So, summer’s basically here and it’s time to start partying properly. Usually, you get either or: either electronic music, or something else. This Saturday, 961 Beer are mixing it up, just like their endless flavors and tastes, and getting you a melange of awesome Lebanese artists including the The Beirut Groove Collective, Charlie Rayne, The Banana Cognacs and The Wanton Bishops!

It’s during the day too, so you can start early and end your party marathon early the next day! It’s from 12:00-5:00PM at Uruguay Street and tickets are just 11USD if you buy it beforehand on the startup we love on this blog: Presella, and of course, there’s plenty of free beer there.

I’m gonna be there and I’m giving away 3 pairs of tickets to you guys (6 total!) All you gotta do after you RSVP is comment here which flavor of 961Beer’s massive inventory is your favorite and the guys and 961 Beer and myself will choose a lucky 3 and announce by Thursday night!

I love TED talks and watch them regularly. I download them on the app, and watch them offline when I’m on a plane or a train. I love AUB because it is my alma mater and the place where I formed my attitudes and philosophy on life and everything in it. So, it’s only natural that my interest in TEDxAUB was extra-special.

The speakers have not been announced yet, but if I don’t have friends on the inside at AUB, then I’m not much of a blogger and leaker, am I?

Speakers

One of the most interesting speakers for me is Henry Mathues, who’s an LAU graduate and an AUB student. From Fine Arts, to Mechanical Engineering, comic books and space shuttles, Mathues is the man behind several valuable books and encyopledias published in Arabic, and has won awards such as the Yuri Gargarin Medal in 2004 and Best Arabic Scientific Book in 1993. He’s also compiled a book on the history of comic books in the Arab world.

I like Henry because he’s into several fields of study, which is something I try to do and think everyone should. Your degree and job are cool, but they shouldn’t limit the endless possibilities your brain can adapt to. Why not major in arts, study engineering then write books on comic books in Arabic?

Ghina Mahmoud Halabi is another speaker I’m looking forward to, and she’s currently doing her PhD in Astrophysics at AUB. She is researching the early stages of the evolution of stars, a fundamental question that holds keys to many answers on our universe, how it began and how life came to be. This is a field that I find immensely interesting, but find daunting because of the sheer scale in terms of space and time when stars and galaxies are involved. Just ask Alina Razzouk, my dear friend and NASA intern how intimidating I find her fields of study when she responds to my babbling on neuroscience.

Raja Oueis is another speaker who I think is contributing greatly to the infamous “Singularity”. He is currently working on “computer vision” and is planning to pursue a doctorate in Robotics. Brains are amazing, but waiting for the natural selection to take its course is not an appealing option given our minuscule lifespans. Robotics and artificial intelligence is where it’s at, and one key problem for machines today is their inability to seamlessly interact with their environments like we do, something I hope better vision will help make a reality. I was lucky enough to take a course module with Raja in a Cognitive Neuroscience course at AUB with Dr. Arne Dietrich, and I most definitely wanna learn more. Also, Raja is quite cool and I expect him to go up on stage wearing a tee with his favorite band on it!

And finally, too much science at the Maamari auditorium in the OSB won’t be tolerated, and someone from the business world will also give a talk. Omar Omran is mastering in Computer Science at AUB at the moment and he is a cofounder of the mobile app development company, Virtual Software, which is a leading mobile app development firm in Lebanon. Apps developed include the AUB and LAU apps.

Apart from the 4 speakers whose profiles I got my hands on, there are 8 other current AUB students or alumni that are being awesome and will share their ideas worth sharing.

Details

It’s happening soon, on May 25th!

Tickets are for 22USD and the auditorium isn’t the largest one out there, so places are limited. However, the event will be streamed live, so no problem if you don’t score a seat.

Follow them on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to stay up to date, and I hope to see you all there!

My, my we have quite a summer ahead for everyone in Beirut. I know you think I’m talking about the horrible security situation, bad economy, political instability, but no. I’m actually talking about the good stuff, you know, like partying hard and dancing all night, one of the things we excel at, especially in summer when we get the reinforcements from abroad.

White and Pier 7 and the like are all awesome, but, not every night is worth 100+ USD and heels and makeup can get annoying day after day. Sometimes, a good old pair of shorts and a sarcastic tee should be enough (along with 20 dollars in you pooooocket). You can take a holiday from seeing mean bouncers’ faces and putting up with mean hostesses and instead go to one of the many awesome and real parties Beirut’s party crews always faithfully deliver.

In this post, I’m happy to introduce Stereo Club Nights, a series of epic DJ lineups this summer both from abroad and local. The guys behind it include the folks that made Underrated’s parties so enjoyable last year. They’ve revamped the team, picked a fixed location and dolled it all up, ready for the music lovers of Beirut.

The venue is gonna be the rooftop of the industrial gem of a venue that is Solea V, 2 minutes from Karantina. The rooftop has been fitted out with a dance floor and stage and a DJ booth that’s more like a kissing booth (so all you boys and girls know how to request songs now)

The nights kick off on May 11th with XINOBI and A.N.D.Y. which I will unfortunately miss. I definitely won’t miss seeing Tube & Berger again, who I had the pleasure of meeting in Los Angeles thanks to my good friend, Cyril Bitar. However, I’m sure you guys will fill us in nicely. To make sure you do though, the guys at Stereo Club Nights have given me two invites to give away. All I’m asking is that whoever gets the tix, take a couple of photos and tweet us about it after enjoying their night.

Here’s the full-lineup. And to be eligible to win the tix, make sure you RSVP and follow us on the different social networks to know when the tickets will be up for grabs =D Stereo’s FB page

Remember when we all came together to help a fellow Lebanese scientist, Hind Hobeika, on the hit show Stars of Science? I liked Stars of Science because it actually cared about science, not just good looks and an auto-tunable voice, but brains.

Hind went on to reap 3rd place for her innovative vital signs and workout monitor for swimmers in Stars of Science, and 1st prize in  MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab Business Plan Competition 2 years later.

I started exercising last year after my gastric sleeve surgery, and my favorite thing to do by far is swimming. However, compared to other workouts, swimming has been lagging technology-wise. On a treadmill, you can track heart rate, calories, distance and a host of other variables depending on the machine you’re working on. In swimming, all you can keep track of is the duration and maybe distance and speed if you’re in the mood for some calculating.

Hind’s invention will fix that, and get swimming up to par with the rest of the fitness world. Keep track of your performance and make sure you’re hitting your goal and being safe if you have a health condition that might be exacerbated with extremely high heart rate for example.

This wasn’t just an entry for a game show though, Hind is serious about making this product come to life. After years of research and development, Instabeat set-up an IndieGogo page to help raise the 35,000USD needed to Hind’s product on the shelves (we’re almost at 20,000USD only a few days into it!). So, if you’re a swimmer, preorder now. If not, pitch in with what you can if you think the idea is cool and will be the success I am sure it will (I know I’ll be sporting it!)

So, click below and help Instabeat get to the 35K mark needed to make it become a reality and something to be proud of when it’s everywhere and you can say “I was one of the first owners/investors” in this =D

Instabeat Page on Indiegogo

I recently met Mark at a mutual friend’s birthday (Alina, the NASA-intern genius friend of mine) and have since learned he’s quite a gifted musician. He shared this video the other day of arguably the most popular song on the radio the past few months: Thrift Shop by Macklemore, only on the piano!

The hiphop song with powerful beats and tunes, suddenly sounds so much more elegant and sweet. Check out Mark’s channel here.

I know y’all enjoy reading this blog, but there’s a ton of other blogs in Lebanon with awesome content on everything from movies and food, to politics and satire. Keeping up with them though can be tough since posting frequency differs, and unless you’re using an RSS reader, it’d be quite a hassle to check them each individually.

My dear friend Mustapha (@BeirutSpring) created a beautiful, streamlined and fast platform that shows all the latest blog posts from a carefully selected group of Lebanese blogs. I check it every day, it’s the perfect way to stay on top of everything happening in the blogosphere.

I also love the sharing options, where if you tweet a particular article, instead of mentioning “via @LebaneseBlogs” it mentions the blogger’s personal handle. So, for example, when you tweet one of my posts, it gets “via @GinoRaidy” which I find a really cool, customized functionality to the already gorgeous platform.

So, check it out here

Oh, and a new, updated, face-lifted and faster Lebanese Blogs is about to be launched soon. Here’s a screenshot of the BETA. Looking even better!

Often, it’s words of sadness and anguish about Lebanon on this blog. More often though, it’s good things. And the bad things written stem from the love for this country and the frustration of how horribly it is being run and barely surviving. The guys at Live Love Beirut found a more beautiful, simple, engaging and fun way to show the nice things about Lebanon that get drowned out by all the negativity.

I am happy to say several of my Instagram shots were featured on their feed, which now has over 5000 followers and 8000 Facebook likes. The total images tagged with #LiveLoveBeirut is over 16,000 photos already. Of course, being Lebanon, several clones have surfaced and you can see dozens of tags now that have to do in Lebanon. I still like Live Love Beirut the most though, because it’s managed better and doesn’t come off as super-desperate for followers and don’t spam my comments with “please tag” or “please follow”.

The other nice thing though, is that Live Love Beirut is now and NGO: Live Love Lebanon, and they’re already doing offline events. This Sunday, they’re cleaning up and canyoning a river in Lebanon. I unfortunately will not be in Lebanon and won’t attend, but I’m very, very pleased with how this once humble Instagram hashtag is turning into a bonafide social engagement movement that is blurring the lines between online and offline. This comes after stencils and online/offline competitions to give away their bracelets.

I miss the kind of volunteer-work and team-spirit I used to feel as a scout and it’s great seeing people from all over Lebanon, all types and sizes, beliefs and opinions, coming together to do something and have fun. So, if you’re free on Sunday, you might want to check it out. Also, if you have good photos of Lebanon, tag them and let’s have a look-see!

Look at that cute serotonin molecule smiling! How can you not click vote on that?

I won’t go into a long post and bore you guys and gals, but if you’ve enjoyed reading this blog over the past few years, learned something, had a laugh or two, got some material to chat up your date with or help in choosing the right venue or event then show some love and help this blog win in The Social Media Awards.

1. Go to www.smabeirut.com
2. Vote for Gino’s Blog in: “Blog of the Year” and “Best Personal Blog”

And thank you all <3

Remember this banner that made us all happy? Well, this Saturday, the King is organizing an awesome party 4acauseThe lineup includes 5 acts that I am very fond of. No 0ne is a childhood friend of mine and his beats are absolutely sick. Lady Bug and Jay K need no introduction from me, and Ryan K and Jean from Beirutish Records will also play back to back. So, the music is going to be very, very beautiful flavors of the good good electronic music we are all so fond of.

Also, there’s gonna be a sports competition there, take a look:

It’s gonna be in Solea V and the entrance is just 20$ for 2 drinks and you’ll get King Nedward’s kit and Beirutish Records album on your way out. Best part is, the proceeds will go for the awesome NGO 4ACause Leb that parties to support charitable causes in our party-loving, but struggling country.

RSVP here and I’ll see you all on Saturday, fellow knights ^^