Proudly Crafted in Egypt

A short story of mobile application development, the dramatic crackdown of a counter revolution and a long-lasting friendship.

First post of the new year and a great moment to fly back in time and go through a personal story I felt the need to share since this summer. A story about my life as web entrepreneur and start-upper in Egypt during one of Egypt’s most dramatic period of its millennial history.

cyberandy-on-ms794As I write I’m on flight MS794 heading back to Cairo from Rome – Italy, my home town.

Today, Tuesday January the 14th, millions of Egyptians are voting their new constitution after kick-starting a revolution that changed the Arab World and was the beginning of a series of tragic events that deeply effected the Egyptian people as well as my confidence in running a successful business in the Middle East.

It is now almost 20 years I make a living developing web applications, I’m one of these guys that still remember Mosaic and gets excited when people and machines exchange information at the speed of light. I’ve been lately reading Evgeny Morozov (@evgenymorozov) so don’t worry I know “The Internet” – meaning this utopian dream of a connected and more civilised society – doesn’t really exists and most of the time nowadays this overall idea of a better World is misused for protecting unscrupulous online money making machines like Google, Amazon and the others.

Anyway, back to our story. Regardless of the time I spent debugging HTML, CSS, JavaScript and trying to push forward all sort of online business (from national governments to street performers, from multinational corporations to tattoo artists, gangsters and movie stars) I still take quite a lot of pride in doing my job and a great pleasure in helping people communicate online.

It was July 2013 when with our partner from UK (Axxe Solutions) and a brilliant advertising agency in Johannesburg we started to help South Africa’s biggest Radio Channel (5FM) launching an interactive radio show called “Beats by Demand”.

The user dynamics was quite simple and the goal even simpler: democratising” the radio program by letting listeners fire votes using a social-driven HTML5 mobile app (a 2nd screen app for Radio programs).

After gathering the requirements and writing the user-stories we began sketching concept and user experience for our first iteration.

Sketch Beats by Demand

Time was running fast, temperatures in Italy as well as in Egypt were going up and…a  major crisis for Egypt was on its way – ready to severely hit the streets of Cairo in just few weeks. Protests immediately following the removal of the President Mohamed Morsi by the Egyptian Armed Forces erupted near the Rabia Al-Adawiya Mosque and people amassed there to condemn the military and to bring President Morsi back to power. For the first  time since my first visit to Egypt I felt something was wrong, deeply wrong even though I knew my perception of the events was heavily distorted by the media I had a weird feeling and as usual…

tweetsI was relying on the great hope, enthusiasm and courage of people like my partner Fady Ramzy (@cyberzizo) who is literally Reloading Egypt on daily basis by devoting himself to the Egyptian Entrepreneurial Revolution described in Christopher Schroeder’s book “Startup Rising”.

As usual, for our activities developed in Cairo like the 5FM App, my long time friend and colleague Remon Magdy was leading the project delivery. I began working with Remon in 2006 while launching the first mobile portal for Algeria’s largest mobile operator Djezzy. Since then we’ve been successfully rolling out services used every day by millions of users from Egypt to Tunisia, from Pakistan to Algeria, from Italy to South Africa.

Remon’s competences, clever attitude and experience represent at best Egypt’s “amazing talent pool of young people ready to create and innovate” as Marc Andreessen wrote on his introduction for the Christopher Schroeder’s book.

August 2013. It was time to begin developing the story board for our application and most importantly we had to prototype, prototype and prototypeyou don’t really know if an idea will work or not until you try to make something real. Building a version to evaluate the interaction is a must for helping you and your client find out what’s missing before moving your code to production. As usual we split our team into smaller groups (involving the agency as well as the client) and began executing our plan.

As we moved along our project Remon kept coordinating our team sometime from his house in Mohandessin (a neighbourhood close to downtown Cairo – in these days of August one of the epicentre of the clashes) and sometimes from our office in Nasr City (nearby the Airport and not too far from the other epicentre of the protests the Rabia Al-Adawiya Mosque) following the advice from the local news and from his friends on the streets.

Skype-conversationWhile Morsi’s backers set dozens of police stations ablaze across Egypt and put on fire 36 Christian churches General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi unleashed a bloody crackdown of unprecedented violence.

All I could do, as the confrontation continued during 14-18 of August, was to keep a close contact with the team in Cairo and working with Remon over Skype as he was literally trapped in his apartment and couldn’t  go out (see Skype conversation).

People from the office had continuous power outages and connection problems but we decided to keep working as normal as possible and not to disclose too many details with the South African partners to avoid any unneeded spread of panic. When everything outside gets messy it comes natural to protect ourselves and keep leaving our normal life as if nothing had happened.

Hundreds of people died in the clashes between security forces and supporters of President Morsi after his removal. These have been by far the darkest days of my entire experience in Egypt and I do need to thank Fady, Remon, Ahmed, Mohammed, Mina S., Mina M., Nevine and all the other Egyptian friends for giving me unprecedented hope and courage in continuing my journey here in Cairo.

Beats by Demand

After fine tuning our Drupal back-end, training DJ Fresh and revising the interaction with the social logins we finally went live as planned in September with our first release of Beats by Demand. The application had a great impact and few weeks after the launch Heineken decided to sponsor it.

I am very lucky to have the opportunity to work with such an amazing team as the one we have in Cairo and I really hope for 2014 we will continue delivering great experiences crafted with pride in Egypt!

If you’re planning to build your new digital user experience…do it in Egypt and drop us an email.

 

Rise Up Summit a Vibrant Entrepreneurial Community

Rise Up summit is Egypt’s largest entrepreneurship summit, it took place on November 24 and 25 at the heart of Cairo “American University Greek Campus in Tahrir Square” gathering entrepreneurs, business owners and young ideas along with whole Egypt startup ecosystem in one place, to provide opportunities for startups and linking entrepreneurs with investors.

Opening ceremony on November 24 started by introducing the key organizers behind #riseup13

Abdel hameed sharara

Abdel hameed sharara

Abdel Hameed Sharara, the founder of Rise Up Egypt said that the most important thing sought by the summit is to look for the best ways to reach a better society, and to improve the standard of living in Egypt, through the adoption of major companies for young entrepreneurs and help them start to apply their ideas. After the summit, he is planning to tour Egypt’s governorates and expand the event to become RiseUp MiddleEast or even RiseUp Africa.

Ahmed El Alfi

Ahmed El Alfi

 Ahmed El Alfi Flat6 Labs Founder and Sawari Ventures Chairman he is funding the new GrEEK Campus where the event took place he said: he is planning to change the Campus in the coming years, by turning the facility into Egypt’s very own Silicon Valley. “In 2 – 3 years, this will be the Arab World’s and Africa’s entrepreneurship headquarter; and since RiseUp Summit is aiming at the same goals as we are, we are proud to host it here,” El Alfi also explained that the location of the venue is very convenient, since half of Egypt’s population (40 million people) are able to reach it in about an hour and a half.    

Event highlights: 

This event is highlighting that Egypt has the capacity to go through the necessary alteration to develop the entrepreneurial community, regardless of the present political, economic and social barriers.

Engineer Atef Helmy - MIT-Enterprise-Forum-Discussion-Panel

Engineer Atef Helmy – MIT-Enterprise-Forum-Discussion-Panel

Engineer Atef Helmy, Minister of Communications and Information Technology participated in an opening discussion panel where he talked about the National Strategy for Communications and Information culture of entrepreneurship in Egypt, and the four programs  applied in universities for the development of this concept for the rehabilitation of its graduates for working life and creativity in their field.  

The MIT Enterprise Forum was a great input at the summit, through the one-hour panel discussions about challenges facing entrepreneurs in Egypt. Hala Fadel, the Chair of MIT Enterprise Forum in the Pan-Arab Region, believes that Egypt has courage, energy and great ideas – a combination that the RiseUp Summit has embodied and used efficiently to connect entrepreneurs on a wide scale.

Pointing the importance of education, the American University in Cairo’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Program was also a key organizer of the summit. “Egypt’s future lies in its education and private sector,” Dr. Sherif Kamel, the dean of AUC’s School of Business stated at the press conference of the preopening of Rise Up Summit

The Greek campus is packed with some great entrepreneurs - Injaz Trade Fair

The Greek campus is packed with some great entrepreneurs – Injaz Trade Fair

More than 2,000 entrepreneurs attended the summit and showcased their projects, aiming to catch the attention of investors and professionals to attain the funding needed to bring their ideas to life. They had the opportunity to network, discuss and listen to Keynote speakers sharing their success stories also participants had the opportunity to join professional workshops. 

The event featured a mixture of keynotes: 

  • Cairo Angels Pitch 8 to 10 startup teams at Rise Up Summit were given the chance to pitch behind closed-doors to gain invaluable feedback, and possibly investment.
  • MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab Region Panel Discussions Panel moderated by an individual with relevant experience with diverse experts to answer audience about the many challenges that face entrepreneurs and organizations working in entrepreneurship in Egypt
  • Wamda’s “Pitch N’ Mentor” Entrepreneurs joined breakout groups with experts to learn how to perfect their 1-minute elevator pitch for both investors and the media.
  • Pitch and Ride PitchNRide is one of the highlights of RiseUp. This unique event puts an entrepreneur in the back seat of a cab with an investor. The entrepreneur does not know who the investor is until they get in the cab. They have exactly the time it takes for the cab to circle Tahrir Square to make their pitch. No presentations, just their skills to convey the idea and engage the investor.
  • Rise a Thon Where the real action happens during the Rise Up Summit! In this unique hands-on workshop, teams to build new products in less than 2 days to solve a number of challenges
  • Trade Fair by Injaz Egypt Injaz- Egypt in collaboration with RiseUp Egypt provided 50 booths for already established start-ups to showcase their products and services
  • Mini Workshops by FLAT6LABS The mini-workshops is a series aiming at solving startups challenges through the case study method.
  • Enspire by Endeavour Egypt The Enspire series are a series aimed at igniting inspiration and motivation through revealing successful entrepreneurial endeavors.

Interact participation 

Fady Ramzy CM of Interact Egypt at Enspire Talk Stage

Fady Ramzy CM of Interact Egypt at Enspire Talk Stage

Our CM Fady Ramzy was one of the speakers at #enspiretalk he presented sharp advises to digital entrepreneurs through also the inspiring success story of Interact Egypt and how it all started over linkedin. And he highlighted the massive social media tools we have today and the best way to use it. In the closeting ceremony he also announced the digital media academy opening next January 2013.

Live Streaming Views

Live Streaming Views

Interact Egypt proudly provided the live streaming service for the Rise Up Summit broadcasting the event to the world over the web to different devices and smart phones. It attracted more than 2,000 viewers to the live stream embedded on different websites. Interact Egypt provided Riseup with a turn-key solution that included the capturing devices, encoders and cloud streaming servers.

Interact Egypt team provided all the required professional services to run smoothly the streaming where we also streamed different activities from the event to the whole world and therefore we streamed the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab Region Panel Discussions, an Enspire talk by Endeavour and a debate about funding held by Ra2ed A3mal. You can check the video archive.

The closing ceremony in the evening of 25 November began with a Google Hangout connecting 20 Arab entrepreneurs located in different countries around the world to share their experience with the attendees of the summit in Egypt. The Hangout was managed from London by Hala Fadel, the Chair of MIT Enterprise Forum in the Pan-Arab Region.

Talaat Harb 5 D Reincarnation

Talaat Harb 5 D Reincarnation

And the biggest surprise at the closing ceremony was a 5 D Reincarnation of Talaat Harb Egypt’s pioneer economist and entrepreneur giving a beautiful speech urging youth to rise up.

The Hashtag #riseup13 generated a great engagement as people were posting pictures and feedback during and after the event and we collected some lovely pictures from #riseup13 on our flicker account