Notes on re:publica 2013

This was my second time to attend re:publica. It is a yearly social conference that takes place in Berlin. It started as a conference for bloggers, but now it include lots of other themes from startups to activism to campaigning and marketing. In fact, I attended less sessions this year than the previous one, and I am going to write a brief about them later on in the post, but let me first start with some random notes I grabbed from the conference.

I love the style of those posters of re:publica

• The smaller the room, the better the session. Well, not only me, but many others have noticed the same thing. The less known speakers giving a workshop-like sessions are more interesting than the well known ones or panels arranged in bigger auditoriums.
• More than speeches, I enjoy the new ideas I stumble upon while attending such conferences. So here are some of those ideas.
• Re:public is not held in a fancy conference centre per se. What surprises me last time is that the venue used to be deserted factory, it was prepared and converted into a conferences venue later on. It is cool, cozy and suitable for the spirit of a bloggers conference.
• In the main hall, where key note and major speeches take place, there is a screen behind the presenter, and his speech is being transcribed on that screen in real time. It is a tough task done manually, but it is very useful for those with hearing impairment, or even journalists or others who take notes of what is being said.
• This is a new idea, but it is new to me at least. Fabbeo allows those who do not have 3D printers to send them an STL file for an object they want to print. In fact, they do not have 3D printers themselves, but they just serve as a marketplace matching customers with service providers with 3D printers.
• In conferences like this, people are busy tweeting and taking photos with their phones. So, their mobile batteries are not expected to last for the whole day, right? As a way of promoting their company, Simyo, a German mobile operator, allows people to borrow portable chargers for their mobiles.
• Last year one company was doing one fine marketing idea. They had a vending-machine-like stand that is connected to the internet. When you go there and publicly check into the machine via Foursquare, it gives you a soda can or something. They were generating a lot of buzz on Foursquare about their company this way, as well as attracting people to their stand.

Eric Hersman

The conference's keynotes was given by Eric Hersman. For those who do not know him, he is an American born and raised in South Sudan. How now lives in Kenya. And you can call him an African entrepreneur. He started iHub, a startup incubator in Kenya, he made Ushahidi with others and is widely respected technologist, blogger and commentator who specialises in the impact and application of technology throughout Africa. I believe the choice for the keynote came because, although he is a bloggers, but it also reflects re:publica's intention to present itself as a conference for entrepreneurs and business startups too. His choice also reflects the need to shed the light on a usually ignored continent, especially when it comes to technology and development.

Eric is an okey speaker. The speech was not impressive or strong as Eben Moglen's keynote last year for example. Eric was focusing on the startup scene in Africa, giving examples from different countries. Showing the incubators across the continent, the entrepreneurs and their challenging spirit was a good thing, but the choices for some of their products was patronising in a way. He pointed one of the main problems that face local investors in the Middle East and Africa, where there are lower hanging fruits such as real-estate business and food chain, which attracts investors diverting them from funding technology startups sometimes. For sure, market economics shall fix that someday, but this still is one of the issues. He then stressed on the need for entrepreneurs to find way to collaborate with each other and build communities and ecosystem. He referred to huts building in Africa as an example where a whole village collaborate to build it. It's up to each one to choose whether he want to be a "villager" or an "individual". Being an individual is okey, but they shouldn't expect people to help or collaborate with them. Then came the main point of his speech, at least according to me. He said that Africa does have its own problems, and entrepreneurs have to solve those problems of their local communities as no body else is going to offer to fix them. In other words, a product made for Berlin or London is not usually suitable for Nairobi or Delhi. He gave an example with a 3G model they are producing in iHub. In a way, it is not a new idea, it is just 3G modem produced everywhere. But giving it a second thought, you can see that electricity is not stable in Africa. Hence, their 3G modem (BRCK), is rugged, portable and can work on batteries rather than electricity. He finally ended his talk with the following summary notes: "There is A LOT going on (in Africa)", "Local problems need local solutions" and "Support and growth are lacking".

Ben Scott

Another session I attended was given my Ben Scott. Ben used to work as a Policy Advisor for Innovation at the US Department of State. He worked at the intersection of technology and foreign policy, or to use his own words, he worked with Hilary Clinton on how to change the US policy in the internet age. Prior to that he worked for 6 years in Free Press. He described Free Press as a non-profit organisation that tries to organise people online and help them engage with wider audience on the internet to discuss internet policies and see how to put forward "good" internet policies. I put good in between quotes here because I have no idea how he defines good policies. Ben started talking about internet campaigns and how all successful campaigns share the same aspects. He added that the internet doesn't really care what you are for and what you are against. Using internet for campaigns is basically the same for all causes. He then referred to Obama's presidential campaign in 2008, and how for the first time they harnessed the internet with such scale. "What Obama realised in his 2008 campaign was that the power dynamics is changing because of the internet", he added. Although, most of what he is saying is well known, I enjoyed some of his examples. To elaborate the contrast between social campaigns now and twenty years earlier, he wondered what are the odds that someone with a camera is taking photos when something like the Boston Marathon bombing takes place in 1985, compared to it in 2013? He then warned that it is - however - not about technology any more, it is more about social change. A successful campaign should make use of technology, but it should also know how to use it to get engaged with the audience. To elaborate more, he added that two companies might use the internet and social media to deliver their message, but a successful social media strategy should not be how you shrink your press release into 140 characters, it is how you engage with people. Back to Obama campaign, he added that they realised than that people want to be heard. The campaign success came from the fact that they gave people a platform to be heard. A campaigners objective should focus on engagement with audience even before listening or just speaking to them. Additionally, social media is not only about delivering a message now, it is also used for collaboration or even funding causes, for example: kickstarter. Both SOPA and PIPA are example how laws can be defeated by the power of internet collaboration. When one of the audience asked whether he is very optimistic about the internet and its super powers, given that some countries like Iran already control and censor the internet. He replied: "30 years ago, if you wanted to start a revolution, you had to control the broadcast station; and to stop it, you had to install armed forced around the station. Now it is that you go online to start a revolution, and you censor and police the internet to stop it". Then he added regarding the case of Iran, "the thing to do in such case is to find alternatives for the internet, or any other parallel ways for communication".

Humanity on display in Neues Museum

The bust of Nefertiti

Today I was in Neues Museum in Berlin. They have got the iconic head of the Egyptian queen, Nefertiti. Let alone how they value the statue. Let alone how they put it in a separate hall by its own. Let alone all the valuable historic items in the museum. Today, I've seen something more valuable than all the historic monuments in there. Something that touched my heart. In a corner next to the statue of Nefertiti, there is another bronze copy of the statue with braille text underneath it. It is there for those blind ones who cannot see the original statue to go and touch it and see it with their fingers.

For me that statue is more valuable than all the original items in the museum. It just symbolises humanity.

On Glorifying Violence

Contrary to almost all of my fellow Egyptian youths nowadays, I hate this growing tone of glorifying violence. Well, this post might be two years late, it might not be the perfect time for it, since the regime and its security forces are currently killing people. But still, I prefer to say it out loud right now. As it is usually better late than never. I am not just agains the idea of glorifying and legitimising violence and considering it a revolutionary act, because of my natural hatred to violence. I am agains it for pragmatic reasons as well. But let me first explain what I mean by "glorifying and legitimising violence".

Illustration by Mohamed Nabil Labib

About two years ago, when the Egyptian people revolted agains Mubarak regime, there existed two narratives for the revolution. One pictured it as a peaceful revolution taking places in Tahrir square, where people carried banners and chanted agains the regime. The other side of the story are those rarely-filmed acts of burning police stations, official buildings and looting department stores. The argument now, is not whether one of them existed rather the other. Because both sides of the story are true. The more valid question now is to ask ourselves, whether we should blindly legitimise the second act and value it as "the only" facet of a multi-facade revolution or not.

One reason for glorifying violence was because Mubarak, SCAF and the Ikhwani government now, always find it plausible to accuse their opponents of being thugs and violent mobs who want to sabotage the country and its stability. This was always their favourite strategy to give legitimacy to the state's brutality. And according to our friend Isaac Newton, "For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction". Hence, the leftists on the other hand, decided to nullify the meaning of terms such as thugs and violence by mocking them sometimes, and glorifying them some other times. You can see people on twitter and facebook giving themselves names like "a thug" and "baltajy". Other than that, there also exists the radical ones who believe that peaceful protests will lead people nowhere.

Watching the security forces killing dozens of civilians in Port Said in less than 48 hours and taking an old man's clothes off in the streets about a month ago and brutally hitting him with heavy sticks, makes part of me eager to legitimise violence as a sort of response to such acts by the state. However, as I said earlier, I still have my pragmatic reasons to refuse it. On the one hand, such violence gives excuses for the regime to kill, beat and arrest more people, and convince the others that it has the right to do so. And it is obvious that in such violent game, the regime can easily outnumber its opponents with its weapons, trained forces and media. On the other hand, if you legitimise violence now, you cannot denounce it later when others such as Salafies, who have always been true believers of violent opposition, use it later on. Not only the Salaies, you've got the Ultras (football fans who got involved into politics since the revolution) as well, they have been praised by revolutionaries throughout the past two years, and now they curse them because they are uncontrollably violent. The problem is that we all miss the point, rather than condemning the Ultrals, we should condemn that culture of glorifying violence we have been witnessing since the early days of the revolution. It's that culture that gave birth sometimes and legitimacy some other times to all those violent groups. The third problem here, is that violence is like a snow ball, it can start small and limited to – arguably – legitimate reasons, but it can quickly get out of control.

Do you think the current chaotic and violent scene is going to make people less confident in the Ikhwani government and they are going to loose any upcoming elections? Damn wrong! The majority are going to vote for the Ikhwan, like they did earlier, and like they used to do during Mubarak's regime. The people just vote for stability, for the the authority and for those who play politics while others never learn and continue to play the wrong game in the wrong arena.

Originally posted in openDemocracy

Rachel Corrie, the girl who taught me a life lesson

On the 16th of March, 2003, a girl passed away under an armoured bulldozer in Rafah. Back then, she was of my same age, yet her mental age was way older than mine.

I was raised in a school where we've been taught that Jews are synonymes to Satan. We were never taught that there is any difference between people's religion and an army that kills civilians in the name of the same religion. Rachel Corrie left her home, travelled thousands of miles and stood in the face of a bulldozer to defend some other people's houses and right to live. Rachel Corrie was Jewish, and stood in the face of a government that carries her very same religion, to defend people who are mostly Muslims. And she died. In the very same school, I was taught to call those who die for a cause Martyr, provided that they are Muslims. Members of other religions are not to be called martyrs. That's what I used to believe in back then. But screw all what we've been taught back then. She is a martyr. A more honorable martyr than millions of those we were taught to call martyrs. She is a martyr, because it's not about people's religion, it's about how human they are.


She died for a cause, but also her death taught me a life lesson. It changed the way I see what we used to call others altogether. Changed it forever.

May she rest in peace now.

Deduction vs Induction

To deduce is to draw a specific conclusion from a general principle. To induce is to derive a general principle from specific observations.

Read more here.

Believe in destiny, yet act like Maggie

Photo taken by Yusuke Kawasaki under Creative Commons license

I still remember that scene of "City of Angels", when Maggie (Meg Ryan), who was a doctor, and she tried to save one of her patients, yet he died in the end.

Maggie: I couldn't fix him.
I did everything right...
...and I couldn't fix him.
That's not supposed to happen.
And l....

Seth: You cried.

I may love this move just because of this scene. It changed the way I see the world a bit back then when I watched it 15 years ago or something. We love the word "Destiny", yet our relation with it is complicated, since we blame everything on it. We never fail, government officials never do anything wrong, it's all destiny. Maggie on the other hand did not believe in Destiny, that's why she believed she has to save her patient, and if he dies, then it is her mistake, her's only. But the patient died in the end, yet she did everything right.

Between the two extremes, I believe we may believe in destiny, yet act like Maggie, act as if it doesn't exist.

What reminded me of this today, is yet another train accident that took place in Egypt, exactly two months ago we had another accident where dozens of school-children died. And as you might have expected, the officials and their look-alike citizens blame it on everything from destiny to the train driver, to the former president Mubarak, to - may be - the British occupation a century ago; you name it.

Don't be Passive. Always have a Bias

It's always easier to blame the two sides, and find it an excuse not to have a bias. And, trust me, you can easily find mistakes committed by the parties on both sides. But the truth is, your role is to support the right against the wrong, regardless of who is in each camp and what did they do.

For me, it is simple, Morsi is just as dictator as Mubarak. Well, the truth is, he is just a puppet, or let me use the Egyptian term here, he is a sheep in the herd, but anyway, he, his party and his group are the ones to be blamed here. They are the ones in power, seeing people dying and not doing any good. They are the ones who lied to people and are still lying.

So, blame El-Baradei or Hamdeen as much as you want, I too, have no problem blaming them if they happen to do anything wrong, but not now. Because what you are doing is just distracting me from the main issue. Just like those who kept on equating Mubarak to the Islamists participating in #Jan25 and asked me not to have a stance because of this. I didn't listen to those voices then, and I won't now, because I hate to be passive. Event if I am too far to do anything, I still have to have as stance.

Loosing faith in Humanity

I am not an Islamist who hates Israel for theological reasons. And I am not a leftist who hates it for ideological reasons. I am just a human who tries not to loose faith in humanity after seeing this photo of a Palestinian baby girl burnt alive with IDF rockets.

A Palestinian medic stands near a body of a girl died after an Israeli air strike in Gaza City November 14, 2012. Terrible terrible loss of life. A short life.

I'm not going to go into the 60-years old debate about who has the right to stay on this land, and who doesn't. I don't even think I have the right to suggest solutions to stop all these blood sheds. I just cannot digest how countries and borders are built on the basis of religion. I cannot understand how citizenships are given on the basis of faith and stories in religious books. And I hate how people think that the existence of one is mutually exclusive to the existence of the other.

Protest Outside The Box

"Why did the protesters go to the embassy of the United States in Cairo?", "The police has all the right to stop them, no matter what" and "Those protesters are mainly stupid and brainwashed". Those are mainly the phrases you are going to see if you happen to follow the Egyptian activists and netizens nowadays.

Like many others, I am against those protests since day one. What's the problem of those protesters? How come it is the USA that is to be blamed just because some people decided to make a film there that the angry protesters find it to be against their religion? Let alone the killing of innocent people in Libya and waving Al-Qaida flag on the anniversary of September 11. And now the protesters are asking for an apology from the States, an apology for having freedom of speech laws! Why not, when we have scholars who call for killing those who participated in that film.

Thanks to the angry protesters who made it easy for me to take such stance this time. I have no reason to sympathize with them. But a year ago, and even during the early days of the Egyptian revolution, I happen to be on the other side of the table. The Egyptians were protesting against the ruling military junta, and back then those whom we used to call remnants of the old regime used to say the exact same phrases I mentioned above to the protesters. "Why did you go to Mohamed Mahmoud street?", "The police has all the right to defend the state against those angry protesters" and "You're brainwashed and following foreign agendas".

I can sure say that the military junta was killing and arresting people, controlling the media, and  they were not democratically elected and ruling the country by brute force, so we had all the right to protest then. And as I said above, the protesters now have no reason to protest this time. But this doesn't seem to be an enough answer to my wonders.

Photo taken by Gigi Ibrahim, under Creative Commons license.

For every protest, in order to unify all protesters, there should be a reason to unify them under its umbrella. Reasons do vary from toppling a regime, to ending military rule, to seeking the rights of the martyrs (like many protests last year). And reason for today's protest are defending Prophet Muhammad. The more noble the reason is, the more easier it is to make others sympathize and even join the protest. But if you give it a second, and a more pragmatic, thought. You'll find out that most of the times those reasons can be noble and true, yet, still there are other reasons that are normally not announced. And here comes my own interpretation of protesting outside the box, that you might choose to agree to totally disagree with.

I think that the main reasons for the protest in front of the embassies of the United States, at least in Egypt, is that the Salafy's felt they were left out. After the Muslim Brotherhood seized the power, they didn't give the Salafy's as much posts in their government as they were expecting. So my interpretation for the protest is that the Salafy's are mainly trying to get back into the picture and to prove to everyone that they have power in the street and can mobilize people. The Muslim Brotherhood on the other hand seemed to be against the protests in the beginning. Most of my friends who are either members of the MB or just emotionally affiliated with them were against it, and they were using the exact reasons I mentioned above for not being in favour of the protests. A short while later, they Brotherhood and Morsi found out that one of their main assets is that they present themselves to the people as an Islamic group. And for sure not participating in "defending Prophet Muhammad" will make them loose a lot of the credibility among their supporters and offer such credibility to the Salafy's on a silver plate. So later on, the Brotherhood changed their tone, and started to call for a million man march in support of the cause. But once more, they realized that they are now in power, and they don't only deal with local matters, but they also have international relations to look after. Hence Morsi and Khairat El Shater were very cautious doing their tightrope walking and trying to please both the Egyptian voters as well as their  own peers in the White House.

Many activists might hate me for this, but the protests that took part last November and December, also had secondary reasons other than toppling the military junta and seeking the rights of the martyrs. The Brotherhood used to say then, that the protests are happening few days before the parliamentary elections, and the non-Islamist protesters are trying to postpone or even cancel the elections since they are sure that the Islamists are going to lead in the elections. I didn't agree with that back then, and I still don't agree much with it now, but I think they weren't totally wrong either. Part of the protests were a way for the protesters to get themselves back to the picture before the elections and a way to grab the voters attention.

Few days ago the Ultras (football fans) were demonstrating in front of a football stadium as they didn't want the Super Cup match to be played before the ones behind the killing of 74 football fans last February to be punished. No one can deny how noble is their cause, yet it was hard for me to see it as the only reason behind the protest. Many more protests in front of the Minister of the Interior or the Israeli embassy, etc. They all needed a second thought from you to tell what are their secondary, or may be primary, unannounced reasons.

I just realized now that there is no ethics in politics, or let me say, there is not absolute good and bad there. Two parties might do the same thing, yet you chose to side with one and stand against the other. I used to do this, and I guess I will continue to do the same. Sometimes the devil is in the details of each action, and that's how you can decide which one is ethical and which one is not. But most of the time you just have to follow your senses. And I do not mean by this that you shouldn't try your best to make the most ethical choices, in fact, I just want you to stick to your ethics all the time. It's only that things will rarely be that clear, so keep your eyes wide open and be ready for all possibilities.

It's Paralympics not Pitylympics

Yesterday was the last day of the 2012 Summer Paralympics that took place in London. Throughout the games people have been sharing photos of the athletes on Facebook and other social media platforms. Challenge plays a major part in sports in general. We love seeing people challenging each other as well as challenging their own selves. We love seeing records being broken. We watch the Olympics to see how strong, fast and high humans can go. And that is reflected in photos, except when it comes to the Paralympics. Or at least this is what I've noticed in the photos people share the most on social media.

The above photo is one good example of what I'm talking about. I'm not sure if you can read Arabic, but in most of the comments [Ar] on this photo on Facebook, people are basically saying, "Thank God who spared us from what he has afflicted other people". Please tell me if I'm the only one who finds such comments stupid and silly. We do not see the athlete's name under the photo, no one has any idea how he finished the race, what records he broke, or not. All what people have is a photo of him starting the race as well as pity on him.

Now have a look at the above photo. You think she felt down while running in some race or something, right? Well, no, that's the long jumping competition. And guess what, all long jump athletes fall down in the sand after they jump whether they are in the Paralympics or the Olympics.

Well, there are for sure comments about the athletes' strong will. They didn't give in to their disabilities and decided to play sports, just like non-disabled people. But why shouldn't they?

Okey, let me surprise you now. According to this article in the Telegraph. "The average man jogs at a speed of 8.3 mph, or 100m in 27 seconds", and "the fastest among us can sprint 100m at a speed of 15.9 mph, or between 13-14 seconds". In this year games, the Finnish athlete Leo-Pekka Tähti finished his 100m race in 13.63 seconds on his wheelchair. So he is fastest than most of us, while he is on a wheelchair!

May be this is how social media works. But let's remember that those athletes didn't go to London looking for pity, but they are there looking for records to break.

Till next post, I'll leave you with this beautiful short film, The Butterfly Circus, starring Nick Vujicic:

The Butterfly Circus - HD from The Butterfly Circus on Vimeo.