As some of you know I was one of the speakers at the RTDATE (refer to title). As it says, it’s a round table discussion organized by the Pan Arab awards academy and ARADO (The Arab Administrative Development Organization)

I will try not to bore you much, so here it goes.

We started at 10 o’clock in the morning (30 minutes late, just like in any Arabic event), a few word about the round table introducing the speakers et al…

First presentation was about branding, Joe Moufarej was explaining how branding affects the trust, loyalty, consistency, credibility, motivates the citizens, (all presentations will be available online soon!) It was pretty interesting as I personally think that government branding in the middle east STINK!

After an interesting discussion between Joe and the attendees about different examples and real case studies, it was my turn!

Here’s what I was supposed to talk about.

• Statistics and internet usage *yawn*
• What is web 2.0 *yawn*
• What is social media *yawn*
• Adapting social media in e-gov policies
• Why to use it in e-gov
• How to use it
• How to do it
• UX
• Case studies
• Missed opportunities
• *yawn*

Anyways, it was supposed to be a normal presentation, talk for 45 minutes or so, discuss, pack and leave home. It didn’t work that way…

I was sitting in a room filled with governmental folks from all over the Arab world, all of them, in one room, and they can only listen to what I have to say. This was an opportunity that comes ONCE in a lifetime, that’s when I unleashed my fury in a very polite way.

Excerpts (in no chronological order)

• I started off by making a statement: in all civilized countries, the governments fear the people except in the Arabic world, the citizens fear their governments and unless we change this, no miracle would work in this region.
• How do you know what the citizens are talking about other than having “moukhabarat” (intelligence services)?
• How do you expect people to trust you when someone who speaks his mind out he gets arrested (Mohammed Erraji? Fouad al-Farhan? Karim Arbaji? Abdel Kareem Soliman? Bashar Al-Sayegh?)
• Government employees, presidents, ministers, army, police, every “official” figure is actually an employee of the people, they are paying for their salaries, they work for them! Citizens should be taught that, officials should be reminded of that.
• Failed attempts in social media, Dubai in denial and never admitting that there is a financial crisis. Social Media is not about lying, social media is not politics.
• No citizen doesn’t love his city or country, it’s the practices of the government that makes them hate the government,  not the nation/country.
• Queen Rania rules
• Queen Rania really rules
• Queen Rania like really really really RULEZ!
• Minister Baroud rules
• Minister Baroud really really RULEZ
• No transparency no communication no information from ministries to the people.
• Governments need to shape up and be really transparent.
• Knowing information about how to open up a business is not a state secret, it should be available.
• A citizen has rights and duties, he won’t do what he has to do unless the government is working for him not against him.
• You are not the user, you should design for the user and not what the director/manager wants.

A small excerpt of what I talked about, of course, emphasizing on all these points to show how social media would work, how we (they?) should start from scratch, clean up their image, build/regain trust…yada yada yada.

I got a few frowns, I got some people to smile, I had people nodding in agreement, lots, tons of questions, if I had the time we would still be sitting and talking. I loved the fact that they were talking and asking about their failures and how to rectify it. The most positive vibe was from the Emirates group, one guy actually showed me a printed email from the VP Joe Bidden smiling and being all excited that “he took the time” to answer him personally saying with a firm tone “this is what we need”, an ex-intelligence officer smiled and said yes you should work on that, I smiled back at them and reminded them that they are the official figures.

The last presentation was about security from a hacker’s perspective, Karim Barbir generated some sweet funny vibes, loved every bit of his presentation. And I learned about a new security feature…fire extinguishers…whenever I see one I’ll crack a smile!