Written By: Farah Ahmed

As you are now used to have the striking dose of I-Gamify’s summit with superb speakers, let’s take a closer look at the latest 4 days’ panels!

Day 9 was a helping hand for the stress that we are all feeling during this time. Linda Asbahan Chaccour a Positive Psychology Practitioner and Addiction Recovery Coach, Bassem Henri the CEO of 360 Experimental Solutions and a Motivational Speaker, and Yasser Shaker the CEO of the Optimistic Spark Center and a Motivational Speaker were here to help us adapt to COVID 19 with a positive mindset.

The discussion was around “Building Resilience, Staying Positive, and Increasing Happy Emotions during COVID19”. Opening with the question of “How can you manage negative self-talk?” Linda advises that to deal with it, you have to be aware of your thoughts to manage your emotions. It’s important to know what’s triggering this specific emotion, especially the ‘disempowering’ one. So, understand it, process it, and express it positively. While Yasser talked about the approaches of ultra-high self-efficacy level self-talk and shock-denial as causes for negative self-talk.

Bassem then elaborated on the issue of adapting our growth mindset in such a pivotal time. He explains that we have to understand our “6 Dimensions Wellness Wheel” and then start building them to make them equal. He highlighted that we have a lot of time during quarantine to work on these 6 dimensions. For example, it is a very good time to focus on the psychical part by exercising, reading is for the intellectual time, and for the social part spending time with our family. Yasser added 5 tips to work on if you want to enhance your ‘growth mindset’, but you have to clarify ‘your reason of being’ or ‘why you do this’ as an incentive for you:

  1. focus/attention,
  2. energy/passion,
  3. learn something new about the thing I set my mind on it,
  4. learn from my mistakes and others (accept feedback),
  5. give it more time.

“The Future of Learning and Development after COVID19” was the focus of the 10th day.  Moamen, who has a personal and professional interest in the field, was pleased to tackle the topic with 3 spectacular L&D trainers. Nelly Habib a certified manager and coach, Samy Morsy a certified career coach and ‘WE’ L&D manager, and Wael Bakhaty a certified business and life coach.

Nelly sees that the future of L&D, particularly post-COVID 19, will witness the enhancement of the online learning/training and blended learning. Nelly believes that the learner will have more responsibilities, the training itself will be prioritized; as people require emotional intelligence, crisis management, and handling virtual teams. For Samy, this challenge has affected the L&D field by changing the mindsets of L&D trainers, as it pushed the e-learning into a high level. Furthermore, he believes that some business objectives and strategies will start to be altered and modified post-COVID 19. Thus, L&D departments have a role to acknowledge how to address such changes, revisit business objectives, and coach the leaders in the scope. Wael considers it as a positive challenge as it changed the learners’ culture; they became more engaged in online learning and conducting their work using technological methods. He stated that to be more effective, it is necessary to deal with resilience and agility.

They argued that the onsite training, in the future, is irreplaceable because some business and training require face to face interaction, yet it will have to be modified. Also, it will depend on the role of the trainers and whether they managed to add value to the leaner from the virtual training or not.

The 11th Day was more oriented to the technical field, under the title “Technologies from a Different Perspective” with Khaled Eldesouky, Mohamed Elbehaery, and Asmaa Ibrahim.

Asmaa as an artificial intelligent owner in Vodafone and founder of Seba talked about the recent growth in the ‘Cloud Computing System’. This platform facilitates the processes of any startups; as it decreases the cost of failure, enhances the user’s experience, and quickens the infrastructure process.

Khaled as an enterprise architect in KSA and a blogger discussed the means of enterprise architecture to support business strategy. This office builds the strategy for the company by collecting the business needs, as well as inserting new technologies like digital transformation and EI. Afterward, it builds a road map, based on these needs and the new technologies, for 3 to 5 years maximum, and then transform it into projects.

Mohamed as a sales manager and expertise in business development explained the security concerns related to the Internet of Things ‘IoT’. He stated that the application is produced as an IOT form, and there are 3 layers:

  1. securing the hardware (differ depending on multiple sensors),
  2. securing connectivity (differ depending on the application), and
  3. securing cloud services and applications.

They debated on the impact of replacing laborers to robots and unemployment, automation, and potential AIO domination after COVID 19. They agreed that a Digital Transformation Committee is a prerequisite to enable adapting to the transformation after this period.

Day 12 tackled pure business matters, focusing on “Enhancing your Business during COIVD19”. Our experts are Marwan Abdin a business administration consultant and founder of ACG – Abdin’s Consultancy Group, Nadeem Barakat head of business development in Homzmart, and Mohamed Green a business architect and CEO of X-Zone.

When asked “How the Partnership Model can support during COVID 19?”, Nadeem replied referring to the new direction for companies is searching for partnerships, like with the E-learning sector. The affected sectors seek this partnership to continue and survive during and after the epidemic. While Marwan further discussed the ways to stay productive while working from home. He highlighted the importance of the psychological aspect and the value of educating employees on how to work from home. He advised on employment and stakeholder engagement, as well as the role of HR (Talent Management Committee) in counseling employees and coaching managers. “How can I perform as a freelancer during COVID 19?” was the specialty of Mohamed. He referred to the increasing competitiveness in the field and laid down some steps to follow as a beginner. First, you must set the kind of services you provide. Second, work on personal skills. Third, focus on personal branding. He assured that nowadays business sectors pay attention to reputation and experience while hiring a freelancer.

Throughout the panel many major points were examined as such; E-commerce, the importance of partnerships for startups in particular and its advantage in outsourcing, the role of HR as a business partner, and also the dilemma of loyalty and laying off employees.

That’s it, folks! Don’t forget to check the complete panels by clicking on the links below!

Day 9: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/581626835792672/

Day 10: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/569006360395025/

Day 11: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/271231030714597/

Day 12: https://www.facebook.com/IGamify/videos/547025756177365/

If you want to book your seat for upcoming panel discussions visit us now: https://i-gamify.net/our-global-virtual-summit