Media Dojo

Archive for March, 2011

It took 20+ hours of traveling but I’m here….a bit crispy but not too worse for wear.

Upon checking into the spectacular Yas Hotel, I discovered that the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair was happening the same week as the Media Summit. Tomorrow, I will spend the day with publishers across the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region learning about how digital is affecting their business.

The Yas Hotel is built over a Formula One track so I heard and saw practice runs this morning by some of the fastest cars in the world. Talk about a wake-up call!

The International Book Fair is now in its 21st year. The book fair is part of several initiatives underway to make Abu Dhabi a hub for cultural and media industries for the Arabic speaking world.

My main reason for coming was to attend the Abu Dhabi Media Summit, which is a 2 day confab featuring the top leaders from through emerging markets as well as big gun media names like James Cameron, who is going to give a salon style briefing on the next Avatar project of his. In the tech space, we’ve got Stephen Elop from Nokia to talk mobile as well as Akamai’s Paul Sagan and Hans Vestberg, the CEO of Ericsson.

This is only the second AD Media Summit. But it’s being organized by my friends at Publicis Live in partnership with the Abu Dhabi government so I’m expecting some big things.