Tag Archives | lebanese bloggers

Lebanese Bloggers Reinvent the World: Virtual Personas

LBRTW

Don’t mind this wild post as it is just my submission to the “Lebanese bloggers reinvent the world competition” competition run by the ministry of telecommunications in Lebanon, and I’m making use of the extended deadline to submit it.

The competition is calling for Lebanese bloggers to come up with some creative invention that might change humanity, and mine is a network device that takes controls of all your senses the second you are born and allows you to be part of the internet, as in living inside it.

With this device you will neither have to go to school to learn new things, nor travel to new places to live different experiences. There will just be a virtual persona of you living on the internet where you don’t only get exposed to unlimited amount of information, but these information can speak to your senses too.

Unlike what we do now, our virtual personas will never have to wake up early to get things done because the internet doesn’t operate from 9 to 6 only. On a typical day, your brain would wake up with that device being online by default, and you would spend an hour with that Korean guy you met the other day at Coursera.org. Next, you’ll have to see how well is your startup doing by checking your revenues and making sure other virtual personas are satisfied with your service. Once you’re done, you might like to click-away to Australia and experience how does it feel to swim with the dolphins. And finally at night, you can take a stroll round Amsterdam red light district YouTube, and learn an additional thing or two about information security from the newly published videos before putting your brain back to sleep.

Your whole life and experiences will of course be recorded and archived on the internet for future generations to be able to travel back in time by watching them.

Now don’t tell me this post in not feasible because you probably would have thought this is the real future if it were coming from some Hollywood movie!

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Crest made me smile

Remember the banner I displayed a while ago for Crest’s competition “Spread the Smile”? It wasn’t a paid ad, but I was actually taking part in a “competition” organized by Leo Burnett among some other Lebanese bloggers to driveĀ  as much traffic as we can to Crest’s page on Facebook, with prizes for the top 3 blogs sending traffic, and yours truly got the iPad 2 above for ranking among the top 3 blogs.

It sure pays to blog and have a cool audience like you, since I couldn’t have made if it weren’t for your clicks! Thanks you!

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The First Lebanese Bloggers Convention at AUB

351smir

I am very proud to announce that, in coordination with Outlook, AUB’s official newspaper, Mind Soup is hosting the first Lebanese Bloggers Convention at AUB.

During the convention/workshop, Lebanese guest bloggers will introduce the world of blogging to students and encourage them to express their ideas and opinions using personal blogs.

Also on the agenda is discussing the impact of blogging on the freedom of speech in Lebanon and the effect of blogging on the Lebanese society and culture.

Everyone is welcome to attend! If you are a non-AUB student and would like to attend, please send an email to moudz.mindsoup@gmail.com so that your access to AUB’s closed campus can be facilitated!

If you are a blogger and would like to be featured in this convention, please fill in this form: http://www.jotform.com/form/1200341481 after reading the rules below.

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Rules for applying (as guest speaker):
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– You should be a Lebanese blogger or an Arab blogger operating in Lebanon and can attend the blogger convention in AUB (Beirut)
– You should be 18 years of age or older.
– You should own a self-operated blog.
– Your blog should be at least 6-month old (updated on a weekly basis) or 1 year old (updated on a monthly basis).
– The convention is probably going to be in the English language, so you should be fluent in English.

Event’s page on Facebook

Update (05/07/2010):
The event has been rescheduled to May 19th 2010 at 5:00 PM

Update (05/18/2010):
The event has been canceled due to the tuition increase protest.

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Lebanese bloggers meetup at T-Marbouta

RFI

It’s all over the Lebanese blogsphere now… Yesterday night I went to T-Marbout along with several Lebanese bloggers to meet with Philippe Couve, Pierre Haski (www.rue89.com), and Eric Scherer from Radio France Internationale.

The meeting purpose was for the French journalists and bloggers to get to know more about the Lebanese blogsphere and its status. We discussed several issues such as why blogging isn’t very popular here in Lebanese, and why do some bloggers post very frequently when things heat up in Lebanon and then dump their blogs when everything calms down. They were also interested in knowing if anyone of us had a problem with the authorities because of some content (I wasn’t surprised with that question, at the end we’re an Arab country!).

In addition, while discussing the Lebanese people in general, we all agreed that they hate to read and write, they’re just good at grasping already processed information. Which explains why they’re all active on Facebook, and very few of them thought of starting a blog. Lazy nation!

w heik..! by the end of the meetup I was glad I had the chance to finally meet Maya Zankoul & Tarek Chemaly.

Here’s a list of the bloggers who were there:

20minutes.fr
beirutntsc.blogspot.com
choueichoueibeyrouth.blogspot.com
qussa.nl
diaryofahalfandhalf.wordpress.com
mayazankoul.wordpress.com
29letters.wordpress.com
klekeesh.blogspot.com
hanane.me
onoffbeirut.com
rue89.com
atelier.rfi.fr
kibot.blog.com
bloggingbeirut.com

And finally, here’s what others have posted about the meeting:

Maya Zankoul
Tarek Chemaly
Samer Karam
Pierre Haski
Hummus Nation (a blogger I really would like to meet someday!)

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