Software Business in the Middle East

Part One

Networking Events

There are plenty of different Networking Events in Dubai. Networking Event is a kind of meeting with many different people who came there to tell about their business, and see what other people’s business is.

Well, I would assume that people would come to see what other people’s business is, but very often people come there to tell about their business only and see if they can get you as a customer. I am not sure if this is typical for Networking Events in Dubai or if it is the same in any country. Sometimes it feels very bad when you talk to somebody and as soon as he understands you are not going to be his customer, he loses interest talking to you the same second. Especially it happens with Real Estate people as nowadays it is only the lazy one who does not try to work with selling the apartments and villas in Dubai.

I used to come to some of the most popular Networking Events in Dubai.

1). Xing (previously known as OpenBC) - it’s a very big community of people based on Internet forum. As soon as you change your location in the profile as Dubai or UAE, the country moderator will invite you to participate in the Networking Event next month. Normally they have about 100-200 people there. Time to time they invite speakers to talk about different things, like business etiquette – to send thank you e-mail to the person you met on the event and so on.

I think Xing has such Events in every country, not only UAE.

2). AmeInfo Networking - organized by the largest news portal in UAE. There are also pretty many people coming there, but I would not tell anything special about this Event. Just a good place to come and meet many different people.

 3). CNet Dubai - I think this is the best Networking Event in the city. The meetings are very well organized they way to motivate people to talk to each other. The guy who organizes the Event, Roger Wilkinson, is very enthusiastic, he always prepares some kind of game so that you are simply forced to meet many people – for example, find out one person from UK, one from India, one from Germany and so on. Then they have a draw to find winners who take home pretty nice prices – like round trip for two to Paris or dinner for two in five-star hotel.

What I’ve learned so far from those Networking Events:

• It is very good place to learn about hundreds of different businesses in the city when you have just arrived. Who knows, maybe you can find some of your customers over there. At least you might get very good contacts that could help you now or in the future.
• If you have very specific product, it is very unlikely you get any customers over there – like our customers are healthcare organizations and healthcare professionals, but it is not many of them who come to such events. But you might get partners or simply find out people who will like your ideas and who will support you by helping with their own contacts.
• You get sick from the people who’re hunting like crazy for the customers trying to sell you stuff like new house, or printing of your business cards, or insurance for your car or anything else.