Being involved in the entrepreneurship scene in Egypt, running Egypreneur; I’m certain that entrepreneurship is the vehicle for the bright future of Egypt.
Having the opportunity to speak at TEDxTanta, I used it as an opportunity to reflect this meaning by reflecting entrepreneurs as the “Modern Knights” who are already and will be leading Egypt towards the desired change in the social and economic fronts.
Hopefully, there are plenty of bright examples that’s making a difference economically and socially right now. One of my favorite is Amr Deabes and Egyptian entrepreneurs who found Ability Contact Center; a contact center that’s fully operated by Egyptians with special needs. We usually consider Egyptians with special needs a load on their families and on their society accordingly.
While everyone is working on mobilizing different forms of “support” for those with special needs; Amr Deabes stepped up to giving them a chance to shine and turn their abilities, passion and patience into a productive tools in the society. I met Amr first time during Startup Weekend Cairo and had this interview with him for Egypreneur:
Reda one of the bright employees of AbilityCC, gave an inspiring speech during the weekend:
Seeing examples like Amr and Ability CC ignites my energy to work further on developing Egypreneur and mobilize as much support as we can to participate in creating the environment to more entrepreneurs to step up to solving social problems, while making an economic impact; Imaging how our new Egypt will be with thousands like Amr.
Life goes on, as usual, tough, troubling and confusing, but extremely incapable of changing few things, those who’re noble enough to love a concept, idea or a piece of land when they have absolutely all the right not to, will be the ones to stay with it longer and perhaps forever.
It’s very rare for crowds to move in the right direction except either when it’s absolutely as clear as the sun for the -80 IQ or when they’re inspired by a leadership, let it be an individual, character or an idea.
When it gets confusing everyone returns back to where he/she belongs! Don’t follow the crowds, either be among them when it’s absolutely right or lead them when it’s turbulent and you have a vision.
These are unedited, unorganized and kinda emotional notes written on my mobile phone during my stay at the night of Tuesday Feb 1st @ Tahrir Square in Cairo among more than 2 million Egyptians demanding freedom and dignity by the removal of Mubarak and his regime. Followed by some videos I recorded using my phone as well.
——————– 6:06 PM I’m at tahrir square finished the prayers and moved to the stage where this section is being led after they called for volunteers, couldn’t reach them so just sat down here thinking and reflecting
Had a few dates and some water, not used to loud chanting; I got a headache. decided to take some rest. Om Kolthom’s voice is louder than any other here. Singing “I love it from all my soul and blood” makes me remember from a few hours when a man listened to it, he got into a hysterical crying and bowing of excitment, people hugged him and calmed him down.
Tahrir square is booming not with expired gas bombs this time and not with loud voices only, but with patriotic emotions, a few public figures spoke a long the same line Mubarak leaving before any further step to be taken
As I always do, calling myself a “strategist” I try to find out if there is any better way I can serve. Tahrir square is safter than it ever had been in the last 30 years, it’s quite hard to describe how understanding, forgiving and open-minded these people are. They used to be the extreme opposite from a few days
Anyone spoke about sexual harrasement in Egypt should come today amonst more than two million individuals, girls here are safe enough to move wherever they want among their brothers
For the first time waiting in front of Koshary El-Tahrir the guy to my back is probably a secret police, had been going all the way ..
7:58 PM I’m back after ordering couple of Koshary and had to wait about 40 minutes in a long line. But got ‘em and ate one already, I also took a piss, it was a deep human experience, I can write a separate note about it
Well, it’s the first time for me to eat Koshary outside home, which is kinda weird. I was brought up to think that eating outside home is a sin exposing myself to diseases .etc when it was a necessity to eat outside I was choosing take away that’s easier to eat on the fly
I think my people are kinda cute, all girls I came across today were very beautiful and the guys surrounding me are handsome in someway or the other, maybe it’s common purpose that unite us and make us blend.
I’m in love with about 3 million people I’m surrounded with now, more than 8 millions who got out from their homes for a shared purpose with shared chants. Also, I’m in love with 83 million people that makes up the population of my country after substituting the police and controlling regime
I love this country so much that I’ll probably be biased. Now, I gotta move .. it’s my turn to chant 8:15 PM.
——————–
Morning of Tuesday. Chants in a part of Tahrir “we demand a revolutionary government .. to build social justice” I was trying to zoom in to a bearded man – who are usually labelled as Islamists – participating in the chants after being noticeably demanding a “civil government” not an Islamic state as the current regime is trying to reflect to westerners to scare them and accordingly get their support and stay in power.
Mixed chants with active presence of Egyptian women; chants are “down down with Mubarak .. tell me who voted for you” and “keep strong o my country .. a new Egypt is being born”
A funny Egyptian man giving Mubarak the red card, football is the most popular sport in Egypt
Creativity and sense of humor are very noticeable there, it was even noticeable by non Arabic speakers. Ben from CNN wrote on Twitter
These guys are extremely hilarious and creative, was the funniest thing in the whole night, they’re altering popular Egyptian songs to anti-Mubarak songs in a wicked way
Ramy a young singer collected all our chants in a single song that was amazing! he’s singing “We’re all .. one hand .. we asked .. for one thing .. go away .. go away”, “down .. down with Mubarak” and “the people .. demand .. removal of the regime” – not my footage here
Early morning of Wednesday Feb 2nd. That was the early morning practice of the guys @ Tahrir while chanting anti-Mubarak and for Egypt. Chants include: “leave .. leave”, “We’ll not go away untill he goes away” and the revolution demand “The people .. demand .. the removal of the regime”.
I left Tahrir square 7:30 in the morning of Wednesday Feb 2nd. A few hours, the regime-hired thugs attacked peaceful protesters at Tahrir killing 5 and injuring about 1000.
Governmental and western media called them “Pro-Mubarak Protesters” which is so far from the truth! We’re used to the government and its police hiring thugs or pushing them to achieve their purposes and some of those detained explicitly stated who hired them and what they had been told to do.
And the struggle of the Egyptian people for their freedom continues …
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?
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
You know that I’m supposed to be studying Engineering, Mechanical Design and Production specifically. Actually, my focus in the last 3 years had been business-wise and the skill set I was investing in the most had been everything had to do with the web & business.
I think during that time I didn’t focus on my Engineering skills, you might know that studying at FOE Cairo University, doesn’t give a lot of space for “skills” to develop, other than solving equations and memorizing formulas!
So, Engineering-wise I was planning to somehow work/study Mechatronics Engineering and make it my future career, of course while taking care of the business, or more intelligently delegating that to someone while maintaining ownership. I got some books from the Evil Genius series from a while and decided to get closer to Electronics the upcoming year.
Anywayz, There is an annual competition called ABU Robocon, that’s going to be held this year in Cairo, I joined a team in the faculty and meeting daily from a few days to plan on how to sort things out, participating in the competition, I was lucky to join a team with colleges who previously participated in Robocon last year, they practically didn’t achieve anything, but have good experience. All the team members are really awesome! Zizo, Hussein, Ghandor, Islam, Hussein and myself with the mentor TA Eng. Mohamed Omar.
While my focus is going to be Mechanical-wise in the project, I’ll appreciate the opportunity to get closer to the Electronics and Control part of making robots too and I think that’s going to be my long-awaited introduction to Mechatronics.
The competition itself is illustrated here:
I’m living a life of an Engineering student though, reading books, watching videos from different universities and soon to get down to Electronics Market / Mechanical Workshops to get / manufacture what we need for the robots.
