So UAE culture is as much the Emirati as it is the expat who calls the UAE home.

That being said how do we promote our local culture?

By creating an environment for creativity!

One such environment is the radio and music.

Nightline on DubaiEye is trying promote the creative culture environment by creating a virtual stage for local and regional musical talent.

Charlie Everett and Mark Atkinson, Everett Atkinson, joined me to share their stories through song.

I think one of my favorite pieces from this show was the last song.

What was really cool about these guys was it was not about the technology or the venue but simply sharing the story through song.

In this case Paul Kelly of Triplew joined me to introduce some homegrown Dubai musical talent.

We went from hip-hop to fusion to rock and we could have probably kept going.

What I find odd is that the UAE has not set in place local content quotas for the arts.

Radio, TV and why not something in the film industry that demands shorts or something are played at the cinema before the imported content.

Well this is really special.

Let me know what you think of this.

But it is also odd how easy it is to live without actually engaging with the UAE culture.

A big piece of that culture is the language.

So many expats living in the UAE and so few making any real effort to learn Arabic, I include myself in that pile.

Why is Arabic not being taken up as a 2nd or 3rd language by expats?

Some suggest it has a lot to do with where we come from and our fear that by learning another language we are diluting our mother tongue, really!

Others say we expats are here for the cash and only the cash.

Others say we are just lazy!

So what do we do?

I never cease to be amazed by what Paul comes up with.

What is clear to me, more than ever, is that the UAE and other countries in the middle east need to think about setting minimum regulations for content of domestic music and more on the radio.

There is wonderful regional content that needs, is crying, for an outlet.

Here is the podcast of the Triplew.me show tell me what you think.

And to be honest students, high school students, are very media savvy today.

But what about students not pretending to do radio but actually doing it for real?

How often to we hear students on our local commercial or national radio networks DOING RADIO?

Never really!

And that never is exactly why every other week the students from Wellington International School in Dubai come on my show, Nightline, and take over the broadcast.

Risky? WC Fields said never work with pets and children.

Challenge? You bet!

Worth it? 200%

These students are doing a live broadcast every other week for an hour and doing well!

Imagine this program in 2 months time!

Why don’t more stations and presenters do what I am doing?

No clue!

The experience has become a hands off exercise where we point at fish that is packed on ice and wait for the sales associate to pull on gloves and grab the critter for us.

Not that I don’t like the modern consumer experience, but for the most part what is missing is the experience.

Shopping has become a standardized activity that we do and do fast.

Like most people I also hit the big box store and jump into the freezer section to grab a few fish fillets now and then.

But when I venture to the fish marhet in Dubai I wonder why I don’t come more often.

The sound, the smell, the people all says you are living!

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Funny how fast we will give up experience for convenience.

The 1st question people ask is why am I leaving Zayed University after 12 years?

Zayed University has been a great place to work and a fantastic personal innovation incubator for me.

But how often are you given the opportunity to not only dream about how you might teach journalism, public relations and advertising for the world we live in but actually do it? In this world almost never.

Well, I have been asked to join the faculty of CUD and not only dream but do.

Very soon I am going to find myself with my feet in 3 places.

I will be a teacher.

I will be an administrator.

I will be an innovation lab leader.

In all 3 scenarios there is going to be a need for extreme motivation.

New programs have very particular emotional ups and downs for everyone making motivation job #1 for me.

As would happen Inc.com has an excellent set of tips on just that, motivation!

Every one of the 14 Inc suggestions are great.

Here are my top 5 picks.

 Avoid negative people. They drain your energy and waste your time, so hanging with them is like shooting yourself in the foot.

Stretch past your limits on a daily basis. Walking the old, familiar paths is how you grow old. Stretching makes you grow and evolve.

Avoid weak goals.  Goals are the soul of achievement, so never begin them with “I’ll try …”  Always start with “I will” or “I must.”

Treat inaction as the only real failure.  If you don’t take action, you fail by default and can’t even learn from the experience.

Take responsibility for your own results. If you blame (or credit) luck, fate or divine intervention, you’ll always have an excuse.

There is a lot to be learned from the business world today and I contend you can learn most of it by listening to what those who are in it are saying.

Of course trying your hand at something is also mandated.

And of course there are groups and organizations in Canada, the USA and Australia who are doing some amazing work.

The question I am always left asking is how do we engage the youth the primary targets of media literacy?

Here is a great example that makes me wonder why every library on the planet is not doing something like this!

First you want to look at the pictures.

What is this all about?

Once a storage room at the Harold Washington Library Center, the high-ceiling, 5,500-square-foot space, dubbed “YOUmedia — a Digital Library Space for Teens,” has become a magnet for young people citywide, so popular and influential that the library plans to replicate it citywide.

What does it mean to be literate today?

Are our youth prepared?

Technology?

Old school vs new school?

Many questions and as many answers.

But maybe the learning process takes place in other ways?

“We are in one of these rare moments in time where what it means to be literate today, what it meant for us, is going to be different from what it means to be literate for our kids,” says DePaul University’s Nichole Pinkard, who first envisioned the space.

It is all bout play I think and that term has changed dramatically in the last 20 years.

YOUmedia owes much of its basic ideology to Mizuko Ito, a cultural anthropologist at the University of California-Irvine who in 2006 studied how teens use “new media.” After three years, her team concluded that most kids shift between three stages of consumption and creation, informally dubbed “hanging out,” “messing around” and “geeking out.”

What I would love to see is this YOUmedia idea rolled around the UAE in a motor home with push out sides so students can come and play and experiment and learn.

Maybe this is something the KHDA would be interested in?

Maybe this is something the Dubai Media Office would be interested in?

Maybe this could be a tool in the recasting of education?

One thing is for certain the role of the media and our youth today is developing at a speed that is changing everything.

There has been exceptional growth and there has been an exceptional reset.

But there is no question in my mind that Dubai is a very interesting case study of success.

Of course the term success is open to many different definitions.

And of course there are imperfections, blemishes, with any success story.

But when I sit down and look at Dubai I still marvel at the change that has taken place and the ability of the public policy process to very quickly adapt and change with the evolving circumstances.

It was interesting to sit down and have a conversation with Mark Beer the Registrar of DIFC courts and the former Chairman of the British Dusiness Group.

It was interesting to hear Mark’s take on the success of Dubai as a brand and as an idea.

What I found particularly interesting, in my conversation with Mark Beer, was the idea that Dubai really needs to embrace the knowledge economy.

Yes there are free zones dedicated to ideas and yes there are many government and private universities in Dubai, but does that equate to an investment in an knowledge economy?

And if a knowledge economy is to be successful, in the long-term, it is going to have to be locally anchored.

But the question of local is problematic in a country with 80% of the population originating from elsewhere.

It is my feeling that if the knowledge economy is to be championed definition of local has to be expanded to include those expatriate that are here as well.

If you are working on ideas for Dubai but are the citizen of Canada, in my case, my ideas are local to Dubai not Canada.

Yet there are segments of society that would suggest my ideas are not local even thought they are fueled by the local experience.

Mark and I had an interesting discussion that I think frames Dubai in a different light to that we are becoming accustom to reading about in the broadsheets.

And the idea of the knowledge economy is particularly interesting.