Tag Archives: BDL

The Power of Hackathons

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hackathon

 

The rail industry in the UK organized Hack the Rails – a 48-hour hackathon that took place last weekend. Over 100 developers and designers from around the world traveled by train from London to York over the span of 2 days while tapping away on their laptops in an attempt to solve overcrowdings, delays, and improve WiFi on the rail network. The best ideas from the hackathon will be presented to ministers and rail executives next month and the winning plan will be awarded a £25,000 investment fund to help get their idea off the ground. The hackathon aims to change the customer experience problem the rail network has been facing.

Similarly, BDL Accelerate 2015 is hosting two hackathons, Web & Mobile Hackathon and Wearables Hackathon, that will be tackling challenges that the public is faced with on a daily basis in Lebanon. The participants of the Web & Mobile Hackathon will be provided with a brief that will consist of a specific theme and the contestants will have to collaboratively brainstorm and work extensively to find a web or mobile solution to a specific issue that is shared with them at the start of the hackathon. This hackathon is organized by MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab & WDS with cash prizes of $6,000.

As for the Wearables Hackathon, it’s powered Innovo, a DNY Group company that will be providing electronic components, a whole bunch of sensors, a wearable sleeve, 3D printing capabilities, and more to the participants grouped in teams, who will dream up and hack together wearables to enhance lifestyle or sports in 36 to 48 hours. In addition to the $6,000 cash prize, the participants will also have the opportunity to pursue their project at Innovo’s lab after the hackathon is over.

Hackathons are considered as a great way to start solving real life problems, as a training session, or as a way to prepare participants and educate them on the process of solving issues. Think of a hackathon as the start of a long journey rather than 36-48 hour hackathons as a solution. Anyone from any background or age can participate in the hackathons hosted by BDL Accelerate 2015. In the spirit of finding the next generation of entrepreneurs, the BDL Accelerate 2015 team has been visiting all major universities in Lebanon to inspire youth to join the startup movement and participate in the hackathons. NRJ Radio, Aghani, and Nostalgie have been tagging along to spread the word further and farther. High school students are also encouraged to attend, with a couple of schools already scheduling class trips for their senior students.

Loïc Le Meur – LeWeb – San Francisco

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LOICLoïc Le Meur
LeWeb
Co-Founder

Prolific serial entrepreneur Loïc Le Meur is based in San Francisco. He has co-founded the #1 European tech event LeWeb and is an active business angel. He was an early investor in LinkedIn, Evernote and Lending Club, among many others. He was named one of “Europe’s Tech25″ by the Wall Street Journal as well as one of the “25 most influential people” on the web by Business Week. He is featured in The Economist as one of “Europe’s Blooming Entrepreneurs”, and is a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum where he helps select the next Tech Pioneers and is a regular speaker.

Loïc founded his first company B2L, a web agency, in 1996 while he was enrolled in business school at HEC in Paris. He used money from a student loan to fund it and the car manufacturer he interned with became his first client for whom he built one of the first car dealership websites. Loïc sold B2L 2 years after he graduated from HEC to BBDO. He then launched and sold a web hosting company RapidSite and the same with Tekora.

At the World Economic Forum in 2003, Loïc met entrepreneur Joi Ito who introduced him to blogging and he also met Linkedin founder Reid Hoffman to which he became an early angel investor. With his new found love for social media networking, that same year, Loïc acquired one of the first blogging services in Europe, Ublog, with the goal of building it into a global business and in order to achieve that goal, he merged with Six Apart (Now Say Media) where he became Executive Vice President EMEA.

In 2004, Loïc and his ex-wife Geraldine founded LeWeb as LeBlog, a meetup for bloggers which rapidly evolved into a tool to inspire entrepreneurs and not only bloggers. Today LeWeb in Paris brings together 3,500 entrepreneurs, brands, geeks, investors and press from 76 countries.

After moving to San Francisco in 2007, Loïc founded Seesmic, a powerful suite of social media management and collaboration tools that provide businesses and individuals with everything they need to build and manage their brands online. Hootsuite acquired Seesmic in 2012.

Today Loïc still works on LeWeb and continues to angel invest in startups around the world. He will be speaking at BDL Accelerate 2015 on December 10-11.

Idea Stage Workshop: Session #3

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The third workshop session was kicked off with the formulation of insights about the Reimagine Challenge theme each team was assigned. Insights have to be supported by observations and offer a glimpse into what people think or feel.

The teams were asked to develop a mind map using keywords, highlighting emphasis and categorizing ideas. The diagram is used to visually organize information by drawing the concept in the center of the page to which the associated representation of ideas, such as images and key words, are added directly connecting to the central concept with ideas branched out.

The teams proceeded to ideation, the final phase of the workshop. In this phase they were asked to chain write storm, the process of writing an idea and passing it on to the next person to build on the idea. They participated in pair brainstorming, in which teammates sit down in pairs to write ideas for several rounds until every teammate has done the exercise with the other, and finally draw storming, where they are to draw their idea.

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The workshop is the third of five weekly workshops in the series of design thinking workshops offered by SETT, part of the BDL Accelerate Idea Stage Startup competition themed Reimagining Lebanon. 24 participants were selected and assembled into 8 teams of 3 to develop a startup idea to address a problem assigned to them. The participating teams will pitch their ideas to a panel of judges in front of an audience during Banque du Liban Accelerate 2015 for the chance to win 5,000 USD.

Samir Abdelkrim – StartupBRICS.com

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samir abdelkrim

Samir Abdelkrim
StartupBRICS.com
Founder & Editor

Consultant, entrepreneur and tech journalist Samir Abdelkrim is the Founder of StartupBRICS.com, the very first and leading French-speaking blog covering startups and innovation in emerging countries.

Samir has spent the last 8 years working or traveling in Africa, Europe, and the Arab world covering more than 20 countries. Being passionate about innovation and startups, he created StartupBRICS in 2013 that currently comprises a team of 6 experts, writers, and connectors based in Europe, LatAm, Africa, India and China.

For 6 years, he worked on European development projects aiming at strengthening startup ecosystems entrepreneurship and innovation in the MENA region, from Algeria to Palestine to Turkey. In 2014, he bootstrapped and launched TECHAfrique, a 6-month trip to explore 15 Startup ecosystems in Africa to meet to meet tech entrepreneurs and hubs, and to create connections and write about it in The Huffington Post, LesEchos.fr, as well as in his latest project’s blog.

Samir has acquired over 6 years of experience in the management of international innovation projects in challenging countries with burgeoning Startup ecosystems – especially in the MENA region. He is also a specialist of “Diaspora Entrepreneurship” and often writes about it in international startup magazines.

Today, Samir is writing a book about African startups and the Tech ecosystems in Africa He also travels the world to share his expertise in several conference such as the much-coveted South By South West (SxSW) Festival in Austin (Texas), the Aspen Institute or the Global Entrepreneurship Summit and the upcoming highly anticipated startup conference in Beirut, BDL Accelerate 2015.

BDL Accelerate 2015 is taking place in 2 weeks!

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Registration Chart

As of today, our total number of registered attendees is at 4,500 and we have adjusted production to accommodate another 500 attendees for a grand total of 5,000 expected registrants. The extra batch of tickets are available here.

Using Eventbrite’s geolocation stats, we know that attendees will be flying in to Beirut from 50 countries across 6 continents. The majority are from Europe, USA, Southeast Asia, Caucasus, and MENA, with a handful from China, South Asia, Australia, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.

The breakdown of registrants provides for a diverse set of profiles distributed organically for an ideal mix of entrepreneurs, investors, advisors, mentors, academics, public servants and professionals. For every 10 entrepreneurs attending, there will be approximately 2 investors, 3 advisors & mentors, 1 academic, 1 public servant, and 15 professionals.

Our Startup Competitions & Exhibition attracted hundreds of applications from dozens of countries. 30 top-tier startups from around the world have been selected for our Early Stage Startup Competition. The winner will take home an impressive 10,000 US$ in cash, but more importantly, will peak the interest of the 200+ investors with over $500 million to invest. Investors are not limited to locals, with some flying over 10,000 kilometers to participate in Banque du Liban Accelerate 2015.

Separately, our Wearables Hackathon and Web & Mobile Hackathon are now accepting applications. Each is awarding 6,000 US$ of cash prizes, which should make for worthy challenges to test the best

We look forward to seeing you in two weeks!