Jordan: Demo For Arab Technology Innovators · Global Voices
Mohammad Azraq

Last month I attended the launch of Arab Crunch Demo, an event organised by Arab Crunch Blog, a professional blog dedicated to promoting technology start-ups in the Arab World, in co-operation with Queen Rania Centre for Entreprenuership (QRCE), at the Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT).
It was invigorating to see young Arab technology entrepreneurs take initiatives and realise their dreams. Companies such as, e-space and Al-khawarizmy from Egypt, Ishki and MailPacks from Jordan, and a few others took the stage and demonstrated their projects to an enthusiastic audience.
(Courtesy of Arab Crunch)
Ghaith Saqer, the editor of Arab Crunch, wrote:
The first version of ARABCRUNCH DEMO was a one day event which concluded on Monday 23rd Feb. 2009 in princess Sumaya University, Amman, Jordan. The event is the only free launchpad platform for newly developed technology products and services in the Arab world. Besides startups’ demos, the event included keynote sessions by regional and world class experts from companies ranging from e-marketing, venture capital, and IT.
In the event Ishki from Jordan, also demoed its website, which is the first Arabic website that enables people in Jordan to share complaints or concerns online and search for solutions. The websites seeks to be the voice of normal citizens regarding public, private or business problems. Ahmad Kharbat cofounder of Ishki said “We will add channels for each company that is operational in the Arab world, so people can voice their concern and feedback”. He also promised to add more local versions of the website for more Arab countries.
Hamdy Khalil co-founder of eSpace from Alexandria, Egypt showcased weNear a location based framework that competes with Yahoo’s Fire Eagle, the platform is geared towards developers in order to use its API so they can develop location aware mobile applications in a range of devices including iPhone, Android and Symbian.
The event also featured well-established entrepreneurs such as; Sumaya Kazi, the founder of the Cultural Connect, and Khaled Jabasini, the founder and CEO of the Dubai-based E-Marketing.
The young and driven was the last Keynote speech delivered by Sumaya Kazi Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief at The CulturalConnect, and Senior Social Media Manager at Fortune 500 company Sun Microsystems. She spoke about her experience in starting CulturalConnect. Sumaya showcased intentional successful entrepreneurs who started successful startups along with other social entrepreneurs she had interviewed before.  She shared 8 tips for startups among them were “Surround yourself with people smarter than yourself and People sit on great ideas, Don’t be one of them”
The event, which attracted over 300 participants, was concluded with excitement and enthusiasm by both the startups and the audience. At the end of the event Saqer said he plans for another version of the demo event in the coming months or next year, he promised that the next event will be bigger and would open greater opportunity for outstanding technology startups in the Arab world.