, and they should do it. There will also be a lot more understanding and cooperation with normal citizens who will have the chance to be police officers whenever they need to be! This eliminates the ”us vs. them” attitude, and transforms the community into a whole big ”us” where ”they” would be the ones breaking the law in a certain instance.
Eventually, when this becomes the norm in a certain society, policemen will be less needed to waste their time writing tickets, and can focus more on more important and deeper aspects of their work, like focusing on combatting organized crime, and training for more sophisticated skills.   

How does it benefit the society?

Just like society makes sure the social and ethical norms are being taken care of, again through their pursuit of self-interest, this circle will be expanded to included new areas never tackled before, it should also foster a new sense of cooperation and responsibiliy among people toward increasingly more aspects of their lives.

How to implement?

The first thing is to make this system available while keeping everything the way it is. This provides a buffer, since you cannot know when exactly the use will be widespread in society. Therefore, you keep things going as they are, advertise for the new system, start mentioning instances where this has happened, warn law-breakers that Big Brother has become one of your own, and sit back and watch the photos coming!

Today was the second and last day of the Conference, and again there were many interesting presentations and speakers.
Again I was very happy to hear about Web 2.0 from Yahoo’s Chief Data Officer Dr. Usama Fayyad, and from Samih Toukan, Maktoob’s CEO. And again, the audience was not fully engaged in the importance of these new trends and how they are (sorry for the excessive marketeering) changing our world.
It was great that we were given copies of all the presentations of the conference by the organizer. I’ll try to share them soon.
All in all, it was a very good and useful conference.

In the first day of the annual Media & Telecommunications Convergence Conference there were some interesting discussions by panels from a wide range of expertise. Arab Advisors hosted many of the key players in this industry in the Middle East.
I especially found interesting the speech by Dr. Saad Barrak, Director General of MTC Group about their work in underdeveloped nations. The interesting point he mentioned was an example of how valuable hi tech services were in these nations. He pointed out that since the infrastructure was very limited (no roads, no electricity, and many of the things we consider to be basic) there was a very high value given to mobile calls and services in general. The typical European, for example wouldn’t give that much value to these things, because they are used to being connected with other in several ways.
Not only that, but there was a high economic value in these services, because the farmer no longer has to accept whatever price is given to him by current bidders, he can easily make a phone call and ask for bids for his crop. He can be very empowered negotiating with the merchants discussing the deal with him. It’s strange that huge growth might come from underdeveloped markets precisely because they are underdeveloped!
Another interesting speaker was the marketing director of Ericsson, Jeremy Foster. He clearly had a holistic view of where the content industry is going. His presentation clearly showed the different options available to the user, the price and value comparisons, and the different revenue-generating strategies available to telecoms and content providers.
IP Multimedia Subsystem was a key topic in his discussion and one of the main strategic opportunities to provide content of all types to mobile users. He demonstrated the paradox of the “dumb mega byte” whereby you can download a video clip of a song of 20 MB for free, and that same song, if delivered only as voice would cost $1! Technologically this is irrational, but the market dynamics make it so. It’s a clear sign that more services and value doesn’t necessarily mean more capacity on gadgets. It should mean smarter positioning, and closer contact with the consumer. He also shared his vision of a centralized database for each user, that can be accessible through different devices, without loosing its formatting and richness. Your soul would be floating in no-place and it can manifest itself for you through whichever medium you choose. That should be cool to achieve. Nothing mentioned about user-generated content, which I think is a key factor in everything nowadays.
Alexander McNabb, group account director of Spot On PR made my day by talking about Web 2.0. It was very strange also that less than 10% of the audience knew the term, let alone being familiar with its different aspects and applications. He moderated a very lively panel where a heated discussion took place about pricing and some unfair practices related to internet service providers.
The general atmosphere was nice, execution of the conference was very good, and the food was delicious! 

I tend to side more with Camus’s method of learning how to embrace the dip not because of the gains you might get, but because it is an inevitable part of life and work.