The last few days I’ve been away in Dubai attending this years Kids and Youth Marketing Summit. Following an invitation to run a workshop on digital and online strategies it was a fantastic opportunity to represent studentbeans.com - experience a different culture and share our expertise in the market place.

Dubai is an amazing place full of opportunity with a huge amount of growth and development occurring everywhere you look. The weather predictably was blue skies however as it was a conference, the most part of the 4 of the 5 days I was there was spent inside a hotel which could have been like any other 5 star hotel in any other part of the world.

My Workshop: With an audience from countries including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Dubai, Kuwait and others it was a challenge to ensure the information was pitched at the right level and I was able to engage with delegates.

The topics covered included:

- Optimising your media mix with the most applicable new technologies to maximise revenue for your brand and target market.
- Identifying which key channels you need to be using and how you can transmit your message.
- Developing long-term brand values by ensuring your messages are seen and used in youth-friendly media.

The workshop ran for the whole day providing participation and interaction throughout – The session I ran was received extremely well and I got some fantastic feedback so I was really pleased with the outcome of the day and overall experience.

Other speakers at the conference included Ahmed Nassef from Maktoob the largest social networking website in the region, Michael Brown – the exclusive agent for Crocs in the region, LG Electronics, HP amongst others. A representative from Ski Dubai, a local attraction was also speaking, an amazing attraction that has real snow in the middle of the desert! I managed to experience it one evening a very surreal experience and a lot of fun!

One of the highlights was hearing Abdullatif Al Sayega speak the CEO of Arab Media Group. An amazing person on of the regions most influential business leaders he has been involved in launched MTV Arabia television channel as well as a partnership with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Radio International radio station, Virgin Radio Dubai.

He spoke about the excitement and opportunity that needs to be embraced. Whilst he also commented that the developments in the region are not that people locally are becoming westernised, but that they are becoming modernised. It is leaders like him that are doing such brilliant things and looking to the future to embrace development and not shy away from the way the world is developing.

Overall it was a fantastic few days and interesting to see and experience a country with so much development and opportunity. If you’ve not been I’d definitely recommend a trip whether it be for business or pleasure, for desert safari, skiing, the 7 star hotels, beaches, shopping malls bigger than you can imagine – it really has everything and more you could ever imagine.