Bahrain eContent Award Competition (3)

Today there is good and bad news. The bad news is that my Dell Latitude X300 went dead. I can not start it up again. Tomorrow a techie from Dell Bahrain will have a look at it. The good news is that today I celebrate an anniversary of this blog (let there be pomp and ceremony as in the hotel lobby - see illustration). In 2005 I started this blog on Labour Day and have written a posting every day. And as I am enjoying it, I sign for another year.

The jury deliberations yesterday took more than 12 hours. The jurors finished the first round of judging and after the necessary administrative procedures, there were some 50 entries left, which were up for scrutiny. Eventually the jurors have to come up with maximally 5 entries per category. The debate about the nominees started late in the afternoon and continued into the late evening. Our Quwait jury observer Ms Manar Al Hashash (27) has left the competition as she has been asked by her government to be present at a meeting with the Japanese prime minister. Gabi Deek will leave today.

Having finished for the day, I had dinner in the hotel with Gabi Deek, the invited moderator of the Bahrain eContent Award Competition. He was also the moderator of the first BEA competition in 2005. He is a general manager for a computer company in Lebanon and is president of the Lebanese Professional Computer Association. He is a Lebanese and speaks Arabic, English and French. And he does it with a lot of passion. Gabi has also been a juror of the World Summit Award competitions in 2003 and 2005. He is really suited for this job.

So we had a late dinner at the hotel. And as he is a gourmet he could live it up with a grand buffet dinner. We got to talk about the Lebanese-Israeli war. As I have never seen a war nor have been close to a warzone (the closes was most likely driving through Northen Ireland in 1985), I was eager to hear how it influenced his life. For what do you do; where computer centres hit; was the telecom infrastructure paralysed. And of course the question comes up: what do you do while a war is going on; do you have a job; what do you do all day. He told that he had been doing something else than being busy with with computers and computer projects for four months. He had been working for the refugees in his country, housing them in schools and finding funds to provide them with food and shelter. Now he is back in the computer industry and everything is booming again. Computers centres were not really hit; so there is not much of a replacement market as one would think. But business is booming again.

Blog Posting Number: 740

Tags: content competition, World Summit Award