Silicon Valley’s Arab Technology Forum 2008
Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008
By Gazette Contributing Editor Bessam Bouguerra

 I had the chance to attend the Arab Technology Forum hosted by Techwadi (held on January 15th through the 17th, 2008) and meet a few Arab entrepreneurs and leaders in the Tech industry. Techwadi is the leading networking association for Arab American professionals in the Technology industry and is led by the very ambitious Tunisian Ghazi Benothman. Ghazi is the General and Founding partner of Minah Ventures. Minah Ventures is a San Francisco-based venture capital firm, with offices in Boston and Dubai. The firm is focused on making early stage (Seed and Series A) investments in technology startups, looking to leverage the engineering talent present in the Middle East / North Africa region.

I attended a few presentations and think Salem Krimo projected very important points. He talked about how his Software is fully built by an Algerian team. He bragged about how smart his team is and how little he pays them comparing to American standard. Salem talked about how, regardless of where the Software had actually been developed, it can always be categorized as made in USA. He recalled a story of a trip to Algeria where he met a few engineers, builders of a great Software that regulates the usage of water, who were trying to sell it to local government agencies.

As he described, because of some idée fixe tied to the culture in that part of the world, no one gave them the chance to even present their Software. He took that software, brought it to the US, made few minor changes, added the “Made in USA” label and took it back to Algeria where every door he targeted was wide open for him to present “his” Software.

I also, had the pleasure of hearing my boss Dr. Fayyad, chief data officer at Yahoo!, talk about the Internet industry and I was very pleased with his humbleness when he told me, smiling: “I hope I didn’t make us look bad” when he knew that I also work for Yahoo!

I was among the few Tunisians who showed up in the event to represent our community. Besides Ghazi and few others, I got to meet Yacin Bahi, a young talented Tunisian businessman. Yacine, is the founder and president of Ybsis, Inc and mentioned a new project he is working on that involves Tunisian developers working from Tunisia.

Finally, I believe all of the Conference participants commited to a common goal: to make the Arab world the next India or Eastern Europe in the area of Hi-Tech .