Bringing minds together

Life can be rough, journeys may get tiresome and goals difficult to achieve. But it is nice to be humane and allow yourself the luxury of mistakes.

Life doesn't always give you perfect things. You just have to make the most of what you get. As long as you know who you are, where your priorities lie and which direction you plan to go in life, everything else will follow through.

 I firmly believe that an individual is moulded by what he/she chooses to accomplish and what he/she leaves behind.

Every choice that you make is significant. Being at the right place at the right moment always helps, so does having an instinct for finding the "right moment" to introduce something new. I have the tendency to always be very positive and trusting towards life and people in general. To me failure is just a means to move on. During my entire life I have been drastically turning pages so many times and I have never been afraid to have to start from scratch all the times I did.

 Dreaming big is possible - and you should never give up when you believe you are doing the right thing.

Try to innovate in everything you do, achieve what has not been done before. Be a curious soul. Test your abilities. Rise against the odds. For as long as I can remember, I have always been interested in the future. I am not satisfied with the status quo.

 I have always been a big fan of TED.com

It may have to do with the fact that I work in the area of creative content production technologies. When the TEDx brand, the independent licensed version of TED.com, was introduced globally in 2008, I saw it as a means to combine both my interests and present it as the definitive natural synergy for the city that is my home. I contacted TED and was awarded the licence to organise the Dubai chapter. (TED - Technology, Entertainment, Design - is a US private non-profit foundation best known for its conferences, now held in Europe, Asia as well as the US, devoted to what it calls "ideas worth spreading". TEDx is a programme that enables schools, businesses, libraries or just groups of friends to enjoy a TED-like experience with TEDx events they themselves organise, design and host.)

 Dubai is not only about unprecedented infrastructure and landmarks but also about extraordinary people with brilliant ideas worth spreading.

I wanted to let the TED worldwide community of 100 million people know that. Making this dream into a reality was no easy task. Ours was a core team of only five members - James Piecowye, Narascia Radice, Parvaiz Nasir, Habiba Hamid and me.

Having worked for so many years in the media production business, I am used to tight deadlines but TEDx Dubai 2009 was literally organised from scratch in 70 days, while I was holding down a full-time job. It was surely the most ambitious and intense project I ever worked on; the deadline was so close that for almost two months I slept an average of four hours per night to ensure that all the components were in place. I think one can achieve that only through sheer passion, and that was probably the secret ingredient in the project of my dreams.

From its conception we held to a few clear maxims: first, to give the stage to a group of amazing people living and working in Dubai and the Mena region. We also intended to produce a conference where attendees are selected on what they do and aspire to rather than who they are. Furthermore, we wanted TEDx Dubai to be free of charge and by invitation only (we could only accommodate up to 1,000 delegates as per TEDx Policy). Yet if you attempt to organise a conference in 70 days in Dubai (taking into account the fact that two major festivals were also scheduled for this period) solely through barter deals, the least you can expect are incredulous reactions and disbelief with people literally asking you if you are insane. The fact that TEDx Dubai took place with world-class as well as locally-based speakers and eight high-definition cameras recording it, is proof that we succeeded.

TEDx Dubai worked out not because any one of the five core team members were particularly adept at event management. TEDx Dubai became a reality because of the support of many Dubai residents who are also TED fans. They believed in the project and were immediately ready to help out in every way they could. We didn't spend a single dirham on marketing or advertising. It was an event that gained momentum only by word of mouth and through the online social networking circles like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

 In a place like Dubai, TEDx added a novelty in the making.

The value of being associated with an event like TEDx Dubai goes beyond mere money - it's bigger than all of its constituent components combined. It is an opportunity to link together individuals that are more of "doers" than "followers".

Each of us have something unique to say and want to share with the world. Powerful things are bound to happen when you give a talented mind an opportunity. When you remove financial equations from that opportunity and add purity of thoughts with no second means, the sky is the limit. You can affect people so strongly that you will be pleasantly surprised by the outcome.

TEDx is that opportunity, a place where for one day you get together and discuss and connect only through the purity of thoughts and ideas while detaching from the rest and allowing synergies to form and grow freely.

- As told to Ruqya Khan, a Sharjah-based freelance writer