Packt Publishing reaches 1000 IT titles and celebrates with an open invitation

As Packt will be publishing its 1000 book within days, they have a surprise to match this event. As mentioned on their website: "Revisit Packt’s website between the 28th and 30th of September to redeem your gift, or sign up for an account with us now to receive a notification email.". That's a gift I did not expect at all.

If you don't know Packt Publishing, that's too bad. One big reason of why that is bad, is because -from my experience with some technical books from different publishers- Packt is one of those who care about  practice with less 'academic' style -which was boring during college and still-. And another thing that I did not know till a couple of days ago -when I was reading about their event- is the following:
"Packt supports many of the Open Source projects covered by its books through a project royalty donation, which has contributed over $400,000 to Open Source projects. As part of the 1000th book celebration Packt is allocating $30,000 to share between projects and authors."

I'v been depending on a couple of its books during the kick-off of my startup, and I suggest you give its practical style a taste.

Source: Packt Publishing reaches 1000 IT titles and celebrates with an open invitation

First appearance of Alkottab at Fekrety competition, AUC

Last Thursday was a special day for me that I wanted to share with the world. It was the awards ceremony for Fekrety (translated to: my idea) competition finalists and the first official appearance of Alkottab (maybe translated to: local school) company.

Alkottab is a new Egyptian startup for game development and animations with Arabic themes and content. And I'm proudly a co-founder of this Egyptian startup which aims to attract the youth in specific to games and animations that introduce them to their history and present, and invest in them to build a brighter future.

Fekrety is a national business idea competition organized by The American University in Cairo’s (AUC) School of Business – Entrepreneurship & Innovation Program (EIP), in cooperation with Intel. Although we did not win the money, it was an opportunity to announce our idea to the world of business and startups and listen to their feedback. And we had some small prizes too, if it deserves mentioning as it was not the main goal of entering this competition.

Let me introduce you to the team, and show you the idea pitching by Alkottab co-founder Eslam. The team from right to left is: Eslam, Omar and Mahmoud (me) as co-founders and developers, and Youmna and Maha as artists.

The summary of the pitch for the non-Arabic viewers is as I mentioned before about Alkottab, plus stating that the Arab countries have a bigger customer segment in game purchases than the USA and that's why foreign companies are interested in localizing their games. And because we are very interested in our idea, we decided to quit our jobs and put our savings in this company, Alkottab, and were hoping to get more fund by winning such a competition. Our first product is about the early days of our Egyptian revolution.

This was the first appearance, and not the last (if Allah wills) because we have the idea and passion, and building the experience, and trying to avoid the mistakes we noticed in different startups we witnessed or worked with.

So, this was a small report to share the news with you. And let's hope to see you very soon somewhere in a local/international event or on the market.