IE Venture Day Beirut showcased the latest in Edtech, Family businesses & innovation, Online & offline business challenges & a startup competition, with insights from Lebanon’s most distinguished speakers, leaders and influential entrepreneurs.
Karl Naim, The founder of ChefXChange addressed the challenges of building his startup team in Lebanon and the entrepreneurship ecosystem in Lebanon. The event also featured Roula Moussa, the founder of Netaways, who shared her journey to success. Nicolas Boukather, Chairman of ANB Holding & automotive called for closer collaboration between private sector investors, government and incubators to help youth come up with innovative solutions to challenges SMEs and family owned businesses face.
The event also showcased a selection of Lebanon’s hottest startups. The entrepreneurs gave a three-minute presentation in front of an excited audience and a jury.
Why should you attend events similar to IE venture day Beirut Lebanon? If you want to find your “Aha” Moment or if you want to take your business to the next level. You might as well turn some key insights into golden nugget. If you take away just “one thing” from an event that it’s worth the entire day!
Follow me on instagram if you are a student, entrepreneur or a freelancer in the digital industry and want to get access to all events and entrepreneurship competitions happening in Lebanon & the Arab region!
The TechWadi Roadshow Powered by Google for Entrepreneurs came to Beirut, Lebanon for the first time on October 24 -25, 2015.
TechWadi RoadShow was developed in partnership with Google for Entrepreneurs (GFE) a division of Google designed to support entrepreneurial ecosystems as an opportunity to expand outreach to the MENA region.
The “TechWadi Roadshow” consisted of two day-long educational workshops led by TechWadi and powered by Google for Entrepreneurs that brought experienced entrepreneurs, investors, and stakeholders straight from Silicon Valley to mentor local startups in Beirut.
The mentors included seasoned professionals from companies like Google, Yahoo, Facebook, as well as founders of various Silicon Valley startups. The event took place in UK Lebanon TechHub, the local host and partner who worked with additional ecosystem partners to accommodate as many entrepreneurs as possible.
The event kicked off with Daniel Navarro, Marketing Manager at Google for Entrepreneurs (GFE) & Christina Ashtary, Program Manager at TechWadi, who welcomed the attendees and introduced TechWadi Organization and it’s dedication to building bridges between Silicon Valley and the MENA region in partnership with GFE.
The event consisted of multiple sessions that provided engaging presentations discussing entrepreneurship, market development phases, startups and investments in the MENA region allowing attendees to learn from established experts including Sherif Badawi, a serial entrepreneur and technology executive, who currently serves as a partner to VCs and startups at Google, Ramy Adeeb, Founder & CEO, Snip.it (Acquired by Yahoo!), Walid Hanna, Managing director at MEVP and many more.
Day 2 was exclusively limited to a selected group of partners startups and entrepreneurs and focused on tailored mentorship meetings and design thinking workshops.
Attendees shared their excitement during the event by live-tweeting speaker quotes and photos of the event on social media using the following hashtag: #SV2MENA.
For those who missed the event, you can find slide decks of mentor presentations here. You can also apply for the 2016 TechWadi Sprint Acceleration Program or the TechWadi Mentorship.
Sony showcased it’s latest products in an exclusive event at Beirut’s Le Yacht Club, including the latest range of BRAVIA 4K LCD televisions and a new line-up of high resolution audio products including stylish headphones and a Walkman.
The high-end, invite-only event included Sony’s key customers in Lebanon, Club Members and media, was hosted by the head of Sony Middle East Marketing Company, Satoru Arai and in the presence of his excellency Seiichi Ostuka, Ambassador of Japan featured a DJ set, live jazz and live demos and exclusive first looks of some of Sony’s recently launched products.
Some of the key features of Sony’s New Bravia 4K LCD televisions include a new 4K processor X1 and color accuracy. The new series are thinner than the iPhone 6 making it Sony’s thinnest range of TVs. It also enables video, streaming, voice search and utilizes Google’s latest Android TV operating system.
Sony has also unveiled the new headphones and Walkman with a distinct finish in a vast array of colors that lets customers match their own style. Sony’s expanding range of High-Resolution Audio products aim to reproduce music just as artists truly intended.
Head of Sony Middle East Marketing Company, Satoru Arai, said Sony has exciting plans for Lebanon.
“We are delighted with the high resonance and uptake that Sony products continue to enjoy in Lebanon. We are looking to bring in more products and ensure that product release dates are unified globally to allow local consumers to experience the technology at the same time as the rest of the world. We look forward to hosting much more events in lebanon in the future,” he said.
For the first time in the MENA region, Intel announced on August 10, 2015 the launch of Challenge ME! An IoT (Internet of Things) competition in collaboration with reputable educational institutions and non-profit entrepreneurship across the Middle East and North Africa.
If you have a start-up idea or you’re an entrepreneur developing technologies for the Internet of Things (IoT) market, make sure to sign up and submit your prototype before the closing date of the submission on October 22nd. The project idea should be aimed at developing or using new technology trends within the areas of the Internet of Things (IoT) with great business potential, such as: Drones, Wearable Products, Smart Homes/Cities, Automotive, Aerospace….
Experts from Intel corporation and the business community will assess the submitted projects based on two major areas; Innovative aspects of the IoT Technology Components and the attractiveness and scalability of the Business Model. Shortlisted projects will be invited to travel to Beirut in November 2015 for the final pitching with a chance to win over $15,000 in prizes and an opportunity to attend the Intel Innovation Summit in UK.
Eligibility: Participants must be above 18 years old and located in the MENA region: Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen.
Intel will also be conducting a series of webinars to assist participants and answer any questions regarding the submission process. Webinar Details
Visit challengeme.intel.com or ChallengeME! Facebook Page for more info about the competition’s; Timeline, Webinars, and Process…
The success of an event is based on a measurement strategy that states the KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to be considered. There are multiple types of KPIs such as (Sales KPIs, Marketing KPIs, Social Media KPIs…). Organizations identify and track different KPIs depending on its objectives and what it wishes to achieve from an event.
The following list includes 3 social media KPIs to measure the success of an event during its different stages.
Social Media KPIs
To ensure the proper reach of the media campaign aligned with an upcoming event, an organization should use the metrics below to achieve maximum exposure, develop customer engagement, enforce brand image, reach target audience and achieve desired action such as registrations, attendance and lead generation.
1- Exposure & Distribution, 2- Engagement & Interaction, 3- Influence & Action
Exposure and Distribution:
Before launching an event, an organization should make sure it’s available on all social networking sites to connect with its target audience and that all channels are updated regularly with the upcoming event details;
Contact information (email & phone number)
Info (place, time & date)
Details (event promo: images & videos)
Prices (ticket details & point of purchase)
Speakers (bio & links to profile)
Social sharing (social media & email)
The ease of access to event details on social media should reflect a growth in exposure on all channels and its distribution among communities and groups; number of fans on Facebook, followers on twitter, connections on LinkedIn, subscribers on YouTube and whether the event is being circulated on social media, mentioned on other platforms and from what sources.
Engagement and Interaction:
Next step requires developing reach and increasing engagement on social media to attain maximum publicity, in order to achieve that a custom landing page should be prepared for those who are interested in the event and are looking for more detailed info. The landing page should be clear, include an attractive image and more text content including all the above and the following info:
Schedule (Breaks, Workshops, Panels)
Partners (Media & Sponsors)
Unique Hashtag (To build engagement during the event)
Outcome (Certificate…)
An event is the best opportunity to achieve maximum exposure on social media, thus during an event the organization should provide an incentive for its target audience to interact. This can be done through:
Connecting with users on social networks and sharing their feedback, comments and conversations by retweeting their content and images.
Another way is to gamify tweeting during event by organizing a simple contest or by displaying the tweet stream on screens in the event.
Engaging with influencers is another incentive, influencers are people your target audience trust and have great presence online and make it easier to spread the message.
Building a photo wall is also an interesting method to encourage attendees to take pictures and share on social media.
Influence & Action:
This is an important indicator to evaluate the success of an event and how well the social media campaign and marketing efforts resonate with the audience. Although there is no universal method to measure an event impact on social media and no approach can be applied to all yet evaluating the different actions taken such as the number of retweets, mentions, comments, shares, reviews, video views, live stream/site visits, registrations, and number of leads/sales will help you understand the perception and attitude of customers.
You can use the following FREE tools to measure the above:
TweetReach.com: Add the hashtag used during the event and you will be able to see the estimated reach, exposure, contributors, tweets timeline and activity.
Twittercounter.com: Gives you twitter statistics (graph & numbers) over a custom period of time, number of tweets, followers and following.
Unionmetrics.com: Gives you instagram insights, top fans, best time to post, post engagement.
Mention.com: Create an alert for your organization name or the hashtag used during the event. Mention.com will scan different sources, social media or web and send you email alerts.
In addition to the above, there are several effective tools to measure event return on investment which should be relevant to the goals set prior to the launch of any event. Setting clear measurements will help generate more value and RIO.
- 1
- 2