Seeqnce blog

Start-up Launch Series #3: ticklemybrain → where minds come to work

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 15:25:11 +0200

Tara Nehme completed her undergraduate degree in Finance at the American University of Beirut in 2009. She had lived in Canada for nine years prior to making the move to Lebanon for university. Post graduation, she was employed as a Forensic Services Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dubai. She worked at PwC for almost two years before quitting her job and heading to back to Beirut to develop ticklemybrain.

ticklemybrain; an online, dynamic, youth driven, career resource portal; presented its plan to empower the Middle Eastern workforce at the Seeqnce Space two days ago.

Launched on February 6, www.ticklemybrain.com aims to revolutionize the job market. For months before that, ticklemybrain founder, Tara Nehme, had been blogging about the trials and tribulations of the young person’s working life, garnering the attention of fresh graduates and young professionals from around the region. Her newly released website is an interactive platform for people looking to develop their professional life, combining form and function to make career-enhancement not only a service but an experience.

Its founder, Tara Nehme, gave an energetic presentation, where she described the idea behind her business. Afterwards, she answered audience questions and an active discussion ensued as to the company’s future vision.

It was a great session! Here are some of the highlights:

ticklemybrain: What It Does

Currently, the website offers users the opportunity to:

1. Transform your resume and cover letter: You can ‘transform’ your resume and ‘create’ your cover letter for a fee that varies according to your career stage.

2. Join a professional network: ticklemybrain is about to launch its own social networking site, the ‘think network’, helping to increase job seekers’ visibility to recruiters.

3. Discover career advice: Artickles is ticklemybrain’s advice and resource area where writers address topics and issues affecting professionals today. Posts are categorized by their self-explanatory titles: find your job, love your job and leave your job.

4. Understand industries: As the website describes it, “Countless professionals seeking employment opportunities live under an illusion of what jobs truly entail, mainly due to the lack of proper resources explaining otherwise. Day in the life aims to clarify these pretenses in a creative way and more importantly by involving users.” Referred to by Tara as the, “wikipedia for careers”, users are encouraged to write about their jobs and help others better understand work life in different industries. In this section, ticklemybrain also publishes snippets about organizations and key figures making headlines.

The team is currently comprised of six people:

- Tara Nehme, Managing Director and Founder
- Cyma Hammoud, Marketing Strategy Consultant
- Four Editorial Consultants: Stephanie Nehme, Lara Atallah, Sergio Kays and Ilija Trojanovic

ticklemybrain: How the Idea Came About

After graduating from university, going through interviews and considering several career paths, Tara found a job she thought would fulfill her aspirations. She was hired as a Forensic Services Consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Dubai.

It was a great opportunity since the job itself was related to finance, her subject of study at university, as well as law, a field she had always been passionate about. It was through her work experience, which Tara came up with the ticklemybrain idea. She explained in her first blog post, “I was the CSI of business crimes. Fraud, corruption, theft, you name it, my team and I investigated it. I learnt an incredible amount, became very close friends with a few coworkers, and more times than not loved my job. Nevertheless, I constantly felt uneasy wondering about my future and the decisions I had made. I was reminded of the struggle I faced seeking employment when friends would ask me to see whether their resumes had room for improvement. I sometimes considered finding a job in a different country but the hassle of the process and lack of resources available shied me away from it all.” Tara realized that there was a gap in the market and more importantly, a need for the services her website currently offers. Thus, ticklemybrain was born.

ticklemybrain: Challenges Faced

Tara talked about the biggest challenges she faced while working on the idea and named five of them:

1. Self-Discipline: She learnt how to organize and manage her workload and ultimately get it done. It was a significant change from having to report to a boss on a daily basis.

2. Programmers: Finding skilled programmers to build the site was unbelievably challenging. “Until I found my current programmers, founders of php Lebanon, I hired and fired two companies,” said Tara.

3. Code, Photoshop and English: Bridging the gap between programmers, her web designer, Maya Zankoul, and herself was not easy. Tara stressed the importance of finding the right people who would love the project as much she did and would go out of their way to get things right. She said, “I’m a big fan of Maya Zankoul and my programmers: Chawki Matta, Simon Tadros and Derek Haddad. They are simply great.”

4. Time Management: “There are not enough hours in the day to make things perfect and this is why my greatest lesson insofar has been learning to let go of this obsession and to work on improving the website each day,” she said.

5. Employees: Finding reliable people you can trust is an ongoing challenge. While ticklemybrain is not actively seeking new employees, Tara said, “I am always open to hearing from passionate and enthusiastic writers who would be interested in joining ticklemybrain. If they possess amazing skills, I would not let them go.”

ticklemybrain: Where It’s Going

Finally, Tara revealed that ticklemybrain did not seek any funding or help for the first phase of its project as it was not capital intensive and she believed her vision for ticklemybrain was feasible on her own. “Once we are ready to expand our reach and website offerings, we will most likely be seeking external funding,” explained Tara.

We asked Tara what she thought of companies like Seeqnce. “When I first moved to Beirut, I felt I was the only person without a ‘normal’ job. Companies like Seeqnce reminded me of the active entrepreneurial spirit in Lebanon, and that there are many ambitious minds with amazing ideas trying to be the next big thing. Even though I didn’t use the help of a start-up accelerator myself, it felt good to know they were present in Beirut, supporting the entrepreneurial visions of
young businesses,” said Tara.

Tara sent a great message to all entrepreneurs wanting to jump-ship from their current jobs. She said that they should plan their business case well, find an objective mentor and most importantly, love what they do. She is a big fan of Steve Jobs and mentioned how his Stanford commencement speech in 2005 helped and continues to motivate her though the ticklemybrain challenges.

The Execution Quarterly Reunion

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 13:49:00 +0200

The Execution Quarterly Reunion took place yesterday in the Lounge at Seeqnce space in Hamra.

It was a casual gathering where over 30 people came. All attendees were former participants at The Execution. The teams represented last night were: The Dream Matchers, The Penguins, Saafer, Red Drops in Lebanon, Smart Code, Custom Dreams, and Global Team (Kolaz).

Everyone had a chance to catch up on what has been going on in the months that have passed since the competition. It was great to see that some teams have already launched their startups, or were in the final steps of doing so.

Among the highlights of the evening, Kolaz updated us with the launch of the beta version of their app. They showed the app and received valuable feedback from several Execution alumna. The app is now available on the Android Store. You can download it here!

In addition, Samer Karam, the Founder of Seeqnce, shared Seeqnce - related updates which included: new website; The 2012 Seeqnce Program; new additions to the Seeqnce team; which startups were graduating Seeqnce after successful acceleration; which startups were joining Seeqnce and which new startups have started their residence at Seeqnce.

Presentations were kept short, allowing people to relax, have some drinks, some laughs and even some playstation.

Thank you to all who attended last night’s reunion!

Social Media Partnership: The Power Of Innovative Online Marketing

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 17:24:34 +0200

In our last blog post we provided some social media stats, emphasizing the importance of social platforms and the tools you can use to capitalize on the same. In addition to this we would like to add another concept that has been attracting a lot of attention lately. And that is social media partnership.

In today’s article we answer to 3 questions related to social media partnership: WHAT is social media partnership? WHY is it important? And HOW can you use it to intensify your marketing?

1. What? - It is a way to “to team up with a company or organization to create mutually-beneficial social media marketing opportunities”, writes Tuvel. When we say social media, we do not refer to Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn only, but we also refer to niche online communities, groups, blogs, forums, and newsletters. The main goal is to build a mutually beneficial partnership with the partnering company while getting great promotional exposure via any possible social media channels.

2. Why? - Social media partnerships, if being successful, could deliver a lot of benefits. There are many reasons why one would like to engage with this type of relationships. Let’s name three of them:

Increased online visibility: Social media partnerships will help your content appear on additional online platforms owned by your partner. “The elements of the partnership may include paid media elements such as customized homepage takeovers, the creation of a brand-endorsed profile for your product, email marketing, or participation in the partner’s newsletter. Remember that most of these social networks also have Facebook and Twitter profiles through which they can cross-promote the partnership and help you reach another tier of the audience on these major social networks” explains iMediaConnection.

Targeted marketing: establishing partnership with a company or social network whose customers/users suit your targeted audience can help you approach the same in a very effective way.

For example, the filmmakers of “The Cove”, a documentary about the dolphin slaughter in Japan, “partnered with Care2, a social network for activists, because its members matched the audience profile of the movi. The production company Take Part developed a petition targeting President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and Japanese Ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki, asking them to address the dolphin slaughter in Japan. The petition was also available in Japanese for Japanese citizens, who could then send it to the Prime Minister and Minister of Health. In addition, Care2 developed an interesting call-to-action strategy. The end of the movie included a message asking viewers to sign the petition, either via a mobile version of the petition site or by visiting the suggested URL. The company also created widgets in both English and Japanese that included information on the movie, along with the names of all the supporters of the petition. That widget could then be integrated into Facebook or MySpace profiles in order to generate digital WOM”, writes iMediaCOnnection.

Amplify your brand image: If realized successfully, social media partnerships could prove you have done your homework meaning you put efforts to get to know your customers, identify their needs, and respond to the same. Moreover, you show that you follow the latest social and digital trends, something that always contributes to company’s brand image.

3. How? - There are plenty of strategies to establish successful social media partnerships. Let’s see a few suggestions:

Co-branding: “Offer logo exposure on your event website and in onsite printed materials (such as show programs and signage) as a Social Media Partner, while your Partner runs a banner or logo on their website”, suggests Tuvel.

Get partners to donate prizes for a contest or giveaway: “In the Mezzeta example, multiple partners contributed prizes and in return received prominent exposure on the online contest. This reduced the cost to Mezzeta while providing a “hallo effect” for all those associated with the campaign “, writes Social Media Examiner.

Coverage: “Provide your Partner with a press pass to attend your event and cover it for their blog or publication. This will result in even more exposure both during and after your event”, advises Tuvel. Or you can ask a partner to mention your product or company in one of their blog posts or newsletter.

Social capital: Ask your partner to retweet “or to cross-post on Facebook to give your communications an extra boost”, writes Social Media Examiner.

Onsite advertising opportunities: “If it’s appropriate for your Partner and space is available, offer a small booth space to them so they can get in front of your attendees. Another option may be to provide them space in the press room for their marketing materials”, recommends Social Media Examiner.

To sum up: Make a list of your potential social media partners. Think about the benefits you could gain from them but also think about the benefits they could foresee in the partnership you offer. Since we are talking about mutually beneficial partnership, do not undervalue your partners! To the contrary, come up with an optimal solution that both sides (sometimes more parties could be involved) will find it attractive.

5 Social Media Tools Worth Exploring

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:01:00 +0200

The world went and got all social. People at all ages are using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, or YouTube. Below you can take a look at some social media statistics you need to know:

Facebook

- More than 800 active million active users with more than 200 million added in 2011 (2012).

- 56% of consumers said they are more likely to recommend a brand to a friend after becoming a fan on Facebook (2012).

- There are more than 3.5 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, etc) shared each week on Facebook (2012).

Twitter:

- There are now 100 million active users on Twitter (2012).

- eMarketer estimates that there will be nearly 21 million users in the US by the end of this year (2012).

- 34% of marketers have generated leads using Twitter (2012).

YouTube:

- 4,000,000,000 page views a day, which adds up to 1,000,000,000,000 a year (2012).

- 60 days > 60 years: More video is uploaded in two months than the three major U.S. networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) combined created in six decades (2011).

- 2 billion: Number of global video views per week being monetized (2011).

LinkedIn

- LinkedIn’s members have reached 147 million (2012).

- 39% of the members is a Manager, Director, Owner, Chief Officer or Vice President (2012).

- The 10 countries with most LinkedIn users: United States (58.5 million), India (13.3 million), United Kingdom (8.4 million), Brazil (6.8 million), Canada (5.1 million), France (3.2 million), Netherland (3.1 million), Italy (2.8 million), Australia (2.8 million) and Spain (2,6 million) (2012).

From the statistics above we can claim that social media has become a very important part of our everyday interaction. And this is actually very cool because all these social platforms enable you to keep track of many activities your users perform and the feedback they provide. This eventually will help you to better understand your users, get into interaction with them and even get them involved in your future product development. And the final goal would be delivering a product that will meet the needs of your target audience in a relatively easy and cost-effective way.

Social media tools are one way to achieve this. Below there is a brief overview of 5 social media tools that can help you to capitalize on the information you can absorb from social platforms.

1. Get Satisfaction

What? - It is a social media tool helping companies to build online communities with the main aim of enabling productive conversations between the companies and their customers. “Realize that simply engaging your customers in conversation won’t earn you a gold star and it won’t make your customers happy. Conversations are everywhere these days, and it seems like the more everyone talks about conversations, the harder it is to start the ones that matter”, writes Get Satisfaction . Thus, this tool helps you build a community with a focus where both parties, companies and customers, provide constructive feedback.

How? - They say: “We are everywhere your customers are (but not in a creepy way)”. How do they achieve this? Their platform unifies conversations happening on your site, Facebook, Twitter, or your blog. It integrates with the systems your company uses. They further explain: “Whether it’s CRM, Helpdesk, or Social Media Tools, our growing list of partner integrations gives you an easy way to connect community to your systems of record. For the DIY minded, we have an open API that lets you access all public information”.

Who? - There are 55 000 customer communities powered by Get Satisfaction. Among them you can find companies such as Nike, Mint, P&G, Foursquare, Visa, American Heart Association, Texas.gov, Microsoft and so on.

2. Social Mention

What? - “Social Mention is a social media search and analysis platform that aggregates user generated content from across the universe into a single stream of information”. They say it is ”Google Alerts but for social media”. You can create an alert and receive free daily email alerts of your brand, company, CEO, marketing campaign, or on a developing news story, a competitor. You can also get the “Realtime Buzz widget” and display realtime buzz on your site or blog. Besides the point-in-time social media search and analysis service, the daily social media alerts, and the realtime buzz widgets, Social Mention also provides API.

How? - In order to track what others are saying about particular topic you just need to enter the keyword(s) in the search tab, then you can filter the search (search in all, blogs, microblogs, comments, bookmarks, news and so on).

Who? - Social Mention monitors 100+ social media properties directly including: Twitter, Facebook, FriendFeed, YouTube, Digg, Google etc.

3. User Voice

What? - User Voice provides tools that on one hand help the customers engage and speak while on the other hand they help companies better understand and interact with their customers.

How? - There are three User Voice products that help you to get connected to your customers. Those are:

- User Voice Feedback: hosted feedback forums which allow customers to create, discuss, and vote for ideas.

- User Voice Helpdesk: simple tool helping companies to track and respond to customer issues.

- User Voice Full Service: a complete solution combining both, User Voice Feedback and User Voice Helpdesk, in a simple and easy to use tool.

Who? - Some of User Voice users are Merchmo, Blackbaud, Rackspace, or Noom Inc.

4. MailChimp

What? - It is a tool that helps you to design great email campaigns, share them on social networks, integrate with web services you already use, manage subscribers and track results. You can use MailChimp’s templates or design your own. It offers cool features and integrations that generally meet your needs.

How? - In order to use MailChimp’s newsletter publishing platform, you need to first create an account (it is free to sign up). Once you do that you can immediately start creating content and publishing it. In between you can create different lists of people to whom you will send the posts. It is very simple and even better it has very helpful guides explaining everything you need to know: from how to get started, to designing templates, from email marketing and getting social to understanding reports.

Who? - Some of MailChimp’s users are the following: Nerdbots, Flux Projects, Angry Birds, Raleigh Denim.

5. Monitter

What? - It is a location-based monitoring system that tells you what people on Twitter are tweeting about right now within a certain mile radius.

How? - It is a very simple tool. All you need to do is enter the keyword, zip code and the radius. You can follow several keywords at the same time.

To sum up: All the information you need is out there. But in order for that information to be valuable, you need to analyze it and ultimately come up with certain set of activities designed to produce the outcome you want. And social media tools are great approach to achieve this. So check out what tools are available, what suits your startup needs the best and get into action!

3 Key Start Up Lessons To Remember

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:22:00 +0200

Last year was quite dynamic, with lots of exciting happenings on the global startup scene. There were a lot of hot startups: some of them are still impressive success stories, while others ended up as epic failures. Nevertheless they all, in one way or another, marked 2011. Now we are at the beginning of 2012 ready for new challenges, new stories, and new lessons to be learned.

In today’s article we share three key lessons recommended by great entrepreneurs and passionate bloggers based on their previous startup experience combined with their great understanding of the latest technology and social media trends. Let’s take a brief look at them.

1. Build products from improvised user behaviors: This is what Chris Dixon advises. He makes a great point here saying that new startup ideas are usually very close to you and what you should look for is the way people around you use products. In fact he claims that their improvised behaviors could be the source of your next big idea. Dixon points out to Instagram as an example of this. He reminds on the “niche communities of “lo-fi” camera enthusiasts who shared photos taken on old cameras that had interesting ways of filtering shots”. Next, Hipstamatic, an iPhone app, realized this and popularized lo-fi filters, selling over 1 million copies. However, what people were missing was the social feature. Thus they took pictures with Hipstamatic, explains Dixon, and shared them using other apps. “Then came Instagram, which combined lo-fi filters and easy sharing. Instagram has been downloaded 15M times and has apparently crossed over to mainstream users”, writes Dixon. The key point Dixon wants to make here is that Instagram came up with a product that performed the job previously performed by users using multiple products. The final message here would be: Look around you, analyze users’ improvised behaviors, understand the reason behind that improvisation and then come up with the “next Instagram” idea.

2. Mobile First, Web Second: “Mobile First, Web Second” and “Mobile First, Web Second (continued)” are two articles written by Fred Wilson, articles which according to Mark Suster “were very influential with the startup community”. What both, Wilson and Suster, agree is that for some startup ideas such as Twitter and Foursquare it is definitely essential to develop a mobile app first, and web app second. Why? In short Suster points out to the increased smart phones adoption as strong fact that justifies this thinking, explaining that for “many young people and many people in the developing countries this will be one of their first computing devices”. Some of the reasons behind “mobile first, web second” approach he writes about are the following:

“The devices are individual, not shared”.

“They are location aware, which is important in personalizing the service offering”.

“They are often one click away from buying”.

“They occupy a lot of people’s leisure time”.

Nevertheless, web apps should not be ignored at all. “I think many recent companies make the mistake of not investing enough in web products, if they invest anything at all. I mostly use Twitter on my mobile devices. But there are some things you just can’t do with mobile app. Try doing proper restaurant research on a mobile device. Try reading a bunch of reviews, checking 5 different restaurants to try and compare the differences. Try writing long reviews of a restaurant,” explains Suster.

Check out Suster’s blog post “Web Second, Mobile First” to read his detailed elaboration on this.

3. Become A Social Media Power User

You came up with the idea, you developed it on the platform(s) you believed are right and what follows next is sharing what you have developed. Becoming a social media power user is one of the biggest challenges you will face. This is especially relevant nowadays when social media seems to change the rules of the game. “Social networks produce an immense amount of data about what real people like enough to share with their friends. Today, people share 30 billion pieces of content on Facebook and over 5 billion tweets — about a quarter of which contain links to content — per month. In an industry where knowing what humans like is crucial to success, search engines have figured out — and taken to heart — a delightfully simple mantra: If people share your content, it’s probably pretty good”, writes Mashable. Furthermore, Mashable claims that there are some experiments which have shown Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ relevance and impact on regular search results. “When we go to a search engine, we want to find what we’re looking for, immediately and hassle-free. It’s clear that social media is helping search engines deliver more immediacy and more relevant results. In the long run, this will help SEO-directed businesses focus on what they should be doing: creating content people love,” writes Mashable.

In his excellent blog post, “100 Ways to Become a Twitter Power User,” Neil Patel explains various aspects of becoming a Twitter power user, including why it is important, what tools to use in order to be more effective and efficient, tips that help you generate more retweets, metric tools for power users, “healthy habits” of Twitter power users, and Twitter power users he personally admires.

To sum up, we cannot claim that there is one universal model that every startup needs to follow in order to succeed. In fact we believe in quite the opposite meaning that every startup is its own story, having its own path to success. However these three lessons might be a great guide until you find your own key to success and then share your own rules and lessons. Good luck!!!

7 Useful Tools For Freelance Web Designers

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:30:19 +0200

Being a freelancer sounds very cool… You have 100% freedom in deciding what projects you will work on, the way you will organize those projects as well as the tools you will choose to work with. Not even mentioning that you decide whether you will work from home, office, cafes, park or any other place you like. Awesome right? Well yes and no. Both, yes and no, are because of one reason: 100% freedom. When you are given the freedom to decide on everything, from working hours, to working place and working tools, then often you might get lost. You are distracted by things that normally people with ordinary jobs do not encounter, you need to create the “system”, you need to find the right tools and use them in the right way, and all this should be done on time or before due or deadline. If this doesn’t happen…the freelancer is out of game.

In today’s article we recommend 7 tools we believe are useful for every freelance web designer. Let’s take a look:

1. GetHarvest.com

Simple time tracking, fast online invoicing, and powerful reports. With this tool you can track your time spent on projects from your web browser, mobile phone, or desktop. It also allows you to create invoices fast, with customized logos and translations, and invoice in different currencies. Harvest also enables you to keep track of your expenses, as well as to send professional - looking estimates to your clients. You can check Harvest pricing here.

2. DesignQuote.net

It is a great tool to get a new project to work on. Clients post projects for free and if you are one of the matching designers then you are notified via email immediately. Freelancers post bids to win contracts.

3. Shadowness

“Our vision is to create a simple and powerful tool to allow artists and designers to connect to each other and share their work. We’re tight-knit, pretty picky about our work, but always friendly, ready to help and learn”. This simple tool allows you to design your portfolio, be awarded as you contribute, join and create art groups, participate in forum topics, access to instant chat messaging between members of the community etc.

4. Vecteezy

It is a community of vector art! Members create and exchange free vector graphics like vector icons, vector patterns, vector swirls, or flourishes. Check it out!

5. FreeAgent

Great tool to manage your books and accounts. This tool is specifically targeting small businesses and freelancers. They say: “FreeAgent launched in 2007, hewn from the frustration that managing company finances was just too damn hard for most small businesses and freelancers. Since then we’ve doggedly stuck to our mantra of demystifying accounting and redefining the relationship people have with their finances”.

6. IconFinder

This tool helps you to find a variety of high quality icons in an easy and efficient way. It is said to be the first search engine focused on icons and “with millions on icons downloaded every month it is among the most popular icon sites”. So maybe it is worth to try it!

7. FontForge

It is an open-source application for font design. FontForge allows you to create your own postscript, truetype, opentype, cid-keyed, multi-master, cff, svg and bitmap (bdf, FON, NFNT) fonts, or edit existing ones. “Also lets you convert one format to another. FontForge has support for many macintosh font formats. FontForge’s user interface has been localized for: (English), Russian, Japanese, French, Italian, Spanish, Vietnamese, Greek, Simplified & Traditional Chinese, German, Polish, Ukrainian”, is explained on FontForge official website.

We hope you will find these tools useful. Any other tools you would like to recommend?

Building A Mobile App? Here Are 5 Tips For You!

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 16:35:00 +0200

If mobile apps used to be luxury, now they became necessity. They became a great tool for companies to strengthen their online presence as well as to build a more engaging customer community.

In today’s article we give 5 tips that could be of a great help when developing and designing your mobile app. Let’s take a look at them:

1. Do smaller releases quickly: Smaller but quick iterations are being highly recommended to developers and designers. Iteration is the key to perfection. Thus if you iterate frequently you will probably end up making more progress in the long run. This is what Kevin Systrom, Co-Founder of Instagram advises.

“Do fewer things more quickly, rather than waiting a long time between big releases as Instagram did. It’s not a mistake, it just took us a long time to do v 2.0. But I’d like to move us into smaller iterations more quickly because I think that if you get into a rhythm of releases you end up making more progress in the long run”, says Systrom.

2. Design for touch: While designing your app, you need to think from user’s perspective. What does this mean? It means that you need to get into the shoes of the user, the way he/she holds the phone, where the thumb sits, the spots the user will look at mostly, the spots and the way the user perceives natural to respond to, and so on. Before designing for others try to understand others behavior and the way they want and will use the app. This will help you a lot in designing a usable app. Many times great apps fail because they didn’t understand the user-device interaction, or they didn’t respond to it accordingly.

“Beyond button layout, think about how you want to indicate touch feedback — physically or visually. While the BlackBerry Storm tried the whole clickable screen thing, the truth is, haptic feedback (such as vibrations), while great for games or for alerts, doesn’t usually work very well for touch-based devices like mobile phones. Instead, use visual cues to show that an item is either touchable or has been touched. For instance, think about how the various keys on the iPhone keyboard grow in size when you touch them. That increase in size is feedback” writes Mashable.

3. Develop for multiple platforms: Logically, developing an app for multiple platforms will help you reach out more customers. Moreover it could enable selling the app at a lower price which eventually could increase the chances of a customer purchasing the app. However “do note that developing an application for multiple platforms is a time-consuming task and you might miss on some of the features available in a particular device or platform” writes TheGeeksClub.

4. Version control: This is probably a familiar concept to most web developers. However, this might not be the case with most designers. Why version control? Because it enables you “to have an unlimited number of people working on the same code base, without having to constantly send files back and forth. You can instantly browse previous “commits” to your repository and revert to earlier versions if something happens”, writes SmashingMagazine. Moreover, “If/when a bug is introduced, you can see the list of possible changes that caused it”, writes HT Applications.

Here you can find top open-source version control systems and tools that make setting up a version control system easy.

5. Compete with yourself: When developing your app or introducing new versions, think of who will use it, how it will be used, where it will be used, and finally how it can be improved taking into account the previous questions. Once you have an idea you believe in, forget about others. If you start acting on the basis of what others are doing, you will end up following them and eventually you will lose your focus.

Keith Rabois, COO at Square, says: “We look at ourselves in the mirror everyday….it doesn’t really matter what other people do. We really strictly believe that. Insofar as a lot of companies start with the premise of, I have to worry about this feature, and they send around emails (asking), ‘Do we have that?’ We try to take ourselves out of that. It’s our job to build amazing products and we either succeed or fail depending on how amazing they are.”

Any thoughts on this? What do you think new, fresh designers and developers should focus on when developing their mobile app? Please share your views and opinions in Comments section.

Interview With Muhammad Tabsh From Kol 3a Zaw2ak, Winners Of The Execution

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:25:00 +0200

In November 2011, Seeqnce organized Lebanon’s first Internet startup competition called The Execution. It was a month - long startup competition at which Kol 3a Zaw2ak was the winner. Last week Kol 3a Zaw2ak moved in to Seeqnce. We are all very excited about it and we wanted to share this amazing experience with you. For that reason, yesterday we conducted an interview with Muhammad Tabsh, the business person in Kol 3a Zaw2ak team.

What is Kol 3a Zaw2ak all about? It is a smart phone app that helps you find the best places you can visit for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; taking into consideration your location, budget and food preferences. However, Muhammad shared with us that they are going to shift into a narrower concept, targeting the vegetarian and vegan people. Next, he was talking about the way he came up with this idea as well as the people behind it.

We found out that although they are not looking for additional team members now, this might change after they launch the app. Following the concept of Minimal Viable Product, right now they are not looking for funding either “but in case we needed any funding I’m sure we will find it at hand”, said Muhammad.

Further, Muhammad was talking about the target market their app tries to serve, as well as the biggest challenge and fear the team faced while working on the idea. When we asked if there are any regrets so far, he said: “Great opportunity, great people to help us, amazing team, peaceful environment to work in, valuable application in hand…. What to regret?!!”

Next, he shared some of the most memorable moments from The Execution. He said: “Since we didn’t sleep for 48 hours, our most memorable moment was Saturday after midnight till Sunday 7:00 a.m; those are the hours we can’t forget. Omar was working on the application, Cyril was designing it, and I was preparing for my pitch, at that moment, pretty much everything made us laugh, and the more tired we got, the more the hunger increased and we started eating anything we saw”.

Muhammad shared his view on startup accelerators like Seeqnce as well as his team’s expectations from their residence at Seeqnce. “What we are expecting is what we are having. Seeqnce is providing us with all the help we need, random advice on exposing the app, their personal opinions regarding how the app looks like, or the thumbnails we are choosing from, all topped with consultancy in the business, technological, and designing fields”, said Muhammad.

In the end he sent a very inspirational message: “Never give up, if you have an idea you believe in, believe in yourself, and you will pull it through. When you want, you can. When you practice, you master. When you persist, you execute. This is what Lara told me before the pitch”.

You can find the full interview transcript below.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Seeqnce: What does Kol-3a-Zaw2ak do?

Muhammad Tabsh: Kol-3a-zaw2ak is a smart phone application for satisfying your hunger desires by finding you the best places you can visit for breakfast, lunch, or dinner; taking into consideration your location, budget and food preferences.

This was our official application, now we are going to shift it into something niche. Our application will have the same features but targeting the vegetarian and vegan people.

Seeqnce: How did you get the idea?

Muhammad Tabsh: I got the idea when I was sitting in Hamra street one day, and I was so confused about what to have for dinner, so I called a friend and told him to come so we can decide where to eat. After my friend arrived, I discovered that he has the same problem, since we had specific budget to have our meals. Eventually after a long discussion we ate.

After a while I heard about The Execution from Lara (from the Seeqnce team) and a close friend of mine. The idea was ready at the moment! Since I needed such an application, I thought many people faced the same problem and needed this kind of service so here it is: Kol-3a-Zaw2ak!

Seeqnce: Who is the Kol-3a-Zaw2ak team?

Muhammad Tabsh: Kol- 3a-Zaw2ak team members are:

Muhammad Tabsh, the business person in the team (Marketing student at Global University)

Omar Addam, the developer in the team (Computer science student at Global University)

Cyril Sader, the graphic designer in the team (Graphic Design Graduate from AUB)

Seeqnce: What stage are you at?

Muhammad Tabsh: We developed our base at The Execution, but you can say we are still at the beginning (seed), and we are going up gradually step by step.

Seeqnce: Are you looking for additional team members?

Muhammad Tabsh: At the moment we don’t need any additional team member(s) since Seeqnce is giving us the help that we want. Maybe after we launch the application we might need additional people to work with us. So it depends.

Seeqnce: Are you looking for funding?

Muhammad Tabsh: The great thing about our application is that it is doable with the amount that we have in our hands. Our application follows the strategy of Minimal viable product. But in case we needed any funding I’m sure we will find it at hand.

Seeqnce: What was the biggest challenge you faced while developing the idea?

Muhammad Tabsh: The biggest challenge we are facing is: How to collect the data. Since in Lebanon we don’t have an official database (census) for restaurants and their menus. So at some point we might be obliged to collect it on our own, which is time consuming and needs a lot of effort.

Seeqnce: What is your target market?

Muhammad Tabsh: After the niche strategy we are going to apply, our target markets are people who are:

Vegetarian

Vegetarian friendly

Vegan

Vegan friendly

Seeqnce: What was your greatest fear while working on the idea?

Muhammad Tabsh: Our greatest fear is “Time”, since Cyril and I have other jobs and I’m still a student, and regarding Omar Addam, he was working on his senior but now he is finished which is good.

Seeqnce: Any regrets so far?

Muhammad Tabsh: Great opportunity, great people to help us, amazing team, peaceful environment to work in, valuable application in hand…. What to regret?!!

Seeqnce: Can you share some of the most memorable moments from The Execution?

Muhammad Tabsh: Since we didn’t sleep for 48 hours, our most memorable moment was Saturday after midnight till Sunday 7:00 a.m; those are the hours we can’t forget. Omar was working on the application, Cyril was designing it, and I was preparing for my pitch… At that moment, pretty much everything made us laugh, and the more tired we got, the more the hunger increased and we started eating anything we saw. Another great moment we cannot forget was Mr. Michel Nehme’s announcement of the winning team at the GEW 2011 Closing Party. When he said:” Global Team” I had goosebumps and was shocked for like 10 seconds.

Seeqnce: What is your view on startup accelerators like Seeqnce?

Muhammad Tabsh: To tell you the truth, we didn’t know what was a startup accelerator before we met Seeqnce. But now we see it as an opportunity to Lebanese people, for those who have great ideas and would like to be unique and special this is their opportunity to start…

Seeqnce: What are your expectations from your residence at Seeqnce?

Muhammad Tabsh: What we are expecting is what we are having.Seeqnce is providing us with all the help we need, random advice on exposing the app, their personal opinions regarding how the app looks like, or the thumbnails we are choosing from, all topped with consultancy in the business, technological, and designing fields.

Seeqnce: What advice can you give to other entrepreneurs?

Muhammad Tabsh: Never give up, if you have an idea you believe in, believe in yourself, and you will pull it through. When you want, you can. When you practice, you master. When you persist, you execute. This is what Lara told me before the pitch.

Interview With Cynthia Bu Jawdeh, Founder Of Strawberry Blu

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 14:55:00 +0200

Nutrition comes to Seeqnce! Next week Cynthia Bu Jawdeh, founder of Strawberry Blu will take the stage to talk about the story and vision of her “healthy” online startup. Strawberry Blu acts as a specialized online Q&A platform, where questions on nutrition, health, dieting and cooking are answered by qualified experts within 72 hours. Strawberry Blu’s vision is to create food-conscious online communities, where every individual will have access to highly credible and comprehensive sources of food information, away from the traditional frauds, ploys and misconceptions within our culture.

Today Seeqnce interviewed Cynthia via email. Cynthia explained to us in details how she got the idea and who is behind it. She told us the company is between the seed and early stage. Moreover, at this stage, Strawberry Blu is looking for funding in order to move to the next level when the company will also look for hiring. Cynthia also talked about the greatest challenge and fear she faced in this business.

Cynthia expressed her opinion on startup accelerators like Seeqnce also. She said: “Seeqnce helped out shape my idea and boosted it to the starting level. It offered Strawberry Blu exposure, motivation, advise, guidance, support and follow-up. Whenever Strawberry Blu steps back in any way, there’s Seeqnce to push it forward. So defiantly, yes I do believe that Seeqnce can help startups such as Strawberry Blu to shine”.

In the end she sent a great message to other fresh entrepreneurs: “To all fresh entrepreneurs, each one of us has millions of ideas on hand, if one doesn’t work just don’t give up; always rely on your own knowledge, talent and passion, take advantages of all opportunities surrounding you, take the risk, create the change and aim at achieving success”.

You can find the full interview transcript below.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT

Seeqnce: What does Strawberry Blu do?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: Strawberry Blu answers any question asked about food whether on nutrition, health, dieting, cooking or any related field, by a specialist (Dietitian, Food Scientist, Chef or a Health Specialist) within duration of around 72 hours, for free.

Viewers can ask on the Facebook Page, Facebook Group, and Twitter, on the Web or via email. Moreover, more weighted question, or repetitive questions are further discussed and elaborated into blog posts.

Seeqnce: What sparked the idea?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: Starting from my university days I was continuously flushed by thousands of questions related to food such as the specific benefits, health problems, related diseases, recipes, advice etc. Most questions were related to our own ethnic foods, cultures and traditions; and in most of the time people’s conception was wrong.

I started compiling a list of all those misconceptions related to food, and I was continuously encountered by “We can’t find any information about Mloukhiyeh, we can’t calculate the calories within our traditional foods, honey is excellent for diabetes, bread makes you fat etc.”All what they knew was what their mothers and grandmas have taught them. I sensed lack of knowledge and lack of resources within my community; so I decided to open my personal blog to share my own food experiences.

Yet, and with the help of Seeqnce Founder, Samer Karam, we decided to transform this personal blog into a social interactive one where anyone can ask anything about food so that I can increase awareness and increase the food conscious within my own community and hopefully within the Arab community as a whole.

Seeqnce: Who is the Strawberry Blu team?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: Founder: Cynthia Bu Jawdeh

Graphic Designer: Josianne El Helou

Other Contributors: (Alternate depending on the need)

A Dietician

A Chef

Seeqnce: What is your target market?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: The general population: food and health lovers within the Lebanese (Arab) community

Seeqnce: What stage are you at? (seed, early, growth…?)

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: I guess it’s between the seed and early stage.

Seeqnce: Are you looking for funding?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: For the near future, yes I am looking for funding, in order for me to move Strawberry Blu to the next level.

Seeqnce: Are you looking to hire?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: For the time being I am managing Strawberry Blu with the contributor’s efforts. Yet as soon as I move forward to the next level I will surely look for hiring.

Seeqnce: What is the biggest challenge in your business?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: As you can see that Strawberry Blu’s mass efforts are sharing information and advice about issues that directly affect health, thus, the biggest challenge is to communicate this information in the simplest, most comprehensible and correct way. So when it’s applied it’s applied correctly. I always fear having any viewer understanding what I write in an incorrect way; that’s why it’s very important for me to always tackle the subject from all its sides, and in ways that are applicable in our own community; in many cases it’s a bit challenging.

Seeqnce: Any regrets so far?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: I can’t think of any, no so far I don’t regret anything.

Seeqnce: What was your greatest fear while working on the idea?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: The idea of Strawberry Blu started as a way of expressing my views and thoughts about this field and sharing my own experiences, yet as it progressed into a serious idea I always had the fear of being unable to fulfill my mission in spreading out the knowledge and shaping out this food-conscious community.

Seeqnce: What is your view on startup accelerators like Seeqnce?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: Well Seeqnce was the best thing that happened to Strawberry Blu. Seeqnce showed Strawberry Blu the willingness and eagerness to help launch Strawberry Blu’s idea and took part of the responsibility for the outcome. Seeqnce helped shape the idea and boost it to the starting level. It offered Strawberry Blu exposure, motivation, advise, guidance, support and follow-up. Whenever Strawberry Blu steps back in any way there’s Seeqnce to push it forward. So defiantly, yes I do believe that Seeqnce can help stratups such as Strawberry Blu to shine.

Seeqnce: What advice can you give to fresh entrepreneurs?

Cynthia Bu Jawdeh: I was continuously motivated by a desire to help, improve and transform the conditions within my own community. I never accepted the world as it was, I was always driven by an emotional desire to address food issues, because I believe food is not just an essential need but food unites us all; it gives us a social identity and a social value; yet on the other hand we must not misuse it. I stood up for my own beliefs and desires and through Strawberry Blu I aim to provide the best innovative solutions and initiate change.

So, to all fresh entrepreneurs, each one of us has millions of ideas on hand, if one doesn’t work, don’t just give up; always rely on your own knowledge, talent and passion, take advantages of all opportunities surrounding you, take the risk, create the change and aim in achieving success.

7 Tech Trends For 2012

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 14:27:21 +0200

Group buying, geolocation apps, tablets, mobile payment, crowdfunding, mobile photo sharing, and cloud based productivity apps were some of the trends that marked 2011. There were definitely lots of exciting technology innovations to follow. Let’s see what’s ahead in 2012:

1. Micro -payment economy

There are more and more sites out there helping you sell everything you could imagine and make some money out of it. To be more precise, there are number of companies selling your idea and giving you a tiny slice for each sale, or when the sales reach a certain threshold.

“Sites like RedBubble do everything for the artist; all they need to do is upload the content. RedBubble will, for example, make the T-Shirt with your art, sell it for you, manage the distribution and, of course, collect payment. The site lets you set the price above their fixed price. Yes, you could add as much as you want onto a $16 T-shirt, but most smart sellers know this means they won’t sell a single garment. Instead, you add 1%-to-5% (maybe 10% if you’re feeling strong) and then promote the dickens out of your product on the site and through various social networks. RedBubble is just one of many destinations popping up to help the aspiring entrepreneur. They join established platforms like Lulu (self-publish books), and YouTube. YouTube has been inviting videographers into the commerce tent for years, letting them add AdSense accounts to popular videos and then sitting back and watching the pennies roll in”, writes Mashable.

2. Video eyewear:

Personal video is definitely another hot trend to watch out in 2012. “Glasses or, more frequently, goggles equipped with tiny video screens mounted inside so you can watch movies all by yourself. The small screens are mounted so close to your eyes, you see them as one giant screen floating in front of your face”, writes Stewart Wolpin. Moreover, he draws attention to a company called Nabes as on of the players in this industry that might make a breakthrough with its video eyewear product.

“Nabes is creating a small video screen mount that clip inside custom designer sunglasses. In other words, wearing Nabes’ contraption is no worse aesthetically than wearing normal (albeit large) sunglasses with headphone wires streaming from it and a cable trailing to your smart phone, tablet or other video source. Plus, you can still spy what’s happening around you”, writes Wolpin. Follow this link to check out Nabes in action!

3. Optical - disc drives disappear from new laptops :

Faster wireless will surely change the way laptops look. The ability to download movies wherever you are in just a few minutes, or to access photos and all other online information from any network connection will definitely make optical disc drives disappear from new laptops. “In 2012, regular-size laptops will be able to ditch their disc drives—and even many of their ports—without losing too much functionality. MacBook Airs don’t include optical drives, and larger MacBooks will likely follow suit this year. Laptops from other manufacturers, such as Asus, Dell, and Toshiba, will join the trend. Of course, some laptops will retain drives, but in 2012 new laptops with optical-disc drives will become harder to find”, writes PCWorld.

4. Voice control:

Surely voice control has been around for year but not the way we experience now. “The novelty of Siri on the iPhone 4S — which allows you to send texts, create reminders, search the Web and much more using just your voice — may be the start of a new trend in voice controlled devices. Siri and its ilk define a new era in which we talk, and our devices understand — often on the first attempt. Other device makers will likely follow suit. What’s more, Apple may use voice control to replace the TV remote”, writes Pete Cashmore, founder and CEO of Mashable, for CNN.

5. The continued rise of Facebook as a platform:

Want a Spotify account or Turntable.fm? Well you need a Facebook account first. “The trend makes sense for social networks: With 800 million people already on Facebook, its growth is bound to slow. But if sharing becomes automatic, the volume of content on Facebook will grow at an accelerated pace”, explains Cashmore. Moreover, “look for more companies to implement this in 2012, including some big names like Netflix (after an act of Congress amends a dated law that prohibits the sharing of video rental activity without written consent). Facebook, like it or not, is becoming a platform for more and more facets of our online and offline lives”, writes Mark W. Smith, web editor and technology columnist for the Detroit Free Press.

6. Mobile chip wars:

According to Mashable, 2012 is predicted to be defined by an intense battle on a micro scale. “With ARM-based CPUs in virtually all of today’s tablets and handsets, Intel, the dominant system CPU manufacturer, has no presence in the mobile space. It’s a situation the company promises to change in 2012 with Medfield—its rethinking of the Atom CPU (popular in netbooks). Meanwhile a consortium of Pacific Rim manufacturers have just banded together to produce new mobile CPUs for phones and tablets.

These efforts may not mean much, though, as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Motorola, Marvell, Nvidia and others all license the ARM architecture and show (along with the hardware partners) little interest in switching to a new or once-established platform. Even Microsoft is developing Windows 8 to run on ARM-based CPUs in addition to traditional Wintel machines”, writes Mashable.

7. Second screen experiences:

Another trend that is said to mark 2012 is the so called “second-screen experiences”. What is this? “It is a buzz-phase among TV and movie execs these days. It refers to apps (mainly on the iPad) that listen to the audio output of your TV and display content related to the show or movie you’re watching. The chances are that you already use your tablet computer or phone while watching TV, so there’s ample opportunity to make the viewing experience a more interactive one.

Disney already has second-screen apps for movies such as “The Lion King” and “Bambi,” while multiple TV networks have similar offerings: We can expect many, many more to be released in 2012” , writes Cashmore.

Let’s see if these 7 movements will define the following year. Any other trends you think will mark 2012?

Pin-Pay Does Team Building Via Viral Video Campaign

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 16:08:00 +0200

With their vision of empowering mobile phones by providing financial services to mobile users and setting the standards for mobile payments, and their state-of-the-art platform to provide this type of service, Pin-Pay organized last week an Apprentice Competition for their employees.

Ms. Hilda Abla, HR manager at Pin-Pay, came up with the idea of the competition after she saw some communication and interaction gaps between the IT department employees and the business department employees that can be filled in a fun interactive manner, and at the same time benefitting the overall exposure and marketing of the app Pin-Pay.

Ms. Abla divided the employees into six teams, three members each, based on the level of their original interaction at work. Each team’s task was to come up with a visual, be it video or photo or story-telling, to show Pin-Pay’s usage and benefits, in a way that this visual should create buzz and awareness. The six teams were given five days to finish their visual using a camera, a voice recorder and/or a powerpoint presentation.

This competition is the first of its kind, and it encourages all Facebook fans to watch and vote. Go to Pin-Pay’s Facebook page, view the videos and cast your votes to whoever you think informed you best about the app. Share the page with your friends and learn more about Pin-Pay through all the videos.

The winner will be the team with the highest number of votes on their video, and will be announced during the company’s Christmas lunch on the 23^rd of December. The winner will walk away with $1000 to spend in this holiday season. The voting, however, will continue as a tool to build brand awareness and generate interaction between Facebook fans and Pin-Pay employees.

Activities such as Pin-Pay Apprentice Competition aim at enhancing the professional relationships between employees and filling the communication gaps present between any two entities of different educational backgrounds in any institution, while at the same time, and indirectly, aiding in the marketing of a product or service in a diverse and cluttered social network medium such as Facebook.

The six teams’ submissions can be viewed below:

Dafe3 3al Mooda http://seeq.co/pinpayteam1

Pin-Players http://seeq.co/pinpayteam2

Shou Ra2mak http://seeq.co/pinpayteam3

Elite Squad http://seeq.co/pinpayteam4

The Nemesis http://seeq.co/pinpayteam5

Pioneers http://seeq.co/pinpayteam6

View, vote and share Pin-Pay’s groundbreaking viral video campaign to learn more about the app that sets the standards for mobile payments.

Pin-Pay is a Seeqnce Advised Startup.

5 Online IDEs To Start Coding In The Cloud

Thu, 15 Dec 2011 10:25:00 +0200

Today it seems as everything is moving “to the cloud”, starting from software applications and data storage to tools used to create the same. Thus, programmers were not left out of the cloud revolution meaning there are quite some alternatives offering to programmers online Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) where they can write, run and share their code.

Let’s see 5 great IDEs that let programmers code in the cloud.

1. Wonderfl

It allows you to write, compile, run and share ActionScript applications online. It’s a useful sandbox for cloud Flash development with an emphasis on gaming and a strong community aspect. The 3 major features are:

“Build from scratch”, starting to write Action Script3.

“Fork” to copy and edit ActionScript created by other users.

“Download” computer to save ActionScript of your choice to your computer.

Wonderfl is free to use!

2. Codeanywhere

It is designed for XML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and HTML coding and has its own handy built-in FTP client for easy uploads. Codeanywhere offers a number of apps for iPad, iPhone and Android so you can work on your code, connect via SSL and even CHMOD files on your FTP server from a range of devices.

Codeanywhere offers a limited, ad-supported free plan, as well as unlimited plans with prices running from $49.99 per year.

3. Cloud9

Cloud9 is a state-of-the-art IDE that runs in your browser and lives in the cloud, allowing you to run, debug and deploy applications from anywhere, anytime. Cloud9’s tag line is “Your code anywhere, anytime”. The Cloud IDE is being used by over 30,000 developers, and is seen as one of the leading companies in the emerging Development as a Service (DaaS) sector. The IDE supports HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but also includes support for Ruby and PHP. Of the online IDEs, Cloud9 is the only one on this list that supports Mercurial as well as Git. In fact, GitHub and BitBucket support is baked in from the start and you can actually create your Cloud9 IDE account by logging in through one of those services.

Cloud9 IDE is free for projects that will be publicly visible, but for private projects the cost is $15 a month.

4. CodeRun Studio

CodeRun Studio is a free cloud application which permits you to build web applications in your browser. It is a fully featured IDE giving you the ability to run and test your code online. It features native support for C#/.NET, PHP, JavaScript and plain HTML. You are enabled to test your code in the cloud IDE, to deploy it to Coderun’s own cloud environment and to import code from other applications. Coderun Studio is comprehensive, with Visual Studio support and social network sharing built-in.

Coderun Studio IDE is free to use, but if you choose to use the cloud deployment service, it will cost from $10 – $169 per month once your 14-day free trial is over.

5. Eclipse Orion

It is primarily focusing on web development languages such as HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, but includes initial support for Java. Orion is not necessarily meant as a hosted solution. It is rather but intended to be deployed into private environments. The vision for Orion can be summarised as “a web platform for web developers”.

Orion is an open source project. It is available as downloadable local server, or through a cloud hosted version, orionhub.org.

To wrap up, online IDEs are changing the way programmers work and do business. It is faster, better and more efficiently. Maybe they do not replace most of developers’ day – to – day tasks and do not replace traditional desktop IDEs completely, but still they are great addition to any developer’s toolset. Furthermore, as the state of cloud computing is constantly improving the online IDEs will be probably improving too, offering better and richer set of features. Nevertheless we should mention some disadvantages of online IDEs such as data loss, code security and requirement for suitable Internet connection.

What is your experience with online IDEs? If you have any suggestion or recommendation, please share it in Comments section!

LeWeb 2011: Interview With Karim Helal, The Founder of Monaqasat

Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:56:00 +0200

LeWeb 2011 conference, the biggest tech conference in Europe, took place on December 7,8 and 9th this year in Paris, France. Founded in 2008 by Loic Le Meur, Founder and CEO of Seesmic.com, the conference has become #1 tech event in Europe, attracting the best and brightest people in the tech world, from Google’s Eric Schmidt to Spotify founder Daniel Ek to Instagram’s Kevin Systrom.

Karim Helal, the founder of Monaqasat, Seeqnce advised startup and premier online tendering solution for the Middle East, attended LeWeb 2011 conference. Yesterday Seeqnce had a chance to interview Karim via email. Let’s see what it looked like through Monaqasat lens!

“As the only Middle Eastern startup attending LeWeb, we definitely felt as if we were entering an incredibly busy world of European startups. With people coming from all corners of Europe (including the only Siberian entrepreneur), this was an incredible opportunity to meet and mingle with the creators and designers of the apps we use on a daily basis”, said Karim.

We asked Karim if he could share with us some memorable moments, speakers, or talks that put an impression on him. He said:

“First, I have to say that the vast majority of the speakers and conferences were extremely interesting and different enough to keep you interested throughout the 3 days. For me, however, the two most memorable speakers were Karl Lagerfeld and Eric Schmidt of Google.

Seeing Karl Lagerfeld, now almost 80 years old, take his iPad out of his bag (that also contained 4 iPhones and countless iPods) and demonstrate how he now uses it on a daily basis to sketch his ideas and new concepts reminded me of the story where Andy Warhol discovered the Macintosh, proving once again how omnipresent these new devices have become and are firmly established as the new standard.

The other highlight was when Eric Schmidt stated that Silicon Valley needed competitors from all around the world in order to better compete and bring in new ideas. Paris, Berlin and other cities around Europe have understood that the future belongs to entrepreneurs and they’ve made it their priority to become the new hotspots. It then dawned on me that while the Middle East has everything needed to really make it a central hub for entrepreneurship (a large talent pool, vast amounts of money and business opportunities), the culture of entrepreneurship is not as firmly established and the political will is not quite there yet. The time is ticking to change that and bring the Middle East at the forefront of entrepreneurship”.

Karim further shared his impressions from LeWeb in regards to Monaqasat networking with potential investors. This turned to be quite difficult because the majority of investors were interested in investing in their own regions. He said: “Going to LeWeb was definitely a new experience for Monaqasat as it was the first non-MENA event that we attended and as a consequence, we met a lot of companies, investors and startups that we would never have had the chance to meet otherwise. Since we are looking for funding to further accelerate our growth across the region, we focused primarily on finding investors that were interested in investing in B2B businesses and with a non-European or non-American base, something that proved quite difficult as most investors like to invest in their own regions. We did however meet and start discussions with very interesting prospects and will communicate more once they become more official”.

We also found out that Karim attended Sean Parker’s private party. “After attending the official LeWeb party in the basement of the Louvre, we got wind of Sean Parker’s private party in an exclusive club in Paris. A group of us went and managed to get in thanks to Robert Scobble, first web blogger and tech evangelist now working at Rackspace and overall great guy. Inside, in a maze of corridors and crypts, we met with a lot of the Valley tech stars, including the founders or AirBnb, Instagram and Sean Parker, the man behind Napster and Facebook. Great night, great drinks and very deep conversations”, said Karim.

In the end Karim explained the importance of LeWeb conference for Monaqasat . He said: “The main outcome of the conference for Monaqasat has been a renewed sense of excitement about all the incredible projects and startups that are coming up in Europe and the US and an overall feeling of satisfaction that we, as a Middle Eastern company, can definitely compete with any of them. We will definitely attend next year with a larger group and hopefully an on-stage presence to demonstrate how the Middle East is definitely part of the global scene”.

Interview With Sara And Dina, Founders Of Chouchic.com

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 11:54:40 +0200

Sara

Graduating with an MA in Global Management meanwhile working for the fashion house Kara Ross NY in London helped a lot in terms of thinking about complexities in management and understating the fashion industry, how they think, how they operate, how important the brands’ heritage is and the opportunity to building a network of top fashion crowd. My experiences abroad and initially as an employee helped me experience phenomenal growth as a person and aided to build a strong base to rapidly and successfully grow ChouChic.com.

Dina

After graduating from Istituto Europeo di Design in Milan with a Master’s Degree in Fashion Marketing & Management, I found a job as an assistant showroom manager for a popular European brand called Santacroce, owned by Prada Group. Following my year of experience with Santacroce, I decided to move back to Lebanon and pursue my career here. I worked at Taten a high –end luxury boutique for 3 years, where seasonal buying trips to New York, Milan, and Paris and managing a team of 15 individuals were the norms. More importantly, it allowed me to accumulate extensive knowledge regarding regional marketing fashion trends, tastes, and buying behaviors. I believe my experience with Santacroce and Taten summarizes the fashion cycle of a brand-from the company factory to the hands of the end consumer; this experience will guide me through every challenge we might face in our venture here at Chouchic.

Fashion comes to Seeqnce! As we already announced on our Facebook page, on Thursday, December 15 at 7pm, Seeqnce Startup Launch Series #2: Project Chouchic.com will take place at Seeqnce, in Hamra, Beirut. Attendance is FREE, however you must REGISTER to guarantee entrance since places are limited. Register now!

Yesterday Seeqnce had a chance to talk with , Sara and Dina, founders of ChouChic.com, a website that offers private daily sales of luxury and upcoming top fashion labels, running for a limited period of time. ChouChic features the most sought after brands across the realm of women and men’s clothing, bags & shoes, accessories, beauty & lifestyle products. ChouChic members are offered generous fashion “insider” discounts.

These two successful women entrepreneurs gave great insights about their company, how it all started and why it actually started. The concept of flash sales is pretty new in the region thus these two enthusiasts decided to take an advantage over it and make it happen. Sara was talking about the way the whole concept works, their initial and future target market, as well as the current stage of the company. “At first, when we launched, we started with women as our target audience. But now we are also planning on introducing men’s and children’s wear. So at the beginning our target market is women at the age of 20 - 50. They are either people that love fashion, or it’s somebody that loves fashion and does not have the time to shop”, said Sara.

We found out that ChouChic is actually not looking for funding right now, but there is a constant look for hiring creative talent, from graphic designers and other IT people, to fashion enthusiasts who like to write about it and get involved in fashion in any form. The team also shared the greatest challenge ChouChic faced and that was the speed of the Internet which right now is much better as compared to what it used to be when they launched.

The possibility that people will reject the flash sales concept, thus will reject the idea of shopping online was the biggest concern Dina and Sara faced in the beginning of the project. Nevertheless, they are doing excellent and are actively involved in raising the awareness for online shopping in the region.

In the end Sara shared her opinion on the role of startup accelerators like Seeqnce in businesses like ChouChic: “If we actually knew about Seeqnce when we started our company maybe we would have actually reached them in the sense of getting advice from them on who to contact in terms of setting up this business. As we spoke to Fadi and Samer, doing this business is basically different pieces from everywhere and putting it together. They probably have already the contacts and that would have most likely cut our time in half”.

The team sent a great message to other fresh entrepreneurs: “Never be afraid to ask for help! Believe in yourself and in what you are doing! Don’t let anyone put you down! Because if it is an idea you think it works then it will definitely work if you want it too”.

Don’t forget to register and see you next Thursday!

7 Mobile App And Website Design Inspiration Galleries

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 16:14:38 +0200

Design inspiration often comes from checking out what others have created. Seeing others’ creations, learning from them and applying the same to your mobile app or mobile website design could be very helpful to every designer or developer. For that reason, we are presenting 7 galleries that might serve as a great source of inspiration for mobile app or website design. Let’s take a look:

1. Mobile Awesomeness:

“Big time awesome for the small screen”. Mobile Awesomeness can be a great source of inspiration for mobile websites.

2. Dribbble:

“Dribble is show and tell for designers. Players share shots—small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on”. Shots are to Dribble as tweets are to Twitter. Amazing place to get inspired!

3. Mobile UI Patterns:

It is an amazing collection focused on UI (User Interface) elements. It is created by Mari Sheibley, lead designer at FourSquare.

4. Refined Mobile:

It is a very creative inspiration gallery that showcases mobile optimized websites.

5. Creattica:

Creattica is a gallery of great design and inspirational imagery. Anyone can submit their work for consideration and voting on items is open to one and all. The best work is accepted and featured in the gallery which receives thousands of visitors every day.

6. Tap Fancy:

It is a showcase for the very best in iPhone and iPod Touch application design.

7. Popular Mobi:

Popular Mobi is a showcase of mobile apps, complete with multiple screenshots. Readers can rate and comment on each app.

To wrap up, check out the presented galleries, get inspired, make it happen and share your creations!

Any other source of inspiration for mobile app or mobile website design? Please share your thoughts and advices in Comments section.

7 Useful Tools To Check Cross - Browser Compatibility Issues

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:44:01 +0200

Whether you are experienced web programmer or you are in the beginning of the journey, you have most probably had experience with the cross – browser compatibility issues. Testing whatever you create in as many browsers as possible is crucial to turning out a great and professional product.

The old-school way to test code required access to a bunch of different computers, different combinations of browsers and operating systems and quite some time to kill. Fortunately, nowadays there are far more effective ways to do website testing across browsers, using either free or commercial Web services and software. Let’s see 7 useful tools that could possibly help you to easily and quickly solve all cross-browser compatibility issues you might have.

1. Adobe BrowserLab

This tool is a free cross-browser compatibility tool that shows screenshots of your website as seen by several different environments such as Firefox 3.0 on Windows XP and OS X, Internet Explorer 7.0 on Windows XP, and Safari 3.0 on OS X. You can change which browsers you’d like to test under “Browser Sets.”

You can have a full-page view in a single browser, as well as side-by-side comparisons of browsers and an onion skin view. The service can access dynamic pages across the web, or viewed locally via Firebug or Adobe Dreamweaver CS5. The ability to create pre-defined browser sets is also useful, in case you don’t need to test on older browsers.

2. Browser Shots

It is a free cross-browser tool that captures screenshots of the website in different browsers. It lets you choose your screen size, color depth, JavaScript and Flash settings. It can be a great free option for glimpsing multiple browsers.

Some say it is the best known and the oldest cross-browser tool used by developers. Browser Shots are one of the few services that offer testing on Linux and BSD.

However, the tool has come under criticism lately for being too slow and too hard to use compared to the other tools.

In fact the free version is the one that is rather slow due to the volume of users, but they offer nearly instantaneous results with an upgrade to a monthly service.

3. Super Preview

The Super Preview download for Internet Explorer allows you to check your site in multiple versions of Internet Explorer. You can view your pages in multiple browsers simultaneously or view how a page renders in a browser and compare it to a comp or mock-up image of a page. Side-by-side viewing options stack horizontally or vertically. There’s also an overlay option to let you work out minute layout differences. Rulers, guides and other toys ease the burden of compatibility tweaks.

The free version is only loaded with IE6, but a 60-day free trial of the full Expression Studio is available from Microsoft’s website.

Unlike other testing options, Super Preview allows you to test pages as you’re developing them on your local machine.

4. Litmus

Beyond screenshots, Litmus lets you check your site in multiple browsers, track bugs, and create reports to dazzle friends and family. This tool also works on password-protected sites, a unique feature among a screenshot-dominated market. This tool has risen in popularity to become one of the most favored cross-browser testing tools on the market today. The free tool is limited to 50 tests per month, Explorer 7 and Firefox 2. The paid version of their app is robust, and allows testing in dozens of browsers and even email clients.

5. Spoon Browser Sandbox

A very sleek, and fast tool that enables you to test pages live in Safari, Chrome, IE, Firefox. One click opens a new window with your preferred browser.

This tool requires a plug-in download, but the process is very fast and seamless afterwards.

Spoon is a pioneer in application virtualization and cloud computing technologies. Today Spoon.net has over a thousand apps available for launch from the cloud with a simple browser plugin. Imagine what’s coming next.The browsers it supports:

Android Browser

Chrome Google 5 to 8

Dillo 0.8.6-i18n

Firefox 1.0 to 4 Beta

Internet Explorer 5.0 to 9 Beta

Mobile Safari

Mozilla 1.7

Opera

6. Cloud Testing

A fantastic tool for cross-browser checks. With Cloud Testing you are able to record and archive much of the experimentation you perform and catalog this into your very own account. Moreover the tool doesn’t require you to store each archive within their servers. The admin panel allows you to export the data in PDF format and share this within your team, or just save each file on your own record.

7. Browsera

Browsera is a tool that tests the cross-browser layout of your website. You will see the differences and errors on your site.

The tool features are the following:

Discovering cross – browser layout problems automatically

Locate JavaScript errors

Easily test entire sites

Test pages requiring a Login

No installation required

Test dynamic pages

Check this link to see real examples of problems Browsera finds.

Hopefully the tools and links we provided in the text above will help you in solving your cross – browser compatibility issues. If you have any other tool you would like to recommend, please share it in the comments section.

5 Tech Logo Design Tips

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:13:00 +0200

Logo design is a pretty sophisticated and complex process. Usually the most difficult thing is to design the logo concept. Reflecting your company’s identity in a simple but eye catchy logo that sends a strong message could be quite challenging. Once you figure this out, it’s time for execution. Here we present 5 tips you might find useful while designing your logo. Let’s take a look:

1. Picture the name

Simple and visual. That’s one of the key things you should keep in mind when designing your logo. If you are able to picture your logo in a simple but eye catching way then you have definitely done a great job. “Start with a logo design by asking yourself what symbols or combination of symbols can be used to support the startup’s name. It must be clear what the business does or what services it provides. The challenge is to find a familiar symbol that can reinforce the business name but stays away from cliché imagery”, advises 99designs.com.

2. Use easily readable fonts

You should be very careful when it comes to choosing fonts and colors. With the array of fonts and colors you can choose, you may feel tempted to use several fonts and colors that are very different one from another and eventually confuse the reader. “Too many fonts will cause the concept of the logo to lose cohesion. If you decide to use two fonts for contrast, choose two from the same theme. Fonts that vary too much may evoke competing emotions in those viewing the logo. If using more than one color, make sure the final product doesn’t look busy and confusing. Remember, you want the logo to look good when viewed with or without color added. Color gradients add polish to designs without looking overdone. Ponder the most popular logos around. With a few exceptions, most use three or fewer colors”, suggests Chron.com.

Here you can check some nice free fonts for designers.

3. Shadow & Gradient

Shadows and Gradients could make your logo “real”, “alive” and eye-catchy. The Shadow effect makes logo images look more real. “Shadow builds a sense of realism to image and text elements, it acts as the brain to express objects with shadows, and makes logo images more real and alive”, advises SourceTec Software. While the Shadow effect brings the sense of realism to an image, the Gradient effect makes it “alive”, colorful, and lovely.

4. Create a superhero logo

People like funny things. A superhero style could be a great approach towards making your logo memorable. Think about the core of your business and try to come up with a superhero logo that could tell the world about it.

“Would it look like Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman? Would it be nice and polite or a bit sharp, like Hellboy? This kind of thinking will help you shape some great logo ideas. Superhero logos are a great way to approach logo design for tech startups and these companies recognized the benefits. What makes or breaks a superhero logo? When creating a superhero logo, keep things as simple as possible and design it using either initial letters or a symbol that is enclosed by a shape. Remember, the logo’s graphics should visualize the name itself and look like a badge – this is specific to superhero logos”, advises 99designs.com.

5. 3D Logo

When it comes to tech logos, a 3D effect might be great to use if precision and craftsmanship are skills you could master. “You need to understand how lighting affects the look of objects, then apply those principles to create a realistic and beautiful logo. Great 3D icons have to be clear, easily understood, slick and visible at every size”, writes 99designs.com.

Here you can check out some nice 3D logo designs and here you can find 3D logo design tutorials.

Want to check out what’s out there and get inspired? Check the following sources:

LogoPond

FaveUp

LogoOfTheDay

LogoLounge

BrandsOfTheWorld

To wrap up, explore great logos that inspire you and try to come up with your own logo concept. Think of your logo as a reflection of your company. How do you want to be perceived? What message do you want to send? Once you have that in your head try to use some of the presented tips (not all of them might apply to your concept; you can use some of them, or make combinations), search for great tutorials and get into action: DESIGN THE LOGO!

Hope you found our article helpful and if you have any other tip or idea that might help other logo designers, please share with us in the comments section.

5 Tips For Fundraising Success

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:03:35 +0200

“By far the biggest influence on investors’ opinions of a startup is the opinion of other investors. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves” - Paul Graham

Previously we wrote about 3 key things you might want to think about before asking for funds:

Choose The Right Funding For Your Startup

Revenue Based Financing (RBF): A Hybrid Of Bank Debt And Venture Capital

5 Things Investors Look For In A Startup

In today’s article we point out 5 tips that might help you in making the most of your fundraising strategy. Let’s take a look:

1. Pitch in 6 slides: “Like many things in life, less is more in fundraising slides” – says Fred Wilson in his great article “Six Slides”. You think it’s impossible? Well Wilson and Brad Feld have done that. Also David Crow, an emerging technology and start-up advocate/evangelist, claims he can do that too (in fact he says he can get to 7 slides which is close).

So what’s the key to the “six slides” pitch? “How could Brad and I possibly take all that we had done and learned in almost 20 years in the venture business and put it into 6 slides? Two things happened. We learned to simplify our story and we learned how to create six killer slides. And killer slides are not slides with a dozen bullets each. They are six powerful points that combine to tell the meat of the story. So when you sit down and build your pitch deck, think of six slides that will inspire and leave something for the imagination. The best part of six slides is that you will get through them in time to have a real substantive conversation face to face about your business. Imagine that”, says Feld.

2. Emphasize the positives and eliminate the negatives: “Communicating success signals the potential value in your company. We were fortunate to boast a strong sales performance during the fundraising period – something we regularly communicated to potential investors” writes Jon Olafsson, chairman and co-founder of Icelandic Water Holdings, for VentureBeat.

Moreover, the easiest thing VCs can do is say NO! Thus you need to eliminate reasons for them to give that answer. In other words this means, you need to eliminate the negatives! “During the process, we addressed three concerns that, admittedly, were specific to our industry, but showcase what any prospective fund seeker should think of in advance:

No track record – We ensured we had a company history, proving to investors that the product had legs.

No distribution – We obtained distribution in US, Canada and China, showing we weren’t a product that would be landlocked in Iceland.

No control of source – We bought the land that houses our spring, giving us the rights to the source in perpetuity”, continues Olafsson.

3. 4 Ms: Momentum, Management Team, Market Size, and Money are the 4 things investors would most probably look for in a startup, says Mark Suster. “I obviously don’t speak for all investors. But in my experience as an entrepreneur and now spending my time amongst investors I can generalize that almost all VC investments in early stage technology & Internet investments come down to just four key factors. And they’re easy to remember because they all begin with an M: management, market, money and above all else momentum”. Read the full blog post to learn more about each of the 4Ms. It is definitely worth your time!

4. Don’t hurry – investors like to wait: While you want to hurry and get the deal as soon as possible, investors like to wait. They want to get a green light from other investors they respect before they jump and invest in your startup. In his blog post “High Resolution Fundraising”, Paul Graham explains this nicely: “By far the biggest influence on investors’ opinions of a startup is the opinion of other investors. There are very, very few who simply decide for themselves. Any startup founder can tell you the most common question they hear from investors is not about the founders or the product, but ‘who else is investing?’

That tends to produce deadlocks. Raising an old-fashioned fixed-size equity round can take weeks, because all the angels sit around waiting for the others to commit, like competitors in a bicycle sprint who deliberately ride slowly at the start so they can follow whoever breaks first”

5. Network like crazy: In his blog post “Notes On Raising Seed Financing”, Chris Dixon points out networking as vital activity of every fundraising strategy. When it comes to networking he advises 4 things:

Make sure you have good Google results (this is your first impression in tech). Have a good bio page (on your blog, linkedin and about.me) and blog/tweet to get Google juice.

Get involved in your local tech community. Join meetups. Help organize events. Become a hub in the local tech social graph.

Meet every entrepreneur and investor you can. Entrepreneurs tend to be more accessible & sympathetic and can often make warm intros to investors.

Avoid anyone who asks you to pay for intros (even indirectly like committing to a law firm in exchange for intros).

Don’t be afraid to (politely) overreach and get rejected.

To sum up: We believe that your startup has its own approach and strategy when it comes to fundraising. There might not be one unique template that will ensure success in fundraising. However, we believe that you might find these tips of a great help as long as they are adapted to your own fundraising model. Good luck!

“Like many things in life, less is more in fundraising slides” - Fred Wilson

The Execution - Training Phase Day 4

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 00:04:00 +0200

On the fourth day of Training, the teams of The Execution were told to come in comfortable clothing and no heels. Why? Because it was game time!

From trying to build the biggest unbroken ring using a sheet of paper, to falling into each other’s arms, to the “ankle” game, teams had a real blast.

Moreover, teams got the chance to practice their 90-second pitch, and went through a crash course in startup legalese.

Let’s hear some of their thoughts on the night.

Note: Don’t forget that all photos of that evening are on our Facebook Page.

SmartCode

It was a tiring night, yet we had lots of fun. We played several fun games with the rest of the groups. Then, we tried our 90-second pitch, seeking suggestions and advice for further improvements. Finally, the team went through the legal documents and signed contracts between them and the Execution partners. The workshops are over, the training is done and now, starting tomorrow at 6pm, we begin ”The Execution”. We are so excited so let the games begin!

The Dream Matchers

What’s an idea without a team? An idea. What’s an idea with a team? A project. What’s an idea with the right team? A success. We are big believers in teams, in fact, we are big believers in huge teams when the time is right. None of the successful web businesses lasted long with one, or two, or even three team members. Don’t let Twitter, the simple and straight forward microblogging website website, fool you. It has over 600 people behind it. If Twitter needs a team of 600, The Dream Matcher (www.thedreammatcher.com) will probably need a team of thousands. It is essential to know how to nurture, grow, and trust a team; this is the topic we briefly tackled during the fourth workshop of The Execution.

Mario Bros

Day 4 of the workshops had us all clutching at our sides with laughter. The Seeqnce team had teammates swooning into each other’s arms, doing a faux dabke dance and cutting up pieces of paper frantically under the pretence of “team building exercises”. Needless to say, it was much fun, and we proved ourselves the best and most innovative team under pressure; we set a record time while walking across the room as a team with our ankles together and we did extraordinarily well with the ring of paper that we had to make in under 5 minutes. Things quieted down later, and we did some impromptu presentations as practice, getting useful feedback from the Seeqnce team and Michel Nehme. The 48 hours of The Execution is just a blink of an eye away. This is where we will shine and prove ourselves worthy of the prize.

You guys took awesome pictures yesterday when we were busy jumping all over the place. Could you use one of those to go with the paragraph? If not, let me know so I can attach one of my crummy pics.

Red Drops In Lebanon

Workshop 4 was the most fun we’ve had in a while. Moreover, it was an important workshop because we found out that our pitch needed some work. The highlight of the workshop was the games! We’ve proven that we trust each other blindly, and that we can work good under pressure. Tomorrow’s the start of the weekend, and we’re going in with positive energy.”

Global Team

FUN is also an element Seeqnce uses to make us learn new things. At the workshop #4, several fun activities were organized by Seeqnce so that we can learn new things, such as team confidence, teamwork, and the importance of learning from others. It was literally the funniest and coolest part of all the workshops! Then, all teams had the chance to pitch their idea, and we think we were the best at pitching! We are thrilled, we are excited, and we are so ready for the challenge. So bring it on!

The Penguins

Last session in the workshop was a great session where participants learned skills like thinking out of the box, realized that methodology alone isn’t enough and it requires coordinating and synchronizing team effort in order to achieve target along with building trust in the team in order to work in a more efficient way.

The Execution - Training Phase Day 3

Thu, 17 Nov 2011 16:24:38 +0200

On the third day of the Training Phase, teams got a taste of how to build a brand image, craft compelling messages and use the right marketing channels. With Jimmy Ghazal of Quantum and Marc Dfouni of Eastline Marketing leading the talks, the teams had front row seats into the minds of some of the best in the business. Let’s see their thoughts on the evening.

Red Drops In Lebanon

So today we arrived at 7:20, yes we admit we were late but we were welcomed by a big camera hiding the beautiful smile of Rasha. We each took our place in the crowded room and the branding communication ride began.

We went through a rollercoaster of information concerning the implementation of our product. Jimmy Ghazal showed us the different ways of dealing with the communication of whatever brand we’re setting and how to go about it.

After the cigarette break, yes some of us unfortunately have this bad habit, we went into digital media strategies with Marc Dfouni. He shared with us very interesting videos and talked to us about the importance of social media. Rasha’s camera was with us the entire time and for that reason, we decided to put her in front of it instead!

3a Taree2ak

Just gonna use simple words at this stage. Today was very interesting, be it in the way of the presentations or their content (e.g. in Egypt people have name their children “Facebook”). Moreover, the presentation of East Line Marketing’s CEO was amazing. We also learned that tomorrow we have a hell of a day ahead of us: We have to sign on a contract and have some physical tasks to accomplish. I also learned that “the competition” is working on their project at any possible place or time. That’s something we should incorporate in our team. But anyways given the shout-outs we’ve been getting I think “the competition” will be annihilated easily by the end of the weekend.

SmartCode

The 3rd day of The Execution workshop was really exciting. We were introduced to startup marketing and communication by Jimmy Ghazal from Quantum and Social Media Marketing by Marc Dfouni from Eastline Marketing. It was quite an interesting and beneficial workshop even though we have lots of deliverables to work on. We as a team are very excited and looking forward to what’s awaiting us tomorrow, especially that everything is falling in place and the picture is coming to light… Cheers…

Collabrotouch

The workshop yesterday was very interesting, and one of the most productive so far in regards to our group and idea. We understood how to formulate our objectives and targets better, while still refining our value proposition. We keep getting more and more excited to get working on our product! We also learned how powerful social media marketing can be, and we aim to focus heavily on that aspect in the future. Luckily, we are quite active people in social media, including Twitter, Foursquare, and LinkedIn, and so that shouldn’t be a problem. Thank you Quantum, Eastline Marketing, and Seeqnce for a great workshop!

The Dream Matchers

A great idea and a great product have no value if not marketed correctly. The third session of The Execution workshops at Seeqnce was about marketing. It is important for a company to know how to strategically market each of its products, what channels to use, and how to measure the outcomes of their marketing strategy. Since all of the ideas participating in The Execution, including The Dream Matcher, are web based, it is intuitive to use the web as a marketing medium. Many online platforms and social networking sites allow for highly effective and creative marketing campaigns. Most important of all, a company should make sure that its marketing strategy and techniques blend nicely with its brand identity. Generic marketing and advertising techniques might do the job, but a well branded marketing campaign changes things from “just ok” to awesome!

The Penguins

The Penguins team learned about the power of social marketing and how to use it for a successful and low cost campaign. Another important topic discussed is the branding i.e. what kind of message to deliver to the customer.

Custom Dreams

Branding and online marketing were the 2 topics discussed at the 3rd workshop of The Execution at Seeqnce.

“If you can’t describe your idea in one sentence, don’t bother”. This statement, made by Jimmy Ghazal of Quantum, illustrates the necessity of creating a clear brand image for every product, and it had us thinking as a team on how to sum up the essence of our website, dedicated to jewelry professionals, in one easy to communicate sentence that just says it all.

Moreover, and before Marc Dfouni gave his workshop on the importance of social media, I just thought that Facebook was an online spying an gossiping tool. We were amazed by the impact of social media shown by a video during the lecture, and we saw the potential of each social networking tool on broadcasting our idea to o a worldwide audience .

Finally, when concluding the 3rd day, Samer advised us to wear comfortable clothes for the 4th and final workshop before The Execution.

So no high heels for you guys tomorrow!

Make sure you check out our Facebook photo album: The Execution Startup Competition - Training Phase: Workshop 3!