Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Technology. Show all posts
Artscoops Launches Middle East Contemporary Auction
Online auction house Paddle8 is pleased to present Middle East Contemporary, an auction featuring works by leading artists from the Middle East. The auction includes works by Khaled Takreti, Mouneer Al Shaarani, Raffi Tokatlian, Fadi Yazigi, Joe Kesrouani, and Abdullah Murad among other contemporary artists. Middle East Contemporary is presented in partnership with Artscoops, the Beirut-based online art platform that specializes in Middle Eastern and African art that we talked about last week. Highlights of Middle East Contemporary include: Mouneer Al-Shaarani, My Delicacy Refused All But Passion, Whereas My Resolve, But What Reason Demands, 2013. Gouache on paper. Estimate: $22,000-$28,000; Fadi Yazigi, Untitled,2013. Mixed media on canvas. Estimate: $12,000-$18,000 and Joe Kesrouani, City Highlights 20, 2011. Photograph. Estimate: $7,000-$9,000.
Complete auction at http://paddle8.com/auctions/middleeastcontemporary.
Complete auction at http://paddle8.com/auctions/middleeastcontemporary.
Dr. Kassem Alom The Healthcare Pioneer
When Dr Kassem Alom arrived in Abu Dhabi in 1978, he immediately started to question whether the UAE really was the right spot for a young doctor looking to start up his own business. “There was nothing here,” he recalls. “There was one hospital - called Central Hospital - which consisted of a group of caravans. When it rained, the water just flooded inside.” Alom’s decision to stay and carve out a niche for himself in the UAE capital was vindicated last year when Al Noor Hospitals Group, the company he founded in 1985, and which is now Abu Dhabi’s largest private healthcare provider by far, listed on the London Stock Exchange. The initial public offering (IPO) netted $342m, valuing the company at $1bn. Along the way, Alom treated Sheikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late President of the UAE, has been appointed to the Supreme Council of the Ministry of Health, and is one of the few expatriates to be voted onto the board of the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Al Noor Hospitals has three hospitals and nine medical centers in Abu Dhabi and is looking at expanding its offering into the rest of the Gulf.
Sports Marketing And Entertainment Go Hand-In-Hand
Today’s sporting events welcome people of all ages and backgrounds seeking more than just their share of action on the pitch. Crowds at the biggest sporting events are placing more value in the entertainment and pleasure they offer off the pitch, and businesses are quickly responding to this. Gone are the days of stadiums filled with statistic-obsessed teenagers and fans dressed head-to-toe in sportswear. Event organizers in the region are rapidly revamping their entertainment offerings at events in a bid not only to grow audiences, but to enhance the overall experience. Sponsors are spending as much on their activation budgets as they are on acquiring the event rights in the first place. The commercial dynamics of sport and entertainment are more intertwined than ever before. The industry is developing entertainment-driven strategies around its major sporting events on a global scale that is far superior than it was a decade or two ago. Think Shakira at the 2010 World Cup, cheerleaders at IPL Cricket, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake at the Super Bowl, and Hollywood A-listers sitting court-side at the NBA– it is now impossible to keep the worlds of sport and entertainment apart. People are buying tickets to today’s events expecting to be entertained and, with this in mind, the responsibility of sports entities is evolving.
Lama Younes: The First Saudi Forensic Psychologist
A children’s rights activist and the first Saudi female forensic psychologist and criminologist in the GCC, Lama Younes is the founder of Hissah Enrichment Center in Dubai. The center is unique in the region since it provides various services for education, training, and counseling to adults and youth to strengthen their personal and professional relationships. Younes focuses upon treating child abuse victims in the Gulf region where it is still considered to be a taboo issue and aims at implementing change through her work. Attaining her Bachelor’s Degree from Effat University in Psychology with a minor in children’s counseling, she went on to pursue her Masters in Forensic Psychology and Criminology from Middlesex University in London. Specializing in Delinquent Psychopath and Terrorism for a Postgraduate degree from Harvard University, she achieved her PhD from the University of London.
UAE The First Arab Country to Sell The iPhone 6
UAE consumers will have to wait at least three weeks before getting their hands on the Apple iPhone 6, which was launched in California on Tuesday night. As early as last Thursday, Apple fans began to camp outside the company’s flagship US store ahead of the launch. While an exact date for the UAE launch is not yet known, retailers in the country have estimated that it could be anywhere between three to six weeks before it arrives in local stores (or ten days online). The Khaleej Times, speaking to founder of online retailer JadoPado, Omar Kassim, estimated that the new iPhone could be available in the UAE as early as September 20, and could retail for somewhere in the region of AED3,100 ($750). “I’d expect a bit of a price premium for the first week or so, around eight to 10 per cent over Apple’s retail US prices, but I don’t expect it to change versus their current iPhone 5s prices,” Kassim said. “It is likely the iPhone 6 will be available in launch markets 10 days after the announcement.
Artscoops Launches A Digital Market For MENA Artworks
May and Raya Mamarbachi have just made a scoop in the MENA art world by launching an online platform specialized in the buying and selling of regional art. Artscoops.com is a platform where you can purchase contemporary and modern artworks directly from artists and commercial galleries. Sabhan Adam (Syria) and Mohammad El Rawas (Lebanon) are part of the growing portfolio of more than 80 pieces that are already available online. No need to be a specialist to understand the huge potential of Artscoops’s market. Over the past two decades, the MENA participation in the international art world has boomed: producing, buying, and showing. Raya Mamarbachi witnessed first-hand the growth of Qatar into a major market maker, spending 25% of the region’s $11 billion art market (a figure set to triple by 2015 according to the NYT, “An Emirate Filling Up With Artwork”). MENA artists are some of its favorites. Creators from the Arab region in particular are everywhere today. They started by colonizing leading public museum and private collections, major institutions, biennials, art fairs, large-scale shows and coveted awards. The MENA region is now equipped with an impressive cultural infrastructure. The most visible part of the process is the emergence of star museums and art fairs across the Gulf. One dimension was still missing to achieve this unrelenting expansion: Artscoops provides Arab artworks with its own digital platform. Being a collector does not require you to fly around the globe or rank amongst the friends and families of glittering art fairs anymore. Artscoops makes it possible for any online user - local, regional and international - to discover the art production of the MENA region and become a collector. Artscoops is actually a double channel platform dedicated to both collectors and amateurs. Whether you are a collector or just getting started, you can learn, develop your own expertise, browse, buy or bid on artworks from both renowned and emerging artists on the platform. To fulfill its educational agenda Artscoops will provide its audience with original recommendations and content assembled by a team of local curators and art advisors, delivered on the website and through mobile applications. “It is about experiencing art”, asserts Raya Mamarbachi, CEO. May Mamarbachi, namely in charge of the relations with the artists and galleries, explains: “We believe in creating long-term value for our buyers, collectors and partners. We accomplish this by offering unique artworks accompanied by unbiased and independent information on the artwork and artist”. Artscoops’s technical agenda is potentially disruptive: a 24/7 platform that doesn’t limit its users by hours of operations or location, where they explore art and artists, and buy through a secure payment gateway – with a return and refund policy too. It seems that the job of “marchand d’art” has mutated. The first online auction is scheduled for the 10th of September in collaboration with Paddle8.com.
Istikana By Samer Abdin Redefining TV
Televisions have been in widespread use in many countries for over fifty years; surprisingly, though, TV viewing habits largely haven’t changed with the rise of the internet in the 1990s and 2000s. But the recent rise of on-demand streaming services and the introduction of smart TVs stands to finally impact people’s relationships with their TVs. On-demand internet based services have massively expanded customers’ choice of content available in family living rooms. California-based Netflix expects to hit close to 50 million worldwide subscribers this year, having increasing its customer base five-fold in as many years. For Samer Abdin, CEO and co-founder of Dubai-based online video service Istikana, the rise of these services worldwide was an exciting development that had largely bypassed TV in the Arab world. “Tareq [Abu-Lughod, COO and co-founder] and I were sitting around in the summer of 2010 talking about Netflix and all the fun stuff going on in the US, and we started complaining about the fact that there wasn't something similar over here for Arabic content,” said Abdin. In the following months the two started to sign content and develop the basic website before launching a free advertising-based service in 2011.
Dr Charles Elachi's Mission to Mars With NASA
Where were you on the morning of 6 August this year? Chances are you were among the millions around the world watching the live feed of NASA’s Curiosity rover as it touched down on Mars. To say that the landing, which was seen by 50m in the US alone on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)’s website, was tense is an understatement; after making its 450 million kilometre journey from Earth to Mars, the rover had to decelerate from a speed of 20,000 km/h to zero in just fifteen minutes to effect a safe touchdown onto the Red Planet’s surface. It was by far the most complicated attempt to land on another planet that humans have so far attempted. Dr Charles Elachi, JPL’s Lebanese-born director, puts perhaps the most astonishing scientific achievement of the century into context. “After that journey, we had to land within a circle of about one kilometre, because we needed to land in a very specific spot,” he says. “That’s the same as if I hit a golf ball from Los Angeles to Dubai, and it has to come straight in the cup — that’s how accurate we had to be. And to make it just a little bit more challenging, the cup is moving at high speed.” The tension surrounding the landing was ramped up not only by the fourteen-minute time delay that it took radio signals to beam back from Mars, but also due to the fact that the engineers and scientists at JPL could do nothing to affect the outcome once the landing process had been put in place.
Elements Productions: Filmmaking Meets Entrepreneurship
Six years ago, after a typical 18-hour day working on a particularly long and tiresome production in Bahrain, Saleh Nass and Chaker Ben Yahmed, who were 23 and 28 years old at the time, respectively, found themselves contemplating starting their own company. Like many entrepreneurially minded builders, they realized they were doing a lot of work for others that they could have easily done for themselves. The pair decided to co-found Elements Productions with just their laptops and two hard drives for storing footage, and took it step by step from there. An initial investment later helped the two filmmakers purchase their first broadcast-quality camera. "Although they’re much cheaper now, at the time they could run up to BD 50,000 (US$ 132,600),” Chaker notes. Today, Elements has an impressive client portfolio including Porsche, Sky News, RedBull, the Bahrain International Circuit, and news outlets like MBC and The Associated Press. “We handle around 10-15 projects a month, from corporate documentaries to web content."
Hayat Sindi A Scientist Among Most Powerful Arab Women
Dropped off at a Danish youth hostel in central London without speaking a word of English, sixteen-year-old Hayat Sindi began to think she had made a huge mistake. The Saudi-born teenager, whose passion for science overrode her logic and common sense, had not realised how difficult her journey to being a great inventor would be. “When I got to England it was the shock of my life,” she explains, recalling that first day. “My sister’s husband collected me from the airport but he didn’t speak Arabic, and I didn’t speak English, so there was no communication, and he put me in a Danish hostel. “I thought, very naively, that because I was a straight-A student, it would be easy. I told my father I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t.” Born in Makkah in 1967, Hayat Sindi is today one of the best known medical scholars in the region. Her research into diagnostics and biotechnology, which is internationally recognised, has earned her a positive reputation both as an advocate of affordable medicine and an ambitious humanitarian. In addition to her scientific work, she has also participated in numerous events aimed at raising the awareness of science amongst women, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim world in general. Thanks to her ongoing efforts, this year, she was ranked number nine on the CEO Middle East list of most powerful Arab women.
Ali Dabaja's Hajjnet Merges Technology With Spirituality
Every year millions of Muslim pilgrims focus their attentions on one place – Makkah. Ever since Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) first led his companions on the first pilgrimage from Medina to Makkah in the year 629, the ‘major pilgrimage’ – Hajj – has been an integral part of Islam. Today, devotees from around the world make their way to Saudi Arabia for the pilgrimage, performing various rituals along the way. Indeed, it is one of the religion’s five pillars, and as such is a duty which must be carried out by every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to do so at least once in his or her lifetime. Taking place each year during the month of Dhu al-Hijjah – the last month of the Islamic calendar – Hajj is the largest gathering of Muslims in one place at one time, with more than 3m people attending annually. Add to that the number of people performing Umrah – the non-compulsory ‘lesser pilgrimage’ which can take place any time – and Makkah regularly welcomes several million people to the Al-Masjid al-Haram mosque, and other sacred sites, each year. Logistically tricky at the best of times due to the sheer numbers, performing Hajj and Umrah has an added layer of difficulty due to the specific rituals and actions required during the experience.
Entrepreneur Muhammad Chbib Launches Citra Style
The world is increasingly recognizing the tremendous potential of the global Islamic economy — one that encompasses diverse sectors including but not limited to finance, food, and fashion. In 2012 it was valued at over $1.5 trillion USD and is poised to double by the end of the decade. In the same year the market for Islamic fashion alone was valued at over $200 billion USD (based on global Muslim consumer spend on clothing and footwear) and is expected to reach over $300 billion USD in 2018. With the recent launch of the Islamic Fashion Design Council in Dubai it is obvious developments in this market will continue to draw a significant amount of attention. Recognizing the evident consumer need and the tremendous commercial potential of the Islamic fashion market, one homegrown fashion label, Citra Style, aims to put modest fashion on the map. Launched in January 2014 by Muhammad (right) and Habibah Chbib, the brand caters to modern and style-conscious Muslim women worldwide who choose to wear the hijab, and aims to be the world’s premier online store for modest fashion. “Citra Style was created for the modern and fashion conscious women of faith,” say its founders.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)