MBAs, Media & the Middle East.

Onsi Sawiris Scholarship Program.

AMIDEAST have some info on the Onsi Sawiris Scholarship Program that offers full tuition scholarships to Egyptian students looking to study Business Admin (or Contsruction Management) degress in the US. There’s an online FAQ with eligibility criteria and the application can be downloaded here.

Middle East Art Fund.

I have been working on setting up a Middle East contemporary art fund to take advantage of the macro trends taking place in the market.

WSJ on B-Schools’ responses to Financial Metdown.

The WSJ reports that students interest in finance-related jobs are down, boutique and mid-sized firms are being encouraged to step up recruitment and that alumni are tapping into the B-School networks to navigate the uncertain job market.

Egypt blogs America. [AUC]

The American University in Cairo’s Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research recently sent 8 Egyptian bloggers to the US as part of the Adham Center’s Blogging the Election project. The group includes prominent names like Wael Abbas and Sandmonkey, plus some “up-and-coming” bloggers worth keeping an eye on.

alt.MiddleEast.

Ruba Saqr writes excitedly about INCOGNITO a recently launched website that seeks to promote alternative arts in the Middle East. I applaud the initiative but am amazed that the site still seems to be focused on pedaling CDs and books rather than streaming music, selling downloads, building a community etc. This seems especially pointless in the Middle East where both e-commerce and physical content sales have never amounted to much.

Globality.

The Economist’s recent special report on Globalization discusses the decreasing uni-polarity (or Americanized) nature of global business. BCG have coined a new term – Globality – to describe it which will no doubt enter common business parlance soon as Ghosn’s frugal engineering already has.

Chicago GSB MBA Info Sessions Dubai + Cairo.

GSB-sponsored Fall Events These University of Chicago Graduate School of Business MBA Admissions Receptions are hosted by a member of the admissions staff and will consist of a traditional information session as well as an alumni panel. Registration is now open for GSB-sponsored Admissions Receptions in the following Middle Eastern and African cities: City Date [...]

Creativeconomy – Ahmed Fahmy.

Driving back to the suburbs from an interesting meeting with Will Ward, editor of Arab Media & Society I was tuned in to the dependably entertaining company of the Erin and Zack show on Nile FM who were promoting a DJ Fido hip hop album launch party taking place at Al Sawy Culturewheel right as I was driving by it in Zamalek so I stopped to check it out.

The venue was a real find. It’s built into the foot of a Zamalek bridge underneath one of the city’s primary elevated traffic arteries. There’s an outdoor garden and two auditoriums and the eclectic programming (experimental theater, comedy, music) is on the alternative side.

Bill Grueskin welcomes the incoming Columbia J-School class.

Bill Grueskin, former deputy managing editor for news at The Wall Street Journal, where he oversaw the development of the Journal’s wsj.com welcomed the incoming Columbia J-School class as the newly appointed Academic Dean. He discusses RSS readers and the increasingly pull-environment of news intake, engagement in a digital world and signs off with a [...]

Where will all the MBAs go?

This is obviously pretty far down the list of priorities amidst the current market turmoil but is certainly of interest to me.

Bear Sterns, Lehman and Merrill represent three prime top-tier MBA hirers and with noted commentators doubting the future of the stand-alone Investment Bank model, I wonder what type or organization will step in to fill the recruitment gap. (I am choosing to be optimistic assuming the void will be filled).