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!

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!