With a new decade come new challenges: .

On this watch list, you will find what I think will be some key issues to address in this new hyper-information era.

1. CENTRALIZED DIGITAL LIFE MANAGEMENT

email, Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, web apps: our digital life is scattered  across dozens of services.

We need a unique platform to “write once, reuse everywhere” our profile metadata.

Watch: oAuth, OpenSocial, FaceBook Connect, LinkedinConnect (wildguess?)

2. MOBILE

Mobile was big in 2009. Mobile will be everything from 2010.

The big winner was obviously Apple. Apple got everything right, thanks to the amazing strategy and architecture behind the ITunes Store.

The Apple ecosystem is a closed one and has its shortcoming, especially the App Store approval process.

Despite the trade-offs, developers are still contributing to enhance the IPhone/IPod Touch experience.

Google can’t afford to lose its relationship with the hardcore developer base and Android and the GPhone are its answer to Steve Job’s unstoppable march in the digital consumer space.

Watch: Apple, Google. Don’t waste your time with: Microsoft.

3. ADVERTISING

Not sure if we will see any change in the online ad industry this year, but the display model is broken.

We need a serious overhaul of the ad serving business. Thanks to the death of privacy, be ready for the hyper-targeting experience.

Watch: Google and any serious innovation they will swallow to keep their business running.

4. E-COMMERCE

Despite or perhaps thanks to the economic crisis, E-Commerce is now part of everyday life. Add mobile access and Inet penetration rate growth into the mix and we should witness an explosion in online transactions.

Watch: Amazon, Apple, Square, Ebay/Paypal

5. OPERATING SYSTEM + THE CLOUD

New fight, same opponents. The OS WWII has just started.

I’ve been using Microsoft Windows for years; I’ve tried hard on linux desktop many times; and one day I gave a shot at Mac OS.

You can’t deny the superiority the UNIX based operating system: once again, the execution is flawless (coming from windows 2000/Vista at least).

With HTML5 around the corner and serious adoption of SaaS, Google once again had to step in with ChromeOS.

But Google is putting itself in a tough position by launching so many initiatives at the same time: you can’t always guarantee that the absolute best resources (read engineers and product managers) will be available for ALL your projects. Look at Google Wave: brilliant idea, bad strategy (maybe worth another post).

Watch: Apple, Google, Microsoft. Don’t waste your time with: Jolicloud and look-alike.

Enterprise: Amazon, IBM, Microsoft, VMWare/EMC.

6. VIDEO

Again, maybe not quite ready for 2010, but be prepared for the online streaming revolution.

Telcos/ISP hold the key to a new way of consuming media. Who will be the winner in the VOD for mainstream?

Watch: Netflix, Apple

It’s now 20:15 Dubai time, I finished my jog, kids are asleep, I had dinner: why stop playing if you’re on a roll?

For industrialsDirectory.com, I’ve long planned a feature providing exhibition and events information to the industrial and B2B users in the middle east. Lets call this feature the event service.

As usual, it’s all started with some diagrams:

My wife told me for years that she though my job was drawing boxes and pipes on piles of paper I will then scatter accross whatever planed surface I will consider “my office”.

The problem

I want to manage and display a comprehensive list of events for industrialsDirectory.com (iD) users.
iD has been developed with a custom framework built on top of the Joomla CMS. Joomla (at least the original version used here) is not flexible enough to handle this project.

The solution

Wordpress!
Wordpress, IMHO, is the most versatile and extensible framework for Web Content Management should you not require features like user profile, advanced search or heavy OO design patterns.
Wordpress give you the ability to use its simple taxonomy to publish any type of content. Its core features are:

• powerful templating system
• built for maximum SEO benefit
• amazing plugins management
• complete documentation and online resources
• built-in rss support
• …

Goal

Deliver the new feature in 4 hours, as simple as that.
Specs:

• Events management interface (CRUD)
• Events categorization
• Events publishing into Joomla CMS*
• Events RSS feeds
• Adversting integration

* ideally, I would like to use a full fledge web service (SOAP server on Wordpress and SOAP client on Joomla developed with nuSOAP) but I may start with a simple XML feed due to time constraint).

Tools

The infrastructure is ready, wich will obviously save a lot of time.
Webserver, DNS, database server, IDE are up an running (let me know if you want more details, nothing fancy here).
Plugins list to follow.

Other resources:

From static content to web pages and now web applications, Jacob enlights us on the evolution of how developers deliver content and services to a fast moving environment.

This 4th version is more of an experiment with white spaces and visual simplicity. I consider it as a perpetual work-in-progress project.

Put together by Giorgio Ungania and his team, the event was a huge success: fantastic speakers, perfect organization and an overwhelming crowd made it a big win for Dubai.
All the talks were trully fantastic, inspiring and a relief in the doom and gloom era we’re experiencing in Dubai.

I left the conference with more hope into the city, its people and what makes us staying in here than I had entering the Palladium.

Thomas Lundgren gave a brave speech telling how his struggling childhood led him on a personal quest to change the world.

Dr. Naif Al Mutawa, master of THE 99 project, is a great story teller. From a writer to studying business and finally getting back to its roots by creating an islamic superheros comic book series, Dr. Naif gave a lively story of his fight for his ideas.

As an entrepreneur in the internet space, I really appreciated the insights of the VC model from Joichi Ito. He also spoke a length about the Creative Commons project and its impact in the sharing economy.

Paul Bennett from IDEO was both entertaining and an eye-opener in how design thinking can overcome basic business problematics.

Big win for the arab and muslim  world represented by Mohammad Gawdat, the Al Awadhi brothers, Masarat Daud, Khulood Al Atiyat, Mohmmed Saeed Harib.

In short, every speakers shared a lot of emotion, knowledge and hope.

The production, logistic and whole setup was uber professionnal. Should I want to organize a large event in here, I wouldn’t work with anyone else.
I look forward to seing some positive outcome of this first conference.

Some side observations from the talks: Google is the Internet, Facebook is the Social Network, Twitter is ubiquitious and IPhone is the device.

I’m excited to attend the next TEDxDubai: the bar is high, but so is the ambition of people wanting to move the world.

- full article here

This reality is one of the reason we’ve started industrial Directory, a B2B network covering the GCC industrial areas and free zones companies.

The lack of understanding the web as a powerful medium to showcase your brand, products and services open tremendous opportunties for web designs shops and agencies in the region.

WE START YOU UP campaign was designed to deliver turn key web projects in short time by leveraging from the tools and mentality driving the startup community forward.

Starting a business or revamping your online identity, “WE START YOU UP” fuels your digital projects with the startup spirit needed to succeed.

Walking in the food court, Building 3 at lunch time and you could have met engineers, sales people, experts and graduates from the IT industry. Facilities were top notch, office space and licensing were both affordable and comprehensive so it was a no-brainer for me to open a new company here.
2002/2003 was also the year the freehold property fever took of: Greens, the soon to be ready Dubai Marina, Emirates Living.

That was the first genuine community built in Dubai.

See, the equation was fairly easy to understand:

International companies + entrepreneurs + efficient administration + talented people + attractive salaries + affordable/comfortable housing = KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY

Then came the inevitable growth.
The first and biggest mistake, in my opinion, was to ignore the strategic asset that a highly skilled workforce and entrepreneurship spirit were representing.
We had here a possible embryo of a local Silicon Valley: knowledge (Knowledge Village is part of the TECOM cluster), legal and communication infrastructure, entrepreneurship.

Sadly, DIC/DMC management was only interested in attracting big names. This lack of vision prevented DIC to commission enough office space allowing for a sustainable growth.

Instead of temporary “work from home” license and off-site office locations, we were shamelessly put on the now infamous waiting list.

So here we killed the community.

Then came the mother of all sins: real estate.
Take a couple of thousand companies either on a waiting list or struggling for space to expand their workforce.
Once plenty of office space if ready, do you release them at a fair price and allow your “partners” to growth or do you put your asset management hat on  and get the highest ROI on your real estate portfolio?

Which one of this choice you think would’ve been most beneficial for the country?

And here we killed our own Silicon Valley.

With the right vision and framework allowing venture capital to finance (and benefit) local projects we would today enjoy a true Dubai Silicon Oasis. Feel free to read Paul Graham’s post “Can you buy a Silicon Valley?” for his VC point of view on the subjet.

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