Tag: Usama Fayyad

Event: U.S. Delegation On Entrepreneurship – June 28th 2010 (Amman, Jordan)

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Barack ObamaLater this month, the U.S. Department of State will be leading a delegation consisting of venture capital investors, entrepreneurs and pioneers in startup acceleration to Jordan, as part of the ongoing push to foster entrepreneurship in the region by the US Government.

The event will be held on Monday 28th of June, 2010; at the Friendship Auditorium of the Princess Sumaya University for Technology, from 6:00pm – 7:30pm.

It will offer a chance for attendees to hear from and engage with members of the delegation, as well as other entrepreneurs, investors, educators and government officials.

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Amman Tech Tuesdays 1st Event, May 4th 2010 (Amman, Jordan)

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Amman Tech TuesdaysIn just a couple of days time, a new series of tech oriented events is kicking off in Amman (Jordan), in the form of Amman Tech Tuesdays, which is an initiative to bring engineers, business people, experts, investors, marketers, entrepreneurs, students and regular enthusiasts from the technology community together on the first Tuesday of every month in an unconference style setting, with the main goal being to organically strengthen the ties between the tech community in Amman, open up doors for collaboration and encourage the sharing of ideas.

The first event will be taking place at 7PM this coming Tuesday, May 4th 2010, at the Friendship Hall of the Princess Sumaya University For Technology in Amman, Jordan.

The idea is for Amman Tech Tuesdays to be a flexible platform, with the possibility for a different group to manage and host the event each month, in order to cover more specialized areas and get to know about innovations from across all tech fronts.

The first event’s sessions are as follows:

  • Open Tech Session
    Usama Fayyad, Phd.     (CEO – Open Insights, LLC.; Exec. Chairman – d1g.com; Ex. Senior VP & Chief Data officer – Yahoo! Inc.)
    In hopes of weaving ties between industry experts, inspirational and renowned figures in technology, Dr. Fayyad will be delivering an open tech session, throughout which he’ll also be accepting attendants’ tech & business questions.
  • Get Inc.’d!
    Omar Al-Taweel, Lawyer     (Al-Taweel Law)
    Having trouble with registering your business or idea? Afraid of making mistakes? Omar will be taking everyone through the process of incorporating your companies and ideas in Jordan;  he’ll also be addressing the new Cyber Crime Laws in Jordan.
  • What’s Up With E-Commerce?
    Ibrahim Manaa’     (Wheels-express.com)
    In this interactive session, Ibrahim will be presenting his experience and findings on E-commerce in Jordan, and the discussion will be opened on what difficulties exist in this space in the region, and what can be done by the community to push things forward and open up doors for e-commerce startups.

These events are also a great networking opportunity to meet the different players from the Jordanian tech scene, and get to share experiences as well as exchange thoughts and ideas.

The Amman Tech Tuesdays events are free and open for everyone to attend; all you have to do is show up at the event’s venue on the right time.

D1G Announces Closing Of Its First Round Of Financing

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D1GD1G just announced its closing of a first round of financing; that will go towards funding the site, its expansion and its infrastructure on the Internet.

According to the press release issued by the company, this first round has attracted a number of regional businessmen and international experts in the internet industry to join the site’s management.

Commenting on this round, Abdul-Majid Qasem, D1G Executive Director, said that the first round of investment was able to attract the necessary funding for the next phase, and that the amount raised would help the company improve its products and services to achieve the board of directors’ vision and aspirations.

He also noted that the next round of strategic investment negotiations with some of the leading capital and private equity firms in the region is currently ongoing.

D1G was founded in May 2006, and according to the numbers released by the company have been able to build a community of more than 3 million people per month over the past years, generating more than 20 million impressions and over 15 million online monthly videos. They also claim to have grown 100% in number of users during the first half of 2009 alone.

D1G’s growth has been both organic and through acquisitions, and it seems they’ll be sticking to the same approach for growth in the future.

Just a couple of months ago, D1G announced that Usama Fayyad, Ex- Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President at Yahoo!, had been appointed Executive Chairman of D1G to help develop the company and take it into its next stage of growth. He was already on their board of directors since September 2008.

D1G also announced that prominent Jordanian business man and investor Karim Kawar will become an Active Advisor on the company’s board of directors. Karim Kawar, who had previously served as Jordan’s Ambassador to the US, is currently advising a number of regional capital and technology companies.

D1G Appoints Ex-Yahoo! Vice President Usama Fayyad As Executive Chairman

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D1GSocial Networking and video portal site D1G, which allows users to share, discuss, and distribute rich online content, has tapped into the knowledge and expertise of online data mining and data strategist, Dr. Usama Fayyad, to help catalyze the company into its next stage of growth.

Usama FayyadDr. Usama Fayyad served as Yahoo!’s Chief Data Officer and Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solution. Dr. Fayyad was responsible for Yahoo!’s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoos data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing Yahoos data process infrastructure which processed and mined over 25 Terabytes of data per day resulting from Yahoo!’s over 500 million users globally.

Fayyad was also responsible for the advanced technology arm of Yahoo! in Yahoo! Research — the group that is driving innovation in social systems is Search Technology, in Microeconomics and in monetization technologies. He was also responsible for user targeting and grew ad targeting at Yahoo! by 20-fold from when his company was acquired by Yahoo! in 2004 till he left Yahoo! in later 2008.

Fayyad invested into d1g.com, and has become the company’s new Executive Chairman. His entry into the company should provide great value in helping scale the company’s infrastructure to accommodate increased users’ activity and to grow the business to the next level.

“Arab audiences are really thirsty for new-generation rich content and social media represented by the Web 2.0 offerings of d1g.com. I am very excited about d1g.com. I have been informally advising the firm since its early days, and I am very bullish about their potential to grow and provide some of the most dynamic experiences for their audiences and marketers alike.” said Dr. Fayyad. “Since my departure from Yahoo! in the autumn of 2008, I have been evaluating various investment opportunities in the regional online space, and I was very impressed with the skills, expertise and dedication of the company’s leadership.” added Dr. Fayyad.

The company and Fayyad are hoping that he will play a particularly crucial role in helping the d1g.com management team better monetize the company’s inventory through more targeted ad offerings that allows marketers to dynamically generate ads that target various audience criteria such as geography, demography, and browsing behaviour. He will also help expand the offering to our rapidly growing user base across the entire Arabic speaking world.