Honest, sincere and real.

I loved his answer to the question about writers block.

Rash said that he felt like every song was his last and then the next one just seemed to arrive in his mind.

I love the sound of his music and he said that it is set to morph into a bit more deeper textures.

This is an interview that I would recommend to anyone who is looking at what they love to do and thinking of packing it in.

Sometimes all you need for a bit of inspiration is someone to take notice.

Listen to Rash Radio music at Triplew.me.

Here is the interview.

If I was to put the words fitness and models together what would you think?

What if I was to add the words bikini and stage to the mix?

Exactly!

When I knew I was going to be speaking to Nadine du Toit, Derryn, Belinda and Ilana about being fitness models I had a whole set of ideas flash through my head.

Of course seeing the stage photos of these women competing also helped to create a stereotype in my head of these ladies.

How wrong I was.

What did I think? All the wrong things but exactly what society would have me think about a women walking on a stage in a tiny bikini wearing high heels.

Instead what I met were 4 competitive, confident, funny, driven, intelligent, professional women who are very serious about health and fitness and who are also very proud of what they have achieved.

These women have embraced a healthy life style choice and transformed themselves, physically and mentally, into dynamic and very distinctly fit individuals.

And these women have taken back their femininity.

Sure that sounds odd but they really have!

These 4 women are very proud of their bodies and are not shy to show you what they have achieved.

Of course on the radio they were fully dressed and in some of the most conservative attire I have seen.

But they did bring the bikini’s and high heals to show me.

These women, like the others I have spoken to recently, were very  inspirational and not at all what I expected.

Well worth a listen here is our conversation.

This is a truly amazing conversation.

Here we have a person who has worked her way through the world of journalism, and serious journalism, to lead the way in reporting and creating programming about fashion.

There is great value in a story like this.

Honesty, hard work, passion and sticking to your goals are all things that stand out from this interview.

And then there is just the art of a great interview.

Jian Ghomesh is a great teacher, of how to do a long-form interview, something that simply is not done enough today.

Watch, learn and enjoy.

TED in Long Beach was great but it was TEDActive in Palm Springs that blew my mind.

One of my passions has been to talk to as many TEDsters on the radio, I host a talk show on DubaiEye 103.8FM, to share their ideas and passion for ideas.

Well here are those conversations with their links.

I like to call these conversations my own private TED event.

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-06-13T22_13_47-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-06-13T22_06_41-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-31T00_24_00-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-31T00_21_37-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-23T21_26_40-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-22T22_09_44-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-17T02_09_36-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-08T22_05_51-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-05-02T03_09_50-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-04-26T00_12_27-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-04-26T00_05_29-07_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-02-08T23_39_08-08_00

http://nightline.podomatic.com/entry/2011-01-31T01_36_52-08_00

Telling a good story is not only about tools but it is about the skill, in this case of interviewing.

In this piece George Stroumboulopoulos of “the Hour “on CBC demonstrates the art of a great interview using a Q&A technique.

Students watch, listen, learn and emulate.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYAUMiK04xQ[/youtube]

Sometimes, as a professor of communication and media sciences, I am uneasy talking about career options becasue who knows where you might end up with a communication degree.

Sure many, maybe even the majority of grads ,will travel along the traditional prescribed career path but more and more today students are going madly off in different and new directions.

What I have learned over the last 6 years of doing radio interviews on DubaiEye is that more often than not our career paths are anything but obvious.

Take Daniella Williams as a case in point.

Today Daniella is a very good and very successful accountant to small business.

Daniella has been called the thinking accountant and this has happened because she is far more than a book minder.

But Daniella did not get to this point following the typical carrer trajectory.

Daniella studied piano, violin and drama initially and went on to become a music teacher.

Then after 3 or so years of teaching Daniella realized that teaching was not her love and instead of sticking it out, becasue teaching is a vocation you know, she went back to school and got an accounting degree.

Today Daniella has married education and accounting as she works  with SMEs to help them learn to be successful.

Who would have thought?

And it is because of stories like this that I often find it hard to point a student down a specific career path.

I was totally inspired by Daniella and recommend listening to this interview with anyone who really wants to take their career in a different direction but is not sure if they should.

Totally 100% inspiring.

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.

I teach about media and the communication process in the UAE and also work in the media in the UAE giving me a unique perspective on this very young industry.

There is no question the media here is still developing.

But compared to the development taking place in the west, or lack of, the change in the UAE media since 1968 has been profound.

The UAE only became a country in 1971!

What is still in its infancy is the media culture of the UAE, it is still being defined.

And part of the problem with the definition of UAE media culture is the extraordinary number of expatriates, like me, who are actively moulding the media culture of the UAE as I write.

What we are living is a classic Catch-22 moment.

The media here needs people like me but also needs UAE Nationals, what is the best mix and can it be legislated or does it just have to happen?

But no matter how I look at the media in the UAE I am left smiling and excited about the type of change taking place and the pace of that change.

Yes there are economic issues to work through.

Yes there are public/private issues to consider.

Yes there are manpower challenges.

Yes we need to reboot the thought process of what media means to us here in the UAE.

It is rewarding to know that some UAE Nationals recognize the change taking place and want more.

Here is a caller from Nightline who talks about his UAE media.

UAE National talks about UAE media.

Really!

The average MBA, Ph.D, MFA, MA has had what training in the art of dealing with the global picture when it comes to micro problem solving at the organizational level?

None!

I had the opportunity to speak to 2 of the co-founders of Source Integral and they were very passionate about the need to recast the thought process of our global leaders.

The idea of PlanetInc was born out of the work of Source Integral‘s management training.

Erica Ilves and Annie McQuade talk about the idea of a more inclusive education that actually brings different ideas to a table allowing different perspectives on a problem to be incorporated into a solution.

While this training happens now for managers and leaders in government, business I wonder why the training is not happening at the high school level or earlier? Why retrofit our leaders when we can prefit them before they get into their leadership positions?

Here is the conversation! Imagine how this idea could make a difference in any corporate decision  making structure.

Do you actually care?

I do!

And like many professors I often wonder if anything I am doing is actually having an impact on the future.

By the future I mean are my students taking any of the lessons, internalizing them in some way and making use of the aggregate in the future.

Well last night I had a conversation with  2002 Zayed University graduate, one of the 1st students I taught int he UAE.

Sure this is not a statistical sample!

But there is no question that the education WE provided at Zayed University had an impact on this student, even if it was tiny, it was an impact.

Farah is doing some very clever things and has a hunger to engage in social experiments!

Listen to our conversation to hear what I am talking about!

It made me feel pretty good to know that this person thought that there was some value to the education I helped deliver.

I think we need to see and hear the product of what we do in the ivory tower a little more often!

Thanks Farah!