Doing Business Naked

Have you ever had an important meeting or event that got you so nervous that you had a nightmare about it seeing yourself showing up naked and had every one shocked and pointing at you until you realized it and felt so embarrassed that you wished you could just disappear?! Well this isn’t about that. This is actually about wanting to be there naked! No not literally. Just read on.

Going back in memory to college years you must remember that one of the important courses of management was Organizational Behavior which is supposed to teach business students about group and individual dynamics inside an organization and a huge part of that is communication.

After graduating if you were as enthusiastic as I am you probably read dozens of articles about business etiquette and all the behavioral rules that govern business relationships whether within an organization or externally with its clients suppliers partners or any other stakeholders. We study up on such models because from the beginning of our careers we aspire to reflect an image of professionalism among our peers and our business contacts. We read about interview etiquette email etiquette lunch/dinner meeting etiquette and the entire bundle of business etiquette for the smallest details that we need to tend to like in the following email cover for a job application:

"Dear Mr. (last name) I would pleased to be a part of your esteemed organization… I believe I'll be a great asset to your staff… I would be glad to show up for an interview to discuss how I can contribute to your organization's success… Looking forward to meeting you. Yours sincerely; My Name."

We repeated those words in one form or another almost robotlike because we wanted to sound as perfect as possible. Don't get me wrong I'm not saying that it's a bad thing. It's definitely a must if you're a fresh graduate looking to nail your first interview or job; it's a phase that we all must go through. But things are different now! The business world has been shifting from formal to casual in a rapid pace. All thanks to Social Media that's changing the way business is conducted by re-engineering communication. Your potential employers colleagues superiors managers clients etc. now are with you everywhere and at all times through social networks like Facebook Twitter Linkedin and many others.

We practically have our whole lives in all of its aspects published online for all our business contacts to see and it goes against the golden rule we were always urged to abide by "Never mix business with pleasure." -Pleasure here referring to social activities including online ones.- Let's say you applied to a job at a company that likes to do a little digging about its candidates. You could polish your resume as much as you want but with one hit of a button in Google search of your name potential employers can practically uncover everything you did in your life up until that moment (including your naked baby pictures that your mom published in her Facebook photo albums). Moreover they can even keep up with what you're doing in real time if you're on Twitter.

You can try to keep it all professional and well-mannered on your social networks but the formality and professionalism that you work hard to encompass during business meetings aren’t things you'd want to fake 24/7. I say "fake" because we're all human beings and we're bound to have personal things we're embarrassed of or even just not inclined to make explicit during business interactions for a number of psychological reasons (even though we all know that we all have and do such things). Keeping up with such an attitude of professionalism and formality throughout our life would just be impossible exhausting and just simply not fun!

So we tend to get loose on social networks with our family friends and the new interesting people we meet every day. And we definitely share our personal life publish details we wouldn't normally make public in a business setting and basically reveal our true selves. We practically are naked in front of our business contacts. And I don't know about you but I love it! I welcome the chance to act like a social human being who can talk about work and anything else I'm passionate about just honestly and casually. That would relieve us from the stress of having to act like cold robots all the time. I also believe that it drives us to be better humans because now if you're just a big fake who preaches ethics and morals at work that you never abide by in your personal and social life you better shape up or you're going down! However this new social-business fashion freedom also comes with its set of limitations that you should keep in mind when you're undressing in front of your business contacts.

I'll discuss these in another post titled "4 Easy Tips For The Social-Business Networkers" as to not make this one too long and scare potential interested readers who aren't so fond of theses. Now that was just my personal opinion but I'd love to know yours: Would you as an employer/employee/client rather stick to formality in business or like to do business naked?!

The 1st Arab Social Media Forum: More Social, Less Forum Please!

 On December 11th, I had the pleasure of attending the 1st Arab Social Media Forum in Amman, Jordan. The forum was the 1st of its kind in the region to target only Social Media topics and share both clients' & agencies' experience dealing with Social Media platforms & different social engagement approaches / show cases (according to their website). 

The event, held in Regency Palace Hotel (which, on a side note I must say, has AWESOME beds XD), was under the patronage of His Excellency Mr. Marwan Juma, the Minister of ICT in Jordan, who was introduced by Mr. Malik Shishtawi , the man behind it all, a social media expert in the Middle East... A rarity indeed.

Now honestly, knowing the agenda beforehand, I wasn't looking forward to the introductory speeches (and I know that not many of you do either so don't give me the stink eye >_>) because I figured they're just going to be boring, bureaucratic and seem too lengthy. Fortunately, to my surprise, they were very casual and interesting. Mr. Marwan, as shockingly as it is for a politician, was actually a pretty cool and laid-back man. He started his speech off by talking about the significance of such an event to the Arab region and to the future of Jordan, specifically. He admitted to being a geek and reminisced about the days "Email" was the new big thing.

Next up was Rashid Al Balla from National Net Ventures; he shared a lot of interesting, if not shocking, insights on social media in the Arab world. Apparently, only 2% of Arabs online are comfortable using English. That makes you wonder of the amount Arabic social forums out there in the world wide web that are only in Arabic. Speaking of which, there was a huge debate throughout the event on whether forums are considered a part of social media or not. I would rather think they're not, but one can not deny the significance of forums in the Arab world, and how they are still the number one Arabic source of information.

Brightening up the forum with his sense of humor, Mark Comerford  spoke of Social Media in a Changing Media Landscape. What perhaps most caught the audience attention was Mr. Mark's habit of... swearing. Oh, he swore a lot. Although, kids, that's not a good thing to do :P, but it lighten up the professional business world that tend to get over-serious. You can find Mr. Mark's presentation from the forum on Slideshare. You'll love it!

The following speaker was Mr. Sameer Issa speaking on "Practical Strategic Approaches to Social Media" (found here); his presentation, although very useful, lacked one thing... enthusiasm! Let aside the fact that as a public speaker, you should engage your audience with your tone of voice and body language, but when you're talking about Social Media (and it's part of your job and who you are as a professional), then you should do it with so much passion that the entire audience can be motivated to listen. At the end, this isn't a boring academic lecture... THIS IS SOCIAL MEDIAAAA! < Mimicking the This Is Sparta meme, if you don't know what I mean then, know your meme.  "Listening & Monitoring: The New Way to Market" (found here) was up next with Mr. Patrick Atallah. Unfortunately, you will not find many tweets on Mr. Patrick's presentation because by then, there was panic and frustration in the room, by the social media addicts & bloggers, due to internet difficulties that left us all unfocused. Not to make this very long, I'll urge you to look at the forum's agenda here search for the rest of the amazing speakers who shared lots of wisdom on that day, of which, Silvia Cambie is most worthy of mention, being the only female speaker at the forum and spoke highly of women's role in Social Media for Social Change. Yes, I'm a feminist. 

What I'd like to share with you most was how great it felt to be among the "ambassadors" who were there specifically to share the event happenings on Twitter. I went to the event as a regular attendee, and being the twitter addict that I am, I was surely tweeting like mad about the event. By the end of the event, that earned me -to my surprise and delight- a place among the ambassadors on stage with a special thanks from Mr. Malik. Darine Sabbagh, who was one of the only two people I knew on Twitter before the event (the other being the amazing Noor Al Hajri to whom I'm very thankful for helping me), spoke of her journey with the other Lebanese bloggers who came specifically for the forum.

At the end, I'd love to thank Noor, (most sociable!), Darine (most adorable!), Ali AlHasani (a real sweetheart), Ata AlQadi, Muoffaq Qabbani, Mohammed Azzam, Mahmoud AlDwairy (who's apparently a big shot and I didn't know :P and was part of the panel discussion as a representative of Jordan Open Source Association, Assaad Thebian (who introduced us to Jafra of the Palestinian culture and is quite an interesting person), Zamil Safwan, Kamel Al Asmar, Eleena Korban, Bernard Sadaka, just to name a few of the many many people I met in Jordan who made me feel to be among a big cool family!