I finally got around to hosting an event for our Home Concerts meetup, and what a party it was! My apartment was filled with nearly twice as many people as I have ever hosted at the same time, who I was able to accommodate only through creative furniture-moving. We had a bunch of guitarists, a couple of keyboard/piano players, and a conversation-stopping cellist (who, by the way, will be among the local musicians playing at The Courtyard Playhouse during the 4B street arts night later this month). And, of course, many fellow listeners to chip in, chime in and applaud the talent and guts of those who played and/or sang in my makeshift Xmas-light-delineated stage corner.
To sweeten the deal, I baked a belated seasonal treat: pumpkin pie. A very simple one too. I prepared a quick crust by mixing 240g cooled melted butter with two tablespoons each of vegetable oil and sugar and a half teaspoon of salt, then folding in 340g flour to make the dough.
After pressing the dough evenly into the baking tin (I used a large tart tin; the recipe quantities should be halved if using a regular pie tin) and chilling it for half an hour, I poured in the filling, which was comprised of a mixture of 850g canned pumpkin purée, 850g canned sweetened condensed milk, 4 eggs, 2 teaspoons of ground cinnamon, half a teaspoon of ground cloves, and a teaspoon each of ground nutmeg and salt.
Baking it at 180C for about an hour, I let it cool before serving. Unfortunately, the whipped cream slipped my mind, though, yes, I would strongly recommend having it on hand. The pie was summarily annihilated nonetheless, and it was a pleasure seeing everyone enjoy it.
Zealous warriors of the still informal Aiur Defiant clan that we are, I and my three UAE-based StarCraft buddies wanted to start having regular LAN parties, complete with blue rock candy and green incense. Alas, we wasted much time wringing our hands in confusion, completely "at a loss over how to go about organising" ourselves, let alone "how to draft a constitution" [1].
Thankfully, we came to know of a benevolent body known as the Community Development Authority, which would be there to support us with these critical functions, and even ensure that we were "sustainable for many years" and wouldn't "get diluted or dissolved" [1]. Since we had no idea about how to use Google or our social networks to research the local network gaming scene, they would also ensure that we were "filling the social gaps, and not those that are already in abundance" instead of "supporting something that is already being saturated in terms of support" [1]. All we needed to do was register.
We would then even be able to "open a bank account, employ people, hold activities, or seek support externally" [1]. Okay, we were not sure we really needed facilities like those, as we were not planning on doing public ticketed and/or sponsored events like many of Dubai's performance art groups (which, by the way, must surely have been registered with the CDA in order to have gotten the requisite DTCM permissions all these years). But it appears that, regardless of scale or activity, any gathering of three or more persons qualifies as a group in urgent need of legal recognition [2]. Without which they can be fined up to AED 10,000 [1]. Okay, when they put it that way ...
Looking up the requirements, we saw that worry was unnecessary, as the process was simple and offered great value. Licensing costs a mere AED 2000. Every 2 years [3]. No problem, that's just ... AED 250 for each of us per year. Hey, it's better than the 10K fine. Also, they required basic documentation, just to get to know us better. You know, specifying "location details" and "proof of location availability", laying out a "2 year budget plan" and "financial plans", and identifying "board members" and "organizational structure" [3]. I'm sure 99% of the clubs in Dubai have those issues sorted out; after all, these requirements have been in place since 1995 [2], and this is the sort of law any reasonable person would look up when starting a Scrabble circle or such.
Yes, it's a bit of work, but at least we won't have to worry about getting slapped with a massive fine and/or a shutdown notice when the ever-vigilant Government Inspection Teams (GITs, incidentally) storm our basement clan lair in the middle of a tournament [2], or surprise us while on patrol at the next IGN convention [1]. Yup, I'm so glad those GITs are around to protect us from all the exploitative gamer clans that would surely take the hapless public to the cleaners in the absence of these regulations.
I've been attending the Social Web events at Pavilion Downtown for the last couple weeks. It's been pretty interesting so far - some sessions more than others, depending on how deep the moderator and audience probed. It's a commendable series, nonetheless, and the upcoming topics look exciting.
The first session I attended was supposed to be about trending. Tala Samman of the MyFashDiary fashion web channel and Clive Azavedo, Lavanya Narayan and Kunal Bilakhia (who, incidentally, all met each other on Twitter), the team behind the @WeAreUAE curated twitter feed, described how they use social media, in a discussion moderated by Leah Manasseh, the founder of the My Dubai My City web video channel.
We learned a few things about "catfishing", Wild Peeta's now famous pre-launch social media engagement and other topics, but the discussion was otherwise mostly generic. Since I study social networks as a science, the actual dynamics of trending were of more interest to me; unfortunately, this was not really covered in any depth. It got rather entertaining towards the end, though, with an animated debate about the effectiveness and attractiveness of online video as a medium.
The next session, about Instagram, featured guests Melina Mitri of s*uce and Elliott Brown of Moloobhoy & Brown moderated by blogger and social media manager Saad Naamani. A few case studies of image campaigns were discussed first, including #WHPdearphotograph, #LiveLoveBeirut, and #friskissthlm.
Mitri's really cool #WeBuiltThisCity social image campaign and its resulting music video were discussed next, and Brown talked about his daily image tag #MB365, along with the implications for tag choice (hint: if you decide on something specific and unique enough, it's less vulnerable to hijacking). During the audience question portion, we also discussed tag engagement (organic vs gimmick-/competition-driven) and the difficulty in being silent once one commits to engagement through social media.
The next weekend's first session was about artists using social media to promote their work, featuring The Third Line's Sunny Rahbar moderating a discussion with local photographer Ammar Al Attar and visual artist Khawla Darwish. It was an okay discussion; some of the more interesting phases were the points when they were talking about the etiquette of engagement - dealing with comments, likes, etc - and about the need for galleries when artists can ostensibly use social media to curate their own works online.
The second session that day was about the choice of medium for conveying ideas online: Words vs Images. The panel was composed of geometry-conscious artist and photographer Salem Al-Mansoori, expressionist painter Nasir Nasrallah, photographer Farah Al-Qasimi (who happened to be exhibiting in one of the galleries of the venue at the time) and articulated tweeter Maitha Al Mehairbi, moderated by columnist Mishaal Al Gergawi. It was one of the most interesting sessions. For example, we had a discussion on the importance of the number of followers, in which Al-Qasimi expressed the view that quality trumps quantity, and locked her Twitter account to keep away people who had nothing deeper to say than "good face" (LOL).
Perhaps the most interesting part was the extended discussion on writing online in Arabic, and translating between languages, with Nasrallah and Al Mehairbi having different approaches to the latter. Gergawi also brought up the idea that Arabic falls victim to a colloquial/formal divide, unlike English; because Arabic is predominantly used at home and with older generations of family, it became associated with formality. On the other hand, some were of that opinion that it is now "cool" to use Arabic on Twitter. Also, there was a later discussion of whether usage of Arabic or English is aimed at specific audiences; tweeting political opinions, for instance, in Arabic might provoke a storm that tweeting it in English would not.
There are still 3 sessions left in the series, and I hope to be able to check them out as well. Don't forget to drop by the entrance gallery exhibition of graffiti photography by Rhea Karam too.
