I work as independent trainer & consultant for online marketing & communications across the region. Previously I was a cofounder & CEO, for the last 10 years, for the regional office in Cairo of the Italian Group Insideout10, which focuses on AI and video technologies to build online marketing innovative solutions.
I am also an adjunct professor at the American University in Cairo (you can find me in the faculty section on that page) where I teach online journalism for the Master of Arts in Television and Digital Journalism program there and also I teach social media for journalists in the AUC's digital media diploma program.
I am focused on sharing the knowledge I learned throughout those 10 years with different business sectors across the MENA region, with special focus for the travel sector because I totally believe that Egypt and the Arab region has a large number of amazingly terrific touristic destinations.
I heard about the EBSOMED project through the announcement of the Meditour conference in Alexandria, which is co-organized by the German-Arab chamber of commerce in Cairo where I also work. I work with the German chamber on two main training programs, one is open enrolment workshops, like for digital marketing fundamentals and personal branding, and the other program is training EU delegation project managers to get better visibility for their development projects in Egypt, focusing on "Communication campaigns in the local context".
My participation in EBSOMED Meditour conference in Alexandria was very interesting since I did the first session, which was an interactive workshop about "Promoting tourism business in the digital era!" educating the audience in the tourism sectors, whether coming from travel agencies, hotels, and other giving them an overview about today's connected users and their online behaviour before, during and after their trips. Also, we discussed few tactics how to turn customers into loyal online brand ambassadors along with a number of interesting and diverse show cases on the local, regional and international levels.
That session was very well received and the audience got out of it a number of digital marketing best practices that they can immediately apply in their work and boost their marketing activities to grow their business. The session was also interactive, with lots of discussions and also interactive exercise which the audience enjoyed participating in, which is a much better format than the usual PowerPoint-lecturing style!
If you have the chance to do this session again, I would request more time since the area of online marketing is really huge and there is lots of knowledge that can be shared with the audience.
I believe that EBSOMED project, by running such events on regular basis can be very helpful in terms of sharing knowledge, experience and best practices from different stakeholders across the Mediterranean, which is very much needed.
