Walk the Talk

I was invited to speak at the Corporate Communications conference this year. Today was the first day and I am due to speak tomorrow.

The event was packed with Communications professionals from all over the region. The agenda promised a thrilling experience. But what I saw and heard today was far beyond from being thrilled.

Most presenters, supposedly communications experts, committed countless mistakes and errors. Some of those mistakes an amateur wouldn't dare making. It was so bad to the point that, toward the end of the day, audience didn't want to ask any questions, just so that they can move on to the next speaker and get the day over with.

Anyhow.... here are my "top 10 presentation screw up"moments from today.

1. Powerpoint Overdose! Man, there were so many slides, I felt like throwing up. Trust me, having more slides doesn't make points stronger. They just make em harder to swallow.

2. Don't read whats written off the screen/slides. It just add insult to injury, and pay attention to cosmetics like font size, color, images and clip arts. Unless your life depended on it, don't use anything from MS Clip art library. Its just lame.

3. Stay focused! People didn't cough up $4k to hear about your company/product/service/boss..etc... they are not interested. Here is a newsflash: They might be interested in what the heck the organiser choose you to talk about in the fist place. You must've done something right in your life. Share it with them.

4. Don't dis other companies, brands or people. It is (1) a cheap shot and (2) some of those people your are dissing might be sitting in the audience - they will most likely swing back at you the second they have the chance to.

5. Less is More - focus on 1 or 2 objectives maximum. Tell the audience what you are expecting to come out with work your way from there.

6. Finish on time. It is disrespectful to everyone. Your fellow speakers, your audience, your MC and most of all. Yourself. It shows you have zero control of your message delivery

7. Research your stuff - don't insult the audience's intelligence with poorly research material or non supported facts

8. Wake up! Stay alert, get excited and psych up your people. Your vibes will affect your audience and they will react to whatever mood you are in. If you are boring and mundane, you will have a stuffed audience.

9. Don't just stand there like a gargoyle, and don't jump around like a chipmunk on steroids. Make your movement and hand gestures subtle, meaningful and to support making a point or a message.

10. And Most important! Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. It was obvious that several presenters today were not 100% familiar with their material. Some actually had typos.

Hope you found those useful. Wish me luck tomorrow

Samer

Looking after your people

If you know me, you'd know that I've been around. In my eight years here in Dubai, I've worked in 4 companies so far. Averaging almost 2 years per company.

In any other place, they'd call me a job hopper. But not here in Dubai. I've seen people who have been bouncing around from one job to another almost every year. You'd think they are working for mediocre companies. But they are not. They are being snatched by top labels.

I get headhunters calling me at least twice a month. Some offering double my current package!

It is not a big secret and here is some of the reasons why, I think:

1. Cost of living in Dubai is exploding out of proportion. Employees are on the lookout for any opportunity that offers better rewards.
2. Companies are not doing that much to increase/raise salaries. As they are already suffering with climbing overheads in land, energy and material. Most people i know get pay cheques increase only when they change jobs!
3. Many business are looking at other growing emerging markets and dubai is still a favorite hub as home base for their expansion.
4. Companies are more interested in existing/established talents as apposed to getting ones from abroad. Hence, people who are based here, are more attractive than ones outside.
5. On the other hand, and because of many reasons (high cost of living, traffic..etc) many exapts -especially the talented ones- are not interested in coming to Dubai anymore.
6. Many talented expats are leaving Dubai to other maturing business environments such as Qatar, Saudi, Kuwait and so forth.

Looking at all that, and how targeted home-based employees are, Companies should work better and harder in retaining their employees.

It is far more profitable to retain good existing employees than to find news ones. Don't you think so?

Blogging in the UAE

I've been following UAE's blogsphere closely. To me, it all started around mid 2005. The discovery of blogging, that is.


Here is how blogging in the UAE used to be like back then


There were 2 mainstreams. Primarily divided by the spoken tongue, Arabic bloggers and English ones.


Arabic UAE Bloggers

Arabic bloggers were predominantly UAE nationals. More females than male bloggers. Most were ex eforums participants. As its was well known that the emergence of blogs, contributed to the slow demise of forums.


Most of the topics Arabic bloggers covered were related to poetry, light UAE news, some UAE, gulfy and Arab pop stars news and of course, photo blogging. Following the block of flicker by Etisalat (the sole telco back then,) UAE photo blogging got a massive hit.

From a global awareness and influence perspective, UAE Arabic blogs didn't make it that well. Mainly because of relatively moderate content and to the poor presence of Arabic blogging in general. One very popular UAE Arabic blogger is Bin Kreshan, owner of the The Land of Sand blog. It is blocked by Etisalat.

UAE English blogs
English language blogging was and is still heavily dominated by expatriates living in UAE. Dubai based ones were the majority. There were a few bloggers from Abu Dhabi and Al Ain. And there are a number of Western educated UAE nationals. Most UAE English bloggers are anonymous. That is likely due to their fear of exposure, as expats, by saying something that would annoy their employers or even "big brother".

But when talking about anonymous UAE based English blogs, one can not ignore the most famous, or notorious, of them all: Secret Dubai Diary.

Secret Dubai Diary, or SD as known in the blogger world, was run by a female expat blogger who started her blog in 2003. In 2005 the blog was noticed, and consequently blocked by Etisalat when she did a post criticizing Dubai Police.

The block got the blog not only the attention of local media, but global press and freedom of speech activists. It is said that this attention influenced the unblocking of her blog to become after that the MOAB (Mother Of All Blogs) in UAE. It also jump started the inception of many of today's most popular blogs in the UAE blogosphere.

SD left the UAE earlier this year but her blog is still active. You can see it here.

2.0
Blogs in UAE have shifted to a next level of maturity. From being a big community of blogs where geography is what got them together, smaller communities started emerging and branch out.

Bloggers have formed pools of mini communities. Gathered by similar opinions, interests or themes. Ones have interest in Politics, Arts, sports or everyday current events. Though at the beginning that sort of pushed a few generic, blog-about-all, bloggers out of the game for sometime, but older UAE blogs still have a strong fan base and followers.


Do you think its time for you to have your own blog now?

Here it goes, again

Lets see how this goes. Wish me luck ;)