Category Blogging

Quick Note

Jeddah was great, as always, and I had a good time. We were worried that the event won’t attract enough attention, but in the end we had a full house and a large number of people watched the live stream and followed the event on Twitter. As I said earlier, we are happy with how it turned out, but of course there was some problems and mistakes that should be solved and avoided in the future.

Saudi BlogCamp was only the first step, and now we are looking forward to the next Saudi BarCamp event. No concrete plans have been set up yet for what this future event would be about, but most probably it won’t be on blogging. Topics such as information security and charity work have been suggested, but we are open to all ideas.

If there is a topic that you feel strongly about and you think would make a good event, don’t hesitate to contact the guys. They will help you to organize the event by all possible means wherever you are in the Kingdom. Big thanks to everyone for making Saudi BlogCamp a success, and see you all soon.

Related:

Saudi BlogCamp

I will fly to Jeddah tomorrow to give a talk at the first Saudi BlogCamp. The presenters also include friends and fellow bloggers Khaled al-Nasser, Fouad al-Fahran and Essam al-Zamel. Saudi BlogCamp is the first of a series of events for bloggers to share knowledge and exchange experiences on different topics of interest. All bloggers, male and female, are invited to participate in these events and help organizing them. Saudi BlogCamp is part of Saudi BarCamp.

The first Saudi BlogCamp will be held at Andalusiya Cafe in Jeddah this Thursday, July 2, 2009. The registration fee is SR50, including lunch, and everyone is welcome. If you would like to attend you can find more information here and here. I’m certainly looking forward to this, and also looking forward to see you all there. If you can’t make it, you can still follow the event on this page which will offer a live stream from the room, and also through Twitter.

Saudi Single Serving Sites

Single Serving Sites are web sites comprised of a single page with a dedicated domain name and do only one thing. This kind of websites has been online for a long time, but the trend was first documented last year by Jason Kottke, and later in a paper by Ryan Greenberg. Now these web sites cover many different topics and you can check the first two links to learn more and find examples, but some of my favorites are: barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com, istwitterdown.com, yourethemannowdog.com, and Are you tired?.

Here in the Gulf, my Kuwaiti friend Bader has created two such web sites: Desert Fubuki, and most recently ismajlisdissolved.com. Last week I came across one interesting example from Saudi Arabia: Is it crowded or not? which basically watches the status of traffic at King Fahad Causeway and how congested it is on both directions. (The website has been taken down and now a message reads that it is still under construction and will be launched soon).

Inspired by the above, I started to think what other examples for Saudi Single Serving Sites could be interesting, useful and/or funny: canwomendriveinsaudi.com, didsaudisacktheirsoccerteamcoach.com, areshouramembersstillappointed.com, issaudiarabiaaconstitutionalmonarchy.com, issaudiogerlebanese.com, saudiwomenarelikejewels.com, jeddahisdifferent.com, whatcoloristhekingdomtower.com, whatcoloristhefaisaliyatower.com, isiteid.com, isitramadan.com, and finally, to answer a question that I’m frequently asked: isahmedjailed.com. You can think of better examples? Please do share them in the comments. I might actually go and buy some of these domains :-)