Abdo's Personal Blog » Updates

Do not wait ..

Abdo — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 01:47:18 +0000

FreeRangeLife on Flickr

قد حان الأوان .لا تعلق بناء حياتك على أمنية يلدها الغيب فإن هذا الإرجاء لن يعود عليك بخير . الحاضر القريب الماثل بين يديك و نفسك هذه التي بين جنبيك ، و الظروف الباسمة أو الكالحة التي تلتف حواليك ، هي وحدها الدعائم التي يتمخض عنها مستقبلك ، فلا مكان لإبطاء أو إنتظار

Inspired by the above statement by Sheick Mohamed El-Ghazaly and my recent life experience:

Don’t wait; don’t wait for investment to get your business rolling; just do it ..

Don’t wait; don’t wait to relocate to live the lifestyle you want; shift your mind ..

Don’t wait; don’t wait for this special moment that will transform you spiritually; live it ..

Don’t wait; don’t wait for “credit” or “gratitude”; make it a part of the “deal” ..

Don’t wait; don’t wait to be understood and then respected; make it the only option ..

Do not wait .. do not wait .. do not wait ..

Raising funds and incorporating ..

Abdo — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:48:05 +0000

Hello Everyone,

During July had been my first experience directly communicating with investors to raise funds for my business, I had been having my friend Karim from Easy-up do it for me and we already got 6 investors interested but per the regulation of the Nilex I needed 25 to incorporate based on the model we had been working on. But to accelerate things up, I had the chance to be in the position myself.

I consider the experience to be overall positive and I learned a lot from it. made a few mistakes; but normal for first timers I presume.

I did postpone launching the business web-site and start executing the business model till I get the funds I need – as I might need to optimize or even change the business model during negotiation , which put me in the position of doing “nothing” for the time I was mainly focused on raising the funds only.

Also role playing, looking at the situation from the investors’ point of view and asking myself the questions I’m expected to be asked during the meetings could have made a difference. Something I need to work on for upcoming opportunities. I don’t think I have a communication problem but during the meeting my mind is mainly filled with the details of the business model and I don’t have a ready- made answers to some questions to be asked, I just think it up and it might be rephrased better.

As a big fan of ReWork I completely believe in their point of view expressed in “Outside money is plan Z”. Yes, I wish I’d go forward with no outside money, but it’s just feels exhausting for a long time. ReWork state the following reasons on why to consider outside money your plan Z:

You give up control
“Cashing out” begins to trump building a quality business
Spending other people’s money is addictive
It’s usually a bad deal
Customers move down the totem pole
Raising money is incredibly distracting

I really believe in these points even stronger now, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t need plan Z sometimes.

What was your first experiences with raising funds? What tips would you advice a young entrepreneur to take into consideration while going through his first incorporation experience?

- Abdo

Practicing Parkour with EgyFlow

Abdo — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:55:18 +0000

Hey Everyone,

View on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AL1X4LicEU4

Last march, I started practicing Parkour with EgyFlow; an awesome Parkour team I first knew about via its facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=101307227731 despite the fact that I don’t have much time to invest weekly on Parkour, I’m maintaining a minimum of a session per week and enjoying it so far.

The other point around is that my company will be taking care of the team’s website http://EgyFlow.com as soon as the materials get ready.

Here’s some photos I took during some training session.

we were actually running on here ..

team members practicing

Stay tuned, I guess I’ll be taking more videos and photos during our trainings .. wanna run after me?

Thanks

- Abdo

Sharing Link: http://abdo.me/ebq39v

For me, is Twitter replacing blogs?

Abdo — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:23:09 +0000

Hey guys,

@ArabicRihanna on Twitter asked a question from a while wondering if Twitter is replacing blogs? I’ll try to give an answer to that from my own perspective and leave the judgement to you.

In the last few months I had been more active on twitter than any other online tool, my first tweet had been Nov, 11th 2007 http://twitter.com/abdome/status/404692242 the point that you can get in touch with someone in 140 character and get to know others through that, which is amazing I guess.

As they say on Twitter.com themselves the current use of Twitter hadn’t been what they had in mind when they started the web service, so its developments seems to be community-driven and user-invented as people start and idea the site adopt it and make it much more easier, such as @user and the HashTags # which is amazing.

While a lot of people mention Twitter as a great tool for mainly; wasting time, others claim knowing some amazing people, building friendships and expanding their network through it.

I’m a social media professional and I’m getting paid for my advice helping clients use the tool to get business and give a good impression about the brands or individuals I work with. I’ll leave all the professional terms and just get a bit personal about my view point about Twitter and whether I’d leave blogging to Twitter. You can find a lot of resources about that online, that’s why I’m entitled to my own experience.

Quality vs. Quantity?

When I first joined Twitter back in 2007, I knew it through Ecademy which is a business network, so my initial view of it has been an interesting new social media marketing tool.

As a Marketing tool, that in somehow have to do with business, I joined and followed a lot of business people until I got my stream flooding with impersonal posts, in most cases marketing pitch – anyway, that didn’t really encourage me to invest that much time on it, so wasn’t that active there.

I started really being motivated to use it with the #MuslimUnity campaign during last Ramadan the idea of connecting people in a practical activity seemed to made a lot sense. Real Personalities? and Genuine individuals to befriend? there is different opinions but it’s not the position to discuss that here. I personally hope to be more cautious!

I fall into the mistake of posting lots of Tweets in specific topic then getting back to the blog to collect them and create a post out of these Tweets, which seemed not awesome to my followers because of the nature of Twitter, it makes it seem like impersonating their experience and I’m stopping that with time. The point is that you have the ideas in mind and the fastest way to get it out is to Tweet it, but it’s not the most effective way.

Briefly, twitter is a great tool, it might take over sometimes and we give more attention to it, but at the end communicating real ideas needs more space than the 140 character that Twitter offers and thus still real content should be posted on Blogs and I’m taking that path here!

Thanks

- Abdo

Footage from Cairo Tower during #CairoTweetUp

Abdo — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 12:07:07 +0000

Hey All,

Last Friday, March 19th I went in a little #CairoTweetUp – Twitter users meetings – and recorded that footage to downtown Cairo. I uploaded it unedited to YouTube, hoping that the annotations there would make some sense.

General view:

Trying to focus on main figures:

Pyramids and Nile View:

Ministry of foreign affairs:

Mohamed Ali Mosque and Saladin Citadel from Cairo Tower:

Cairo university main hall from Cairo Tower:

The guys: @ramezm @gr33ndata @humanzz @Haerviu and myself @abdome > getting down.

Provided that 3 members are from Alexandria, i get to know some new Alexandarian words.

Enjoy!

- Abdo

Sharing: http://abdo.me/qbw88r

Saqqara Desert Horse back-riding

Abdo — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 01:22:49 +0000

Hey Everyone,

Friday, March 5th. I went with the amazing Weekedn Trips group in Cairo http://www.facebook.com/weTrips for horse back riding in Saqqara desert and enjoyed it a lot. Here is some videos I got during the outing.

I tried to take footage while riding, but when it gets fast it’s completely ridiculous to take footage and control the horse. There is some funny parts that I won’t share, but maybe later one.

There is 2 things I liked about that outing away from the excitement, there were 2 Hijabi girls who looked so decent and had no problem outing with the group, I was really proud of them – the second thing is that praying in the desert, was a bit tough especially prostration, but strengthened the feeling of praying anywhere, under any condition.

Getting out and getting ready to start, hear my sigh @ 1:45 HeHe

Finally, I love horses so much and enjoyed that outing a lot.

Have fun!

- Abdelrahman

Sharing: http://abdo.me/87xnxb

#CairoTweetUp 20 February Felluca ride

Abdo — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 12:37:32 +0000

Hey guys,

I hanged out with fellow Twitter users February 20 in a felluca in the awesome river Nile recorded this couple of videos.

View on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpe6buzK8wU

View on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VikRYQfzWAs

List of participants can be found on this Twitter list:http://twitter.com/gr33ndata/falucatweetup

Good to be with you all guys.

- Abdelrahman

Sharing Link: http://abdo.me/b5w3ea

Me on DeviantART?

Abdo — Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:43:35 +0000

Salam Everyone,

Hey congratulate me people, I made some progress with my DeviantART account, it’s funny that after so long I finally updated my Avatar!! For me - as I posted before about transition from a Geek to a normal human being (Post: http://abdo.me/2009/11/lifestyle-shift-can-we/ ) DeviantART should be a part of this transition.

I remember when someone who has passion for Art showed me some designs there, I said wow, look at the license it’s CC, that might be suitable for a project I’m working on. That reflects the attitude of the geek/business-man I had for the last three years, must say having that attitude was the right thing to have and I’m happy with where it brought me practically, having my own company and demonstrating high level of technical knowledge and professionalism at work.

While I’m not an artist and not even a wannabe one, I’m just getting into it for well-being and tasting things, which is a quality practical people might lose with time if they don’t allow the time to explore it. I’m currently more about web and software interface design, photo retouching and maybe photography in the near future.

Feel free to connect with me there: http://amagdy.deviantart.com

Sharing: http://abdo.me/ct9y8w

A new business card

Abdo — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 23:50:26 +0000

Hey All,

This is just to break the silence for about a month on the blog by a short post, I just went with my amazing cousin Mahmoud and got couple of Twitter-like business cards for our start-up. We worked together since October, 2006 and I’m very happy seeing things moving for the best after years of hard-working.

These are temporary business-cards we created till we settle down with a final decision on the identity and go further with the online presence. I’m considering blogging much more often and getting a bit personal. Hopefully, I’ll be starting that from now.

Have a good time all

- Abdo

Sharing Link: http://abdo.me/94fxaz

Paraliminal session for exams by Dr. Ahmed Emara [Arabic]

Abdo — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:20:18 +0000

Hey Everyone,

We all get stressed during exams times especially provided the education system and attitude we have in our country, Egypt.

I used to get stressed during exams time as I prefer to focus on business and leave studies to the last few days before the finals, that’s very difficult with complex engineering subjects that need ongoing practice on solving problems and accordingly that got me over-stressed and my performance wasn’t that good.

As they say; attitude is everything. How we act is a direct result of how we feel which is resulted from what we believe in and what’s going on in our minds, If we can find away to change how we feel about the situation and ourselves, we can break free from stress and perform to the best of our ability.

I came across a very interesting paraliminal session from Dr. Ahmed Emara especially made for students under exams pressure. If you don’t know what a paraliminal session is, I was first introduced to it through LearningStrategies and they have something to say about it here:
http://www.learningstrategies.com/paraliminal/home.asp

I was sent the following on FB:

أحمد عمارة
متخصص في الصحة النفسية
وعضو رابطة الأخصائيين النفسيين المصرية
بيقدم حل مسعف لدوامة الإمتحانات

ملف صوتي هتلاقوه هنا
http://www.3emara.net/audio/Exams.rar

I uploaded the files to my site and they’re available for streaming from here:

http://abdo.posterous.com/private/qEJxHnDndy

The files are as follows:

Exams01.mp3 > 07 Min > Introduction
Exams02.mp3 > 23 Min > The Paraliminal Session
Exams03.mp3 > 39 Min > Practical Advice

Could be downloaded from:

http://amagdy.com/images/Exams01.mp3
http://amagdy.com/images/Exams02.mp3
http://amagdy.com/images/Exams03.mp3

Hope that helps and wish you guys, all the best Insha’ Allah.

- Abdelrahman

Sharing: http://abdo.me/zd46sy