Mind Soup

Omar Christidis is the Founder and CEO of ArabNet, the leading events and media company focused on the Arab web and mobile industry. ArabNet organizes the leading conferences for the digital sector in the MENA region, including the ArabNet Digital Summit, the premier international gathering for Arab digital professionals and entrepreneurs. The Summit was held for the fourth time in Dubai in June 2013 and brought together more than 800 attendees from 35 countries and received more than 9,100 tweets and 42,800 hits on the live-steam.   In 2012, Omar was selected by GulfNews Magazine as one of its “30 under 30" list. He is a graduate of Yale University and the Co-Founder of the Yale Arab Alumni Association.   At the last ArabNet Beirut, the issue of language of the conference was raised. Why do you think it is better for the conference to be conducted in English in both Dubai and Beirut? ArabNet Beirut and the Digital Summit are held in English because of the signific...

Two weeks ago, I was attending the Arabnet Digital Summit and I insisted to attend the sessions about Education to understand more about the view of professionals and educators towards the use of technology in education. Needless to say, I was disappointed with what most of them had to say. The speakers still had a traditional approach to education, a Web 1.0 approach as I like to call it. They only cared about using technology to push material to their students rather than stimulate and encourage them to learn. They were promoting 20-year-old technologies such as Blackboard and Moodle (which are basically sites that host the lectures and are traditionally structured to minimize interaction). Some were bragging that they  have implemented these programs in their schools and universities as if it was the most advanced technology and will bring great benefit to their students. Others were promoting them because they sell these programs for millions of dollars to Arab educa...

ArabNet Digital Summit 2012, the biggest event for web and mobile in the region, is less than 2 months away. Last year’s summit brought over 1000 attendees, 100 speakers, featured 18 panels and 17 talks, in addition to 20 entrepreneurs pitching their ideas and startups. This year’s event is even bigger! Cutting-edge panel discussions, specialized workshops, exciting competitions, focused networking sessions, social activities and more, spread over 5 action packed days including: Two Developer Days with technical discussions and workshops for programmers An Industry Day about how web and mobile are transforming traditional industries like healthcare, travel, education and banking Two Forum Days , the largest gathering of digital business leaders in the region featuring over 100 globally renowned speakers covering the latest trends and technologies in web and mobile A Community Day raising public awareness about the the power of digital The Digital Summit will also include ...