Here are some of my latest collages, please feel free to remix them.

(too bad I cannot embed directly from Mixel)

The beat and rhythm of Lebanon…

Looking at many abandoned homes and dreaming of moving in. Old balconies in the heart of Ashrafiyeh makes me day dream of other possible choices…

Montreal seems so far away, and if I am to be stuck here, I wouldn’t miss it… I would adjust.

I’d pick up the pieces and start building a new home.

I’d make sure to appreciate everyday that it is peaceful.

And always learning in order to make things better, innovate, inspire and create.

Akh… Beirut ya Beirut… I will miss.

And my sister’s long hair, I will miss.

Despite all the bullshit here: absurdities, corruption, injustice… there is something that makes it worth staying. I am planning on coming back, with a purpose related to my work.

Uploaded with Skitch!

I haven’t written in a while mainly because I am now a mom of a beautiful baby girl, and because I have relocated myself to Lebanon for a few months. Lebanon has the slowest most frustrating internet in the whole planet Earth World! It is a form of censorship, yes. Recently the government has proposed a new law named LIRA that stands for “Lebanese Internet Regulation Act”. This law according to the first article of Daouk’s draft law bans “anything that offends public morals and ethics.” Who decides what is moral? As I’ve written before, the price of freedom is that we must accept not only what we love, but also what we hate. Freedom of speech is not defined by measures of taste or decency; it’s not about what is “right” or “wrong.” It’s about the right to choose for yourself what is “right” or “wrong.” On so many levels this law is nothing but another ugly way to shut people up, control the masses and abort any sorts of hope for innovation in the country. Many of us have signed petitions, helped raise awareness for this destructive law, people will continue with or without this law their online activities.

Lebanon has a set of absurd laws that most of the time no one respects anyway. It is pretty much an organized chaos, organized by small groups of people related to each other by their belief system. It is important to understand the culture here, the way people survive, hustle, and live around here to understand how they do business with each other. First of all, payment is always delayed. No matter what, the client will pay you later. That is just how it is.

I have no intention in complaining in this post, but rather to write about how design thinking cannot always improve any given situation. Nor can we completely rely on understanding a given culture, or people behavior in order to apply design thinking and save the day.

I have been offering my design skills here and there and have been amazed really on how much a designer outside its ordinary country + culture can face this very uncertainty. Middle-eastern culture is all about bending the law. It’s a case by case basis kind of treatment. For example, there are no lines in front of a cashier. You just get yourself to the cashier and basically make your way there by politely smiling to the people you walk in front of.

Imagine now a design process in an agency. OUCH! Nightmare! There is a lot to be done here in order to improve web projects in the MENA region. Because although I am based in Lebanon, I can assure you that working in the whole region is pretty much the same idea.

Many ideas on drawing comic strips of what an arab client is like. For an arab client, being descriptive on what they need / want is as vague and obscure as trying to read Arabic letters when you have never learned how to in your life. This is no exaggeration.

Sir client, what is it that you don’t like in the layout? Can you try to tell me what are the design elements you disliked vs. the content elements that you disliked?
The client answers: I don’t know. I just don’t like it. Try again.
End of the conversation as his assistant walks in, another meeting is about to start.

Client: “Don’t spend too much time on this, I want it to be very simple.”

Designer: ” Ot takes time to make it stand out by its simplicity.”

Client: “Then I want you to make it complicated!”

(O_o)!

Top 7 in order to survive and grow peacefully

1. Let go, to control is absolutely an illusion, instead adjust or improvise fast
2. Do not plan too much. Leave some space for serendipity.
3. You cannot heal or help someone all the time, you cannot solve all problems, but you can genuinely walk witj someone thru challenges.
4. Nothing lasts. Enjoy the small things even if they will not last.
5. Continuity facilitates psychological balance in humans. Any abrupt change destabilizes.
6. Look forward for life beyond physical pain.
7. Know when to start.

CC Salon Montreal in Retrospect, a year later

Turn off the Lights!

Welcome everyone! Me, the host of the Salon.

All the CC goodies.

Catering by 1000 Oysters

Debugging…

Preparing for our first talk by Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation on Skype from Toronto.

We gathered on this cold snowy day over 250 people at la Sala Rossa!

Martha Rans presenting Artists Legal Outreach.

Gilles de St-Exupéry.

Karl Dubost, Let’s Get Digital.

Michelle Thorne.

Christine Préfontaine & Émily Rose-Michaud

Also on staged was Christopher Adams, Freesouls and Sharism Presents & Jeremy Clarke, Global Voices of whom I don’t have photos…

PRESS RELEASE – -

Creative Commons Salon Montreal 1.0

Montreal, December 13th, 2010

Sharism presents the first ever Creative Commons Salon in Montreal on Tuesday, December 21st, 2010. Calling all creators, internauts, jurists, and educators: this event is for you.

Entry to the event is free and open, as are the ideas that will be exchanged among us!

The first CC Salon Montreal, which will take place at the Sala Rossa (situated at 4848 St-Laurent Boulevard), is an excellent opportunity to learn about Creative Commons licenses and how they can help you. The Salon is a wonderful occasion to gather the artistic, internaut, and legal communities of Montreal to discuss issues such as intellectual property, open culture, and copyright in the age of the Internet.

The evening will commence with a conference on the question of Creative Commons and intellectual property in Canada, including the most recent copyright reform bill РBill C-32. The line-up of guest speakers includes Martha Rans, Project Lead for Creative Commons Canada, and Mark Surman, the executive producer of Mozilla Drumbeat. Several other artists and web developers will share their experiences and answer your questions. This is a Creative Commons event and is co-sponsored by Universit̩ de Montr̩al chaire en droit de la s̩curit̩ et des affaires ̩lectronique, and by Mozilla Drumbeat.

Doors open at 5:30 pm. Free music, DJing, and live cinema are on the agenda after 10pm.

Whether you are a defender of free culture and believe in the spirit of sharing, or if you have a peaked interest but are not quite sure what it is all about, then come join us and learn more, share your ideas, or simply come join the fun.

Will upload the slideshare talks very soon. Hopefully I can get a helping hand editing / uploading the videos of the talks for CC Montreal.

Special thanks to Geneviève Danfort who helped us with this successful event! (^____^)

The manifesto is still a work-in-progress and cannot wait to upload our thoughts. Until then a little sample.

The Arab Awakening is above all a youth revolution.The wall of fear and oppression has fallen.
The wall that restrained the creativity and self-esteem of Arab youth for far too long has fallen.
The wall of paternalism which considered women as the property of men, and youth as the executors of their elder’s, has fallen.

The wall has fallen.

The veil has fallen.

We are here. Now.

The revolution has just begun.

This is an old video I made a few years ago. Since I lost all data and art work for a full decade, I have only bits and pieces left online. This is an expression of perceptions, between different identities, and the quest to find balance in all of them. Traveling, and moving to different places, mixed with video experimentation’s, stories collected, recordings of phone calls with my mother, field recordings in Beirut, drawings and thoughts…

Tomorrow I will be 29.

C.O.N.N.E.C.T.I.N.G.T.H.E.D.O.T.S

Traveling back and forth.

Screen Printing posters for Creative Commons Salon in Montreal

Keith Murray’s hands when he visited Montreal. Pink tattoos.

Screen Shot of Mark Surman speaking on Skype at the Creative Commons Salon Montreal

More practicing at drawings.

Arab Spring.

Arab Revolution.

Drawing of Mona Eltahawy

Co-Founded a record label. No Weapon.

WAEL GHONIM.

Uprising.

Swag made in montreal for Growing Global Movements at sxsw

Discussing the Arab Identity. sxsw talk: Growing GLobal Movements.

Lots of back and forth to NYC

Promoting/organizing the Libre Graphics Meetings in Montreal

At Pecha Kucha

April 2010

Oshazuke <3

Vj set for CC Qatar Official Launch.

Packed, and moved from HOMA to Mile-End.

Our friends got married on Île Ste-Hélène in Montreal, magical.

Ate with my family in Lebanon <3

Became a mobile blood vessel for a new human.

Spoke about the wisdom of the web at ParisWeb.

Keeping lists for future projects, Hopes & Dreams, …

W.H.E.R.E.D.O.E.S.T.H.I.S.L.E.A.D.

It is not an amorphous cloud of equals, where nobody gets any decision power. Neither is it a traditional hierarchical organization where commands are issued top-down and people are expected to follow them. A Swarm may look like this from the outside, but that’s not what it is.

Rather, it is a scaffolding set up by a few individuals that enable tens of thousands of people to cooperate on a common goal in their life. These tens of thousands are usually vastly diverse and come from all walks of life, but share one common goal.

As all the people in the Swarm are volunteers — they are there because they think the Swarm can be a vehicle for change in an area they care about — the only way to lead is by inspiring others through action.
…

In a Swarm, nobody gets to tell anybody else what to do. (People can take on roles and deliverables voluntarily, though.)

What is a Swarm.

Let us focus on What We Can Do!

Why am I referring to a Swarm?

Lately I have been thinking a lot about a sort of collective around our craft in my city. I currently live in Montreal, and I am a user experience designer. I find myself isolated. Although I used to be part of the group UXMTL, I quickly lost interest in it because it was actually the opposite of what I could do, or even wanted to do. My goals were not met, and I did not meet other designers of other fields. Rather I got into arguments with very comfortable bureaucrates working in small agencies who came to our meetings to mostly argue about our existence.

My goal was to get to know our ever growing community of practitioners, and share methods, books, knowledge and best practices. Rather we were a few meeting in a closed room, complaining about our every day battle — making our boss understand why he/she hired us in the first place. Help our craft be accepted in a design process that is too centered on making things look nice, but not very useful.

This was Montreal back in 2009. And unfortunately, things have not change that much. BUT this post is not to rent about this small city, rather to try once more to fit it.

Why a Design Swarm?

I think that if we gather around a common goal and inspire each other through action and cooperation, we can make a good change. I am part of big collectives, and movements that I deeply believe in and have found myself very inspired, active and motivated when I felt we were all making something better, or doing something together without planning too much. Just getting things done. I’d love for a Design Swarm / Collective to exist in Montreal and to gather people who are working in a design field that is centered on the end user. They don’t have to be making screens, or wireframes, or sitemaps. They should be the new kind of designers who not only care about how sexy the font is, but if the font is accessible/readable, web friendly, and if the message the font is drawing; is understood. Designers with a soul. I am throwing this out there and hope to reach at least one or two other Montrealers who, like me, believe in change, believe in purpose, love their jobs, love people and want to be better at what they do by sharing / collaborating / and occupying their world.