Watch your mouth...

I love this story. Partly because it indadvertently paints a wonderful picture of the chaos that reigns in the Dubai Courts, and partly because it is actually quite interesting from a privacy/rights point of view.

To briefly summarize the case - a business partner in a restaurant has been hauled in front of a judge for posting pictures of an ex-employee on Facebook, with slanderous comments about the amount of money he allegedly stole. The defendant has pleaded guilty ("because he agonized me") although apparently (according to FakePlasticSouks) this case may be running in parallel with one in another area of Dubai Courts. FPS makes the point that it is interesting partly because it was brought in front of a judge in the first place, marking a level of success for Dubai's fledgling eCrime division, or whatever it is called.

To me, it's another case examining how we set our own boundaries for behaviour online. When I arrived in the UAE, the Middle East was years behind the rest of the world in terms of technology trends and adoption. Today, that is far from the case. Even when we're talking about slandering people online, unfortunately.

The accepted rule of thumb is to behave online as you would in public. But for a new agency convert such as myself, what does that really mean? Clearly, the behaviour displayed in the case above was fit for the primary school playground and absolutely slanderous. However, is office chat really something you'd indulge in if your client was sitting at your desk? Probably not.

I have set myself new rules of thumb. Emails should reflect the language you would use in a business meeting, and any postings on social media should stay within the limits you would set yourself at your clients' evening events.

Oh.. and final rule of thumb... set my privacy settings on Facebook sky high, so that I can relax there, and be the person I am on Sunday mornings... :-)

Talking Ted

Spent the day today at TEDxDubai - a younger sibling of the global TED conferences that regularly blow my mind. The basic premise of the conference is "ideas worth spreading", and they seek to bring together all sorts of people to talk on topics across technology, entertainment and design (umm... T.E.D...) without a commercial aspect. You have to apply for a ticket to attend, and then it is free, meaning that the only people there are there because they want to attend, rather than seeing it as a tick in a box on an HR form.

Too much to tell about TEDxDubai... once there are videos on their site I'll post links. Suffice to say, I enjoyed it - I hung out with friends that I hadn't seen for a while, and met their friends. I listened to inspiring people. I lost at buzzword bingo - being a bit cynical, I'd bet on "vision" as the word of the day. "Inspiration" was a run away winner - and rightly so. After a while it was wrong to keep score, and slightly embarrassing that we'd been so impolite as to cast aspersions on these peoples thoughts and ideas.

Highlights -

Jiochi Ito - a venture captialist from Silicon Valley who is part of the group setting up Creative Commons - a way to standardize legal agreements that will open up sharing of information, photos, articles and music across the internet. Mind blowing.

Dr Naif al Mutawa - hilarious. Seriously funny man. Describes himself as over educated as he couldn't figure out what to do after he got banned from Kuwait for his writing in the 90s. So he set up "The 99" - super heroes who each have a stone powered with one of the 99 traits of Allah. He's done an animated film, which will be shown at Cannes. DC Comics contacted him, and they're going to do a joint series where Superman/SpiderMan etc join up with the 99 to fight evil powers. How to influence the youth. Love, love, love it. And he was funny. Result.

Mohammed Saeed Harib - is it a coincidence that he's also in animation? Mohammed created Freej, which I love, and he was in equal parts an adorable young scruffy artist (in a dishdash and ghutra - in the style of our dear crown prince Fazza, naturally), as well as an entrepreneur and Chairman of his own empire. Freej came out of a project he was asked to do when he was at Northwestern, in the US. Base something on one of your cultural heroes, he was told. So he drew his grandmother and her three friends. Nuff said.

Paul Bennett - of Ideo. Sorry, did you hear that - he's from IDEO. They're really cool and alternative, and nothing like McKinsey. Did you notice my trendy scarf? It was featured in AN ARTICLE I was in, cos like, I'M IN THE MEDIA. But the most important thing we teach our employees is sublimation of the ego... maaan... we need to disappear.
Knob. We called him The Gnome.

Dubai Abdulla Abulhoul. Age 13. Youngest filmmaker in the region, and has decided already that she's going to win an Oscar. Wouldn't put it past her, and certainly wouldn't stand in her way. Mini dynamo - slightly precocious but to be honest... don't you have to be, to make it in that world?

Jamil Abu-Wardeh. I was introduced to him when he came over to set up MTV Arabia, probably 4 years ago. He then decided that the Arab world needed stand up comedy, so put together the Axis of Evil tour. Hilarious. He stood up and talked about the terms comedians use - "he bombed" = bad. "He killed" = good... and managed to spin out an 8min talk on the need for home grown entertainment, in to a commentary on language, and a proper laugh fest. That, is skill.

Ian Gilbert. Asked us if a crashed car was parked. Talked about developing education to inspire children. Asked why we need teachers when we have the internet. Managed to take a talk that could have been cliched and a bit predictable, and twist it to make our brains hurt. If only he'd been cloned and put in schools everywhere.

There were more. Ernst van der Poll spoke passionately about conserving our seas. Maserat Daud talked about inspiring teachers in 8 days. Khulood al Atiyat on her project "Unleash" about passing out journals in to the community for people to draw in and send back.

And finally - they showed us a video, from a previous TED winner, who came up with the Charter for Compassion. This to me, embodies everything that I was taught about religion. Sharing, understanding, compassion, conversation, community. These people are honestly building bridges, and I really hope they can make something out of this fledgling initiative. It is a pretty simple and non-religious message - do unto others as you would have done to you.

What a fantastic day.

Distant echoes of "ch-ching" for Twitter?

I picked up an interesting link today from a post by @CMEGroup on Twitter, which was a blog post about the potential for algorithmic trading based on Twitter feeds.

The blogger highlights a new technology from StreamBase, who have developed a Twitter interface for their CEP engine, or in layman's language, their blackbox trading technology. Basically, they have built applications that look at real time events, analyse their impact and decide whether to act - eg decide whether to trade based on that event/information.

Their release sums it up best:Mark Palmer, CEO of StreamBase (@mrkwpalmer). “We’re seeing business applications that ingest Twitter message content, frequency, patterns, hashtag use, and so on, and then transmit Twitter messages. For example, trading systems or operations support can use Twitter direct messaging to alert users of trading opportunities or system problems. Systems can also use Twitter messages to assess economic sentiment in real-time for trading systems, or marketing analytics, through monitoring news headlines and popular sentiment transmitted via Twitter. And we’ve even seen interest from the government and security industries for in-bound Twitter message processing.”

The most interesting point for me is how this shows that there is real business use for the "fuzzy" facts that Twitter offers. In one of the response posts, the blogger states:"Streambase's ability to use Twitter as a source of "fuzzy" information would increase my edge on the rest of the market."

This is the key point for me - as he makes clear, trading is not an exact science, and traders use every source of material possible to spot trends, and make their trading decisions before that trend breaks. For example, the Iran election news that broke on Twitter could have impacted FX trading. In a more local example, the recent #etisalatfail stories about the Blackberry patch should impact Etisalat's business, if it weren't part of one of the most ridiculous duopolies ever dreamed up.

What this also underlines though, is the fact that Twitter appeals most to those in the news, media, and tech industries. These are the people that see the value and are out there busily forming communities and creating conversations, and it could be the case that the stellar rates of growth slow once those industries are online and Tweeting away. Yes, there are lots of people in those industries. Yes, there are celebrities and their followers (though I think this phenomenon has a shelf-life, personally). But when positioned against the likes of Facebook, which is designed to appeal to everyone with some semblance of a family or social life, I'm not sure that Twitter has the same ubiquitous appeal.

So, the trading industry has seen a potential business opportunity in Twitter, and is now busily making it work for them as a media alert service and trend spotting tool. It seems to me that this is where Twitter needs to start to get smart and actively start searching for ways to license fat feeds to companies such as StreamBase, answering the interminable question - how can Twitter make money?

How Tea Fixes All Ills.

I've deleted a rant that I posted yesterday. It was a bad day, designed to test me, and I failed. Lesson learnt - don't use public blog forums to vent. Use private blog instead.

There is no point railing against the idiocies of corporate life in public, either suck it up and stay a part of it (and keep getting paid) or decide enough is enough, and head off to the beaches of Thailand to become a dive instructor.

Whether or not the latter option is becoming increasingly attractive, is also not a matter for this forum.

However, yesterday's fury-storm did achieve one small thing. It reminded me of the restorative qualities of a cup of tea.Tea rocks. It is both soothing and perking (is that a word? It should be.) It is terribly English (in my opinion) yet strangely appropriate for most cultures and settings around the world. It calms furies, and realigns the brain-planets, allowing for rational thought. It should be drip fed to world leaders 24/7.

End of sermon.

Toasting with a glass half-full

So - a spot of positivity to take us in to the long weekend (hallelujiah...!)

Couple of things making me smile today - one that involves drinking, and one that doesn't. Let's start with the latter...

MEPRA - the Middle East PR Association - has recently been resurrected from zombie status by the indomitable Rebecca, who has been doing a sterling job rousing all of us in the industry out of a collective grumpy stupor. I'm a member for the first time in about 6yrs (I was a member when I first arrived, and quickly decided to save my cash), and am actually getting involved...

Yesterday saw the first Twitter workshop held by Spot On PR at the Hilton, and by all accounts it went down a storm. There were certainly interesting tweets about the event, with Dubai 92 DJ Catboy interacting with the participants thru Twitter in real time.

The next one is due to be held at the DME, on the trading floor (my gaff) on the 26th July, and seems to be coming together rather nicely. Rebecca sent the invite today at 10am and it was fully booked by 3pm. Not too shabby, especially as it's summer time and in theory everyone has fled the sandpit.

I'm looking forward to it, should be a good event. Will be good to see the SpotOn crowd in the flesh, rather than the Twitterverse, for a change!

In other news, a friend and meeja-type also recently decided that us birds in PR and the media don't get together nearly enough, and floated the idea of a networking event. She sent the invite to her network, and a good few of us were briefed to pass it on to our respected networks, and so far, she's had an excellent response.

It'll be good to have a chance to socialize with some of the people that you tend to just run in to at industry events, when one or the other usually has a particular agenda/manic client/deadline. It'll also be rather nice to meet some of the people who are currently just names in the ether. I'm looking forward to it.

The Cultural Band-Aid

Firstly - a disclosure up front. I'm an expat brat. What this basically means is, I grew up in Saudi Aramco, in a camp that looked eerily like the Truman Show village, where most people were American, and the ones that weren't, wanted to be. Yes, it was in Saudi Arabia, yes, we learnt Arabic at school - did we assimilate? Did we hell. The company nationalized in '85 (I was 9) and suddenly moved all of the Saudis off camp, giving them free loans to build their own houses. Our daily use of Arabic dwindled, and we trotted out stock phrases to chat in local shops on weekend excusions to Khobar, and then headed off to boarding school at the age of 11. So, I'm wide open to the accusation of hypocrite here, but I'm going to stick my flag in the sand anyway.

In my time here, one of the things that has irritated me the most is a phenomenon that (for the sake of argument) we'll call the cultural band-aid. Intelligent people, who are here to embrace new experiences and cultures, occasionally have a lapse in to the old "us & them" mentality. And it really annoys me.

I was reminded of this recently when I watched a video posted on a news site, demonstrating the appaling standards of driving in the UAE. It wasn't the driving that put my teeth on edge. It was the dialogue - where the "GASP"s should have been in speech bubbles, as well as the fact that they were out there to judge, but the verdict was in long before they got in the car.

In my opinion - if you don't like being flashed, get out of the outside lane. Simple. Whether or not you're doing 10k over the speed limit. But that's not the point.

The point is, I think that expats have a tendency to believe, in the very hidden core of their psyche, that the locals are fortunate to have us around. I include all expats in this generalization, so yes, everyone who isn't an Emirati.

So, as much as many of us "embrace" local culture, practice our stumbling arabic, observe local customs and try and befriend Emiratis, we have a tendency to revert back to our cultural groups for comfort, familiarity and reassurance, and gloss over the cracks with a handy cultural band-aid - the patronising us&them comments that many or most of us have made at some point.

Driving standards, maids, labour in general, queues, government officials/offices, the police, gender equality... the list is long. Don't like it, don't get it, don't want to think about it, stick a band-aid on it ... "they're dreadful, they don't understand, it's so 3rd world, tchah, tsk, grumble.." Magic. You feel better having "explained" the behaviour, and thus the blemish is covered, and we can continue "assimilating" the bits we like and approve of.

It's a dangerous game, and seems to be leading to a backlash, with Emiratis forming groups on networking sites such as Facebook hitting back at the expat hoardes.

Our time here is limited kids, make the bloody most of it.

Get out your hatchets..

There are things that PR people are never meant to do, or at least, be seen to do. One of the most important, is to avoid ever whingeing about the media.

I'm sorry, on this occasion, I just can't.

Before I start, I'd like to note that I have worked with very talented and insightful people from all sorts of cultures, and managed to communicate a company's story (with the help of bilingual colleagues) in many languages. It's one of the things I love about living abroad.

But too often, we hear yet another rant from regional journalists on the dire state of regional PR. By and large, I think they have a lot of valid points. There is too much release-spam being issued on a daily basis, there are too many clueless execs following up with pointless phone calls, I agree, I agree, I agree.

However, I would ask these journalists to take two minutes at the next pointless press conference that you attend (I promise, the spokespeople will be at least 30mins late, you have plenty of time) to look around and observe the activity of the average lesser-spotted-Dxb-journo.

Many of these people walk in, say "Where's the press release" and walk out again. Many interrupt your spokesperson to say "What does your business do?" Questions, if there are any, are rarely informed.

I have come to terms with all of these idiosyncrasies, and accepted this as my lot. Fine. I'll even accept the accusation that the PRs should have briefed these people better (though I'd argue that most of the time, we've tried, and given them as much info as possibly can.)

But the hatchet job, no, that pisses me off. Just as it is common courtesy for PR people to give journalists a story in good time to research, write, edit and file, it is common courtesy for journalists writing a story on a company to give the company a chance to comment. And if you don't, don't expect me to come running back and with exclusives and interviews - I've got enough of a battle on my hands trying to educate my execs on why they shouldn't go to your boss.

And breathe...