StartupWeekend Baghdad: Again and Again

For the past two days I was honored to be invited to speak at the 4th Startup Weekend Baghdad, a series of events that I used to organize in the past as one of FikraSpace’s activities to enrich the entrepreneurial scene in Iraq.

The event continued snowballing every year despite shuffling organizers. Large corporates started to believe in its power as the largest telecom company in Iraq became the sole sponsor for the event, two years in a row.

During the event I shared a bit of what I’ve learned during my journey and some stories from Silicon Valley that I visited this summer.

I made a joke as the last advice to take, but its been captured by many.

Nine team been formed in the past two days, three of them led by young females, working on wide range of ideas starting from automating the process of getting a doctor appointment to smart homes and some cool idea like a platform to recycle rejected designs.

Haneen Al-Salman want to encourage reading through public bookshelves

Jahez is a platform that designers can use to sell their rejected designs

The teams were focusing on solving the country’s problems through technology, which I share the same opinion as Nawar Al-ani in his article on LinkedIn that Iraq doesn’t need much of technology innovation to solve his current economic crisis.

a mobile controlled home with and disasters alerts through GSM notification

“There are lots of people who tried to do the same idea before but they don’t have the domain expertise or the connection in the medical fields to do it” — Ihab Alghazal, DoctorE

doctors directory to get you an appointment with the best doctors

Ihab Alghazal, a medical representative and DoctorE’s team leader, said that what make his team able to be alive after the event is that his team has the domain knowledge and the connections in the field. Which is a thing I highly agree on how valuable it is to have the right network.

I don’t want to be so pessimistic neither optimistic, but what facing the country cannot be solved by those young people only, there is not much of project whose continued after the event’s ending in the past.

The international companies in the fields of media, pharmaceuticals, oil and telecommunications running in Iraq played a role in developing young Iraqis skills. But the country still have skills gap.

***all photos are courtesy of StartupWeekend Baghdad