The first time I heard about the World Economic Forum was probably 15 years ago. During my university years, my gang of geeky friends included a guy who’s father was a minister in the Jordanian government. A bunch of college friends and I were were in his father’s private office one day (we were probably [...]

They have free Wifi here (hint, hint, QAIA)..

Why not use it to write one final post from Sharm.. My thoughts on the WEF will follow soon.

Lots of stuff happening today. In the morning there was a WEF Workspace session on branding the Middle East. You can see Workspace slide here.
The lunch I attended was held under the banner of ‘A New Arab Renaissance’, where the Arab Business Council gave awards in the field of arts to the Egyptian actor [...]

I am sitting among the audience of a session about Palestine which includes among others Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli foreign minister Livni, who both had a meeting at the WEF today, which was the highest level Palestinian-Israeli meeting in 11 months.

Feeds are starting to come out of the WEF. Webcasts and podcasts are now becoming available. Have a look here.

I just emerged from the WEFs Workspace session on innovation. The Workspace is a neat WEF space full of whiteboards, colored pens, video cameras and screens. It is, in short an intensive brainstorms space. After a briefing by the chief moderator (HP’s Joseph Hanania) the participants in this session got to choose a number of [...]

Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of the Easy brand (EasyJet, etc) has just addressed the plenary session of the WEF, saying that travel and tourism can be an absorber of a lot of labour in the region. The investment in the sector can range from large international companies but also home-grown medium and small companies (everything from [...]