all right no cut for those of you who
speaks only English no cut means dots
okay I know God is an organization for
cultural development cultural
development is a big statement which is
something that we never thought we’d
ever set as organization it’s something
we never aimed at or even intended to
but let me explain it in order to
explain it we need to understand what
culture is culture by definition is a
set of ideas behaviors and traditions
that a group of people would follow what
we do is develop that and the way we
develop that is by connecting the dots
or the new codes and those dots are
basically people ideas knowledge
communities organizations what-have-you
but tonight when I one of what I want to
focus on are basically the dots of
learning that we managed to gather
throughout the journey of magog since
its inception the first thought I want
to start with is this frustration I like
to what many doctors will tell you I
would say frustration is actually good
for you and it all started back in 2007
I worked in advertising I graduated as a
graphic designer
and as I worked throughout my career I
reached a point where I could no longer
come up with ideas I felt I had a mental
block I didn’t know what to do I thought
I probably need to change careers but
like any ad man one of my dreams is to
actually go to the caroline’s Festival
it’s like the Oscars for advertising so
I gathered a bit of money and flew there
and the minute I entered into of the
first stock I sat on the chair the guys
I was speaking and instantly ideas
started pouring out of my brain I
couldn’t stop them to the external
actually opened my notebook and started
writing on and on and on one talk after
the other and so I realized that
basically the issue wasn’t me
but it’s basically the environment
around me it’s not actually triggering
me it’s not actually inspiring me so I
felt that kind of frustration in a way I
felt good because I realized I wasn’t
the problem but also that I need to do
something about it
the second frustration came about when I
was going around looking at those
activities in the event and I realized
that all the collaterals all the
marketing material was translated in all
languages including Hebrew but not
Arabic I thought hmm well we kind of
form quite a decent chunk of the globe
and we don’t have presence in Sutton in
such a big event and also the
submissions from the Middle East into
such an event were very Western like we
didn’t reflect anything about our
culture and that was a bit irritating in
that sense to top it off I went to a
workshop on radio advertising and as I
said in that workshop an Asian guy came
and sat next to me and out of courtesy
he was like you know who are you what do
you do and why are you from so I told
him my name is Joaquim I’m Lebanese are
working quit I’m a great director in one
of the ad agencies and what do you got
what do you do and he’s like I’m from
South Korea I’m University student Wow
interesting is like you’re doing your
masters your final year so you’re
attending such a festival it was like no
it’s my first year and the university
sent the whole class to come and it
struck me at that moment
that guy was 18 years old I was 29 and
we were both taking on the same kind of
knowledge at different ages so
technically he’s 11 years ahead of me so
with all these frustrations from this
festival I came back to wait and I
thought there’s something needs to be
done
and to me such a festival didn’t look
that hard to pull off I mean it took me
a while to I should go there because I
didn’t have the money for it so instead
of you know every time paying so much
money to go there and be inspired why
not bring it to where I live in quit and
hence the second dot of this learning
which is inspiration I told my wife you
know how about I quit my job sorry my
own company
and part of what this company does would
be maybe a conference similar to the
kind festival
I chose like Ella let’s do this so I
quit my job started their creative
consultation and started preparing for a
two-day symposium focusing on epic
design and great evaluate writing target
Ricci was one of the people I knew back
from university days so and he’s a very
prominent type designer so I thought
he’d bring in some audience mind you
that back in the time in quate or even
in the region conferences of the sort of
the current festival who didn’t really
exist so I spoke to toilet and it all
him I had this in mind what do you think
is that instantly he said yes I’ll be
I’ll be coming and I needed more
speakers but I didn’t have more budget
so I threw myself in at the speaker as
well and a good friend of mine was
Makassar as well to be point one speaker
and we all gave three talks and three
workshops and the title of the symposium
was no Katara Haru
hence the name look out now please
disregard the aesthetics of the whole
thing it was signed in a hotel I reached
also don’t know why we even had flowers
on this stage but it looks like a
government event rather than actual
creative event but I mean it was what it
was we had around 80 people coming in
the only way to be communicated the
event was by email and Facebook Facebook
were just the only social media platform
at the time you would create a group and
you send out the invites and so 80
people came in and that was like a big
deal at the time and among the
participants were these two lovely
ladies siren fec and hustle him Eddie
that was me in case you didn’t recognize
me with hair so backtracking on silent
houses events while I was facing my own
frustration they also were facing the
same thing they graduated as graphic
designers worked in an ad agency were
frustrated from the quality of work that
they were doing they quit their jobs
went to London took on a cup of
workshops they felt inspired and they
thought to themselves hey those kind of
workshops aren’t that hard to do in quit
and as they were thinking of that they
were on Facebook the event of Nakata at
her roof came up through a friend and oh
they were like the sorry catfish coming
to quit that’s interesting let’s sign up
so they sign up they came in and we met
in my workshop on creative epic writing
and immediately we kind of clicked as we
spoke and discuss ideas throughout the
workshop and at the end of it they came
up and they were like listen we probably
have similar visions of what we would
like to do it quit how about we team up
and do something together now at this
point such a question usually have two
kinds of answers the first one would be
who are you I know you it’s my project
I’m gonna keep on doing it on my own
I’ll obviously probably I won’t be
standing here today or that won’t be
more slides after that but obviously the
answer was yes great let’s work together
and do something big and that sense of
collaboration is a very critical dot and
it was and it was really the driving
soul of everything that we did after
that
so with that collaboration we organized
a big conference at this very stage in
gust we had around 13 speakers we did
around 10 workshops very small ones over
the course of three days we had around
200 people attending and for us we saw
that as an opportunity it turned out
there are a big number of people who are
really thirsty for creativity so what
that sends immediately not immediately I
mean we got a call because it seems like
it had good reputation it built up good
reputation through social media we had a
call from the organizers of art to by
saying we’re going to do it do by design
days and we’d like you to come and
organize a conference in Dubai and we
got so excited about it
we said yes we’re gonna do that so we
went to Dubai and did an even bigger
thing with 25 speakers around 12
workshops over the course of five days
it was amazing we got regional coverage
it was a blast 300 people came in but on
the
and it was a catastrophe sponsors didn’t
pay us we went into debt we started
getting letters from lawyers from
suppliers threatening us if you don’t
pay and we literally fell into tears not
knowing what to do we just were so
impossible going there because it’s
Dubai so at this point if any normal
businessman will tell you cut on your
losses close shop go home take a loan
pay everything back and just you know
live your life but as naive as we where
we said you know what let’s do the same
thing again in the same year in quit so
we did we called up all the speakers we
told them hey listen you came to Dubai
we can’t pay you so why don’t you come
to quit we’ll pay you football and
everybody’s happy now usually you know a
nice big hotel you know like we never
work with you before if you didn’t pay
as for the by what would we pay you for
quit but luckily enough it seems
everybody believed in what we’re doing
and they said yes so we did it again in
quit with the same set of speakers same
number of workshops lots of sponsors
came on board because we were in Dubai
mccottry to the coverage and they felt
while we like a regional thing so we
paid everybody back we paid back all our
debts and we say some money I started
hiring stuff and this gave us a very
good learning which is believing in what
we do we had faith in it so with that
being an additional driver to move on we
organized our 2013 conference we had the
Arab Spring happening at the time and
everything was very negative lots of
Wars lots of bloodshed lots of changes
and so on but for us it was about
creating positive change
so we themed it as executing culture
shock and kind that kind of worked well
but at the same time it was a conference
not everybody really wants to come and
listen to talks
so we thought okay so if nobody really
wants to come and listen to talks we
need to do something to bring in more
people so as a group you know it wasn’t
done anymore at my myself we thought
okay we did some brainstorming then we
had came up with brilliant idea and it’s
food so who hates food eventually so we
thought if in the outdoor area of those
talks we’ll have some food kiosks will
create a nice seating arrangement that’s
good for people to engage and have a big
screen
that’s broadcasting the talks that
inside that are inside and what happened
basically is that people would come in
who are really wanting to listen to the
talks they would call up their friends
or their business partners or their
clients like you know coming over it’s
nice chilling atmosphere let’s have some
coffee talk a bit so the people would
come in but at the same time in their
background they listening to those
interesting talks and that fad fed into
the conversations and that eventually
made everybody who came in for just a
cup of coffee stay for all the three
days and with that our audience doubled
from 400 in 2012 to 800 in 2013 so food
work dimension so as a collective we
realized that we are actually problem
solvers nothing would stop us
so with that idea and that understanding
we themed our next conference in 2014 as
practicing the collective approach it
was all about collaboration it was all
about how we as a society can solve
so speaking of society as we came up
with that theme we realized that many
people who actually attended the past
conferences had life-changing moments as
they listened to our talks so we managed
to collect a few names spoke to them and
they agreed to be on a video that we
opened up the conference with some
change majors some started businesses
some simply quit their jobs and went on
a discovery journey for their passion
you name it and with that in mind we
realized that everybody was really
interested in what they’re doing and the
audience started growing more and more
we had around a thousand people
attending this conference and with that
we realized that we have a community
although it might sound like a given but
really there was no community that you
could talk about back in the day
right back when we were I was in quit
actually so this was a very inspiring
moment for us and the very important
realization and with that what we did
for the 2015 conference was involved the
community in our program wasn’t just us
doing the talks and the workshops we did
an open call we invited as many
community partners as we can to suggest
the right activities to be a part of our
program and we took them on and we did a
whole seven days program in 2015 that
was so engaging with so many community
partners and that also resulted in the
first open-air concert in quit after a
very very long time and this was a
milestone done with what an amazing
partner Lauren lapa trade park had just
opened and we had this concept of solid
mercy of course nobody was allowed to
dance but at least they could club and
enjoy that time but there was a sense of
change that you could feel while you
were listening to the music to the
ambience really feeling good the vibes
around that and was it okay we felt like
you know there’s so many community
members part of this program we’ve we’ve
been engaging so many people with having
so much of a big audience and everybody
started to have certain expectations of
the kind of change you’re creating
within the society and this really
created there’s learning that we have
some responsibility to hold on to and
with that sense we kind of stepped back
and said okay remember we started off as
a design conference but now we’re
actually creating some sort of a change
in the community and we are literally no
experts in that it was just happy
so we took a step back and we said okay
we’re taking all that into consideration
now we need to talk about something big
much bigger than any one of us something
that really involves everybody the topic
was powering the creative economy where
become a problem solver become an active
individual in changing their society and
it was such an abstract topic as well
that one conference which was for eight
days with so many activities and around
6,000 people attending it this topic was
such an abstract concept that we felt
just one conference wasn’t enough so we
felt that with it we can actually grow
so we decided to stop doing the annual
conference and go on to and visit as
many cities as we can in the following
years which are the two years and as we
stand today we visited around eight
cities mostly the GCC we’ve lately
visited Beirut and a man and with that
topic we were trying to sort the
conversation on the creative economy
we’re trying to make more connections
grow the community find and discover
more individuals that are willing
willing to be part of it and hopefully
by in 2019 we’ll be able to bring them
into our regional conference that will
be hopefully for 10 days engaging as
many community partners as we can so
that we define one individual level on a
social level and even on a structural
structural level how we can achieve the
creative economy and become each one of
us an entity that can add value to
society and hopefully our next thought
would be how can we actually pass it on
so that each person would be able to
make their own mark thank you very much you
speaks only English no cut means dots
okay I know God is an organization for
cultural development cultural
development is a big statement which is
something that we never thought we’d
ever set as organization it’s something
we never aimed at or even intended to
but let me explain it in order to
explain it we need to understand what
culture is culture by definition is a
set of ideas behaviors and traditions
that a group of people would follow what
we do is develop that and the way we
develop that is by connecting the dots
or the new codes and those dots are
basically people ideas knowledge
communities organizations what-have-you
but tonight when I one of what I want to
focus on are basically the dots of
learning that we managed to gather
throughout the journey of magog since
its inception the first thought I want
to start with is this frustration I like
to what many doctors will tell you I
would say frustration is actually good
for you and it all started back in 2007
I worked in advertising I graduated as a
graphic designer
and as I worked throughout my career I
reached a point where I could no longer
come up with ideas I felt I had a mental
block I didn’t know what to do I thought
I probably need to change careers but
like any ad man one of my dreams is to
actually go to the caroline’s Festival
it’s like the Oscars for advertising so
I gathered a bit of money and flew there
and the minute I entered into of the
first stock I sat on the chair the guys
I was speaking and instantly ideas
started pouring out of my brain I
couldn’t stop them to the external
actually opened my notebook and started
writing on and on and on one talk after
the other and so I realized that
basically the issue wasn’t me
but it’s basically the environment
around me it’s not actually triggering
me it’s not actually inspiring me so I
felt that kind of frustration in a way I
felt good because I realized I wasn’t
the problem but also that I need to do
something about it
the second frustration came about when I
was going around looking at those
activities in the event and I realized
that all the collaterals all the
marketing material was translated in all
languages including Hebrew but not
Arabic I thought hmm well we kind of
form quite a decent chunk of the globe
and we don’t have presence in Sutton in
such a big event and also the
submissions from the Middle East into
such an event were very Western like we
didn’t reflect anything about our
culture and that was a bit irritating in
that sense to top it off I went to a
workshop on radio advertising and as I
said in that workshop an Asian guy came
and sat next to me and out of courtesy
he was like you know who are you what do
you do and why are you from so I told
him my name is Joaquim I’m Lebanese are
working quit I’m a great director in one
of the ad agencies and what do you got
what do you do and he’s like I’m from
South Korea I’m University student Wow
interesting is like you’re doing your
masters your final year so you’re
attending such a festival it was like no
it’s my first year and the university
sent the whole class to come and it
struck me at that moment
that guy was 18 years old I was 29 and
we were both taking on the same kind of
knowledge at different ages so
technically he’s 11 years ahead of me so
with all these frustrations from this
festival I came back to wait and I
thought there’s something needs to be
done
and to me such a festival didn’t look
that hard to pull off I mean it took me
a while to I should go there because I
didn’t have the money for it so instead
of you know every time paying so much
money to go there and be inspired why
not bring it to where I live in quit and
hence the second dot of this learning
which is inspiration I told my wife you
know how about I quit my job sorry my
own company
and part of what this company does would
be maybe a conference similar to the
kind festival
I chose like Ella let’s do this so I
quit my job started their creative
consultation and started preparing for a
two-day symposium focusing on epic
design and great evaluate writing target
Ricci was one of the people I knew back
from university days so and he’s a very
prominent type designer so I thought
he’d bring in some audience mind you
that back in the time in quate or even
in the region conferences of the sort of
the current festival who didn’t really
exist so I spoke to toilet and it all
him I had this in mind what do you think
is that instantly he said yes I’ll be
I’ll be coming and I needed more
speakers but I didn’t have more budget
so I threw myself in at the speaker as
well and a good friend of mine was
Makassar as well to be point one speaker
and we all gave three talks and three
workshops and the title of the symposium
was no Katara Haru
hence the name look out now please
disregard the aesthetics of the whole
thing it was signed in a hotel I reached
also don’t know why we even had flowers
on this stage but it looks like a
government event rather than actual
creative event but I mean it was what it
was we had around 80 people coming in
the only way to be communicated the
event was by email and Facebook Facebook
were just the only social media platform
at the time you would create a group and
you send out the invites and so 80
people came in and that was like a big
deal at the time and among the
participants were these two lovely
ladies siren fec and hustle him Eddie
that was me in case you didn’t recognize
me with hair so backtracking on silent
houses events while I was facing my own
frustration they also were facing the
same thing they graduated as graphic
designers worked in an ad agency were
frustrated from the quality of work that
they were doing they quit their jobs
went to London took on a cup of
workshops they felt inspired and they
thought to themselves hey those kind of
workshops aren’t that hard to do in quit
and as they were thinking of that they
were on Facebook the event of Nakata at
her roof came up through a friend and oh
they were like the sorry catfish coming
to quit that’s interesting let’s sign up
so they sign up they came in and we met
in my workshop on creative epic writing
and immediately we kind of clicked as we
spoke and discuss ideas throughout the
workshop and at the end of it they came
up and they were like listen we probably
have similar visions of what we would
like to do it quit how about we team up
and do something together now at this
point such a question usually have two
kinds of answers the first one would be
who are you I know you it’s my project
I’m gonna keep on doing it on my own
I’ll obviously probably I won’t be
standing here today or that won’t be
more slides after that but obviously the
answer was yes great let’s work together
and do something big and that sense of
collaboration is a very critical dot and
it was and it was really the driving
soul of everything that we did after
that
so with that collaboration we organized
a big conference at this very stage in
gust we had around 13 speakers we did
around 10 workshops very small ones over
the course of three days we had around
200 people attending and for us we saw
that as an opportunity it turned out
there are a big number of people who are
really thirsty for creativity so what
that sends immediately not immediately I
mean we got a call because it seems like
it had good reputation it built up good
reputation through social media we had a
call from the organizers of art to by
saying we’re going to do it do by design
days and we’d like you to come and
organize a conference in Dubai and we
got so excited about it
we said yes we’re gonna do that so we
went to Dubai and did an even bigger
thing with 25 speakers around 12
workshops over the course of five days
it was amazing we got regional coverage
it was a blast 300 people came in but on
the
and it was a catastrophe sponsors didn’t
pay us we went into debt we started
getting letters from lawyers from
suppliers threatening us if you don’t
pay and we literally fell into tears not
knowing what to do we just were so
impossible going there because it’s
Dubai so at this point if any normal
businessman will tell you cut on your
losses close shop go home take a loan
pay everything back and just you know
live your life but as naive as we where
we said you know what let’s do the same
thing again in the same year in quit so
we did we called up all the speakers we
told them hey listen you came to Dubai
we can’t pay you so why don’t you come
to quit we’ll pay you football and
everybody’s happy now usually you know a
nice big hotel you know like we never
work with you before if you didn’t pay
as for the by what would we pay you for
quit but luckily enough it seems
everybody believed in what we’re doing
and they said yes so we did it again in
quit with the same set of speakers same
number of workshops lots of sponsors
came on board because we were in Dubai
mccottry to the coverage and they felt
while we like a regional thing so we
paid everybody back we paid back all our
debts and we say some money I started
hiring stuff and this gave us a very
good learning which is believing in what
we do we had faith in it so with that
being an additional driver to move on we
organized our 2013 conference we had the
Arab Spring happening at the time and
everything was very negative lots of
Wars lots of bloodshed lots of changes
and so on but for us it was about
creating positive change
so we themed it as executing culture
shock and kind that kind of worked well
but at the same time it was a conference
not everybody really wants to come and
listen to talks
so we thought okay so if nobody really
wants to come and listen to talks we
need to do something to bring in more
people so as a group you know it wasn’t
done anymore at my myself we thought
okay we did some brainstorming then we
had came up with brilliant idea and it’s
food so who hates food eventually so we
thought if in the outdoor area of those
talks we’ll have some food kiosks will
create a nice seating arrangement that’s
good for people to engage and have a big
screen
that’s broadcasting the talks that
inside that are inside and what happened
basically is that people would come in
who are really wanting to listen to the
talks they would call up their friends
or their business partners or their
clients like you know coming over it’s
nice chilling atmosphere let’s have some
coffee talk a bit so the people would
come in but at the same time in their
background they listening to those
interesting talks and that fad fed into
the conversations and that eventually
made everybody who came in for just a
cup of coffee stay for all the three
days and with that our audience doubled
from 400 in 2012 to 800 in 2013 so food
work dimension so as a collective we
realized that we are actually problem
solvers nothing would stop us
so with that idea and that understanding
we themed our next conference in 2014 as
practicing the collective approach it
was all about collaboration it was all
about how we as a society can solve
so speaking of society as we came up
with that theme we realized that many
people who actually attended the past
conferences had life-changing moments as
they listened to our talks so we managed
to collect a few names spoke to them and
they agreed to be on a video that we
opened up the conference with some
change majors some started businesses
some simply quit their jobs and went on
a discovery journey for their passion
you name it and with that in mind we
realized that everybody was really
interested in what they’re doing and the
audience started growing more and more
we had around a thousand people
attending this conference and with that
we realized that we have a community
although it might sound like a given but
really there was no community that you
could talk about back in the day
right back when we were I was in quit
actually so this was a very inspiring
moment for us and the very important
realization and with that what we did
for the 2015 conference was involved the
community in our program wasn’t just us
doing the talks and the workshops we did
an open call we invited as many
community partners as we can to suggest
the right activities to be a part of our
program and we took them on and we did a
whole seven days program in 2015 that
was so engaging with so many community
partners and that also resulted in the
first open-air concert in quit after a
very very long time and this was a
milestone done with what an amazing
partner Lauren lapa trade park had just
opened and we had this concept of solid
mercy of course nobody was allowed to
dance but at least they could club and
enjoy that time but there was a sense of
change that you could feel while you
were listening to the music to the
ambience really feeling good the vibes
around that and was it okay we felt like
you know there’s so many community
members part of this program we’ve we’ve
been engaging so many people with having
so much of a big audience and everybody
started to have certain expectations of
the kind of change you’re creating
within the society and this really
created there’s learning that we have
some responsibility to hold on to and
with that sense we kind of stepped back
and said okay remember we started off as
a design conference but now we’re
actually creating some sort of a change
in the community and we are literally no
experts in that it was just happy
so we took a step back and we said okay
we’re taking all that into consideration
now we need to talk about something big
much bigger than any one of us something
that really involves everybody the topic
was powering the creative economy where
become a problem solver become an active
individual in changing their society and
it was such an abstract topic as well
that one conference which was for eight
days with so many activities and around
6,000 people attending it this topic was
such an abstract concept that we felt
just one conference wasn’t enough so we
felt that with it we can actually grow
so we decided to stop doing the annual
conference and go on to and visit as
many cities as we can in the following
years which are the two years and as we
stand today we visited around eight
cities mostly the GCC we’ve lately
visited Beirut and a man and with that
topic we were trying to sort the
conversation on the creative economy
we’re trying to make more connections
grow the community find and discover
more individuals that are willing
willing to be part of it and hopefully
by in 2019 we’ll be able to bring them
into our regional conference that will
be hopefully for 10 days engaging as
many community partners as we can so
that we define one individual level on a
social level and even on a structural
structural level how we can achieve the
creative economy and become each one of
us an entity that can add value to
society and hopefully our next thought
would be how can we actually pass it on
so that each person would be able to
make their own mark thank you very much you
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