Everybody is been raving about Mosri Meter and the first 100 days of Morsi’s rule. So I have decided to get the opinion of the person that started it all. I threw some questions at Abbas Adel, the social entrepreneur who founded this phenomenon that got all Egyptians thinking about this new era in Egypt’s rule and this is what he had to say: –
Who is Abbas Adel?
I’m social entrepreneur, founded MorsiMeter.com, Zabatak.com initiative and MUFIX community. I work as a Senior Software developer in a Major Telecom operator in Egypt, involved intensively in youth and NGOs activities, award-winner of many national and international competitions. Speaker in many major events. A Good father and a loyal husband.
Tell us more about Zabatak. How? When? Why? What?
After the events of the 25th of Jan revolution, it has become normal to witness crime incidents on a daily basis. Some were rumors and some were true. The people’s perception of their country has improved and it’s only through collective work that we are able to achieve the desired change. Our country still suffers from corruption that’s spreading like cancer. We believe that if we worked together as we did in the revolution days, we can change everything. The collaborative efforts and the accumulating change is the key. Everybody contributes to the bigger picture of change. Therefore, we established this initiative to gather any piece of information about criminals, corruption and off-law activities that could be useful to an ordinary person, hence becoming a reliable news center, and still carries potential for further development.
To elaborate more about how Zabatak works. In a regular street, a lady is walking and suddenly a thief with a motorcycle took her bag and number of people are present on the same location. A man was able to see the criminal face features and another one was able to memorize this motorcycle plate number. A smart-phone user was able to take his picture and maybe another one was able to film the whole accident. Each one holds a piece of information which is very important for the lady and for the police. The first person who saw the criminal face maybe late for work and can’t give the lady the information he knows. The one who has the criminal picture maybe in a moving car and he will late posting it on facebook to share with friends. Every witness will use the information he holds in a non-proper way. If we are able to collect all these pieces of information in one place, we will be able to create a useful information that will help us bringing the lady’s bag and catch the thief. And this is what Zabatak aims at. We provide online and mobile service to collect information about crime and corruption from people and locate the information on Egypt’s Map.
With this information we can warn each other and locate crime spots on the map.
Zabatak is not only asking people to report anything wrong they see but we want people to help fixing what annoys them too. They can propose solutions and vote on it and we as Zabatak team take these solutions and give them to people in charge to apply them.
Who is your team?
We are friends, sharing the same vision of making Egypt safe and beautiful again. I founded Zabatak along with my wife, Naglaa Metwally. She is graduated from Faculty of Law and has a strong knowledge of social media marketing. Ali El-Hefnawy, a very talnted graphic designer, is the person behind all Zabatak and MorsiMeter’s artwork. Mostafa Raafat, a dear colleague and my partner, responsible for contacting and meeting VIPs and he is very good at making people excited about our ideas. Amr Sobhy, one of the most active people I’ve ever met, is usually handling all our PR and media interviews. He used to work as a Business Developer in a leading mobile company but is starting his own start-up at the young age of 24. Safwat Mohamed our mathematical geek, software engineer and bank of ideas, lately joined Zabatak but soon became one of the minds driving Zabatak forward. Lastly, Ahmed Salem, a pioneer software developer who created the Zabatak Android Application. We also have a group of university students who help us in various occasions; Mostafa Abdel Naser, Ahmed Nagy, Abdallah Abuouf, Ranna Mohamed and Menna El-Khateeb.
Tell us your views about the revolution, Do you think it was successful? Elaborate on your response.
The people’s perception of their country has improved and it’s only through collective work that we are able to achieve the desired change.
We believe that when people work together they can make a difference and that’s what we are trying to focus on in our projects. Corrupted people will have less better chances to operate since everybody is watching them closely. Drivers on the streets will follow driving rules for fear that they might be caught on camera. Country officials will do their work as long as they believe that people are watching them. Yes, people together can make a change and we believe that in 1-5 years we will be able to eliminate corruption and crime to a non-noticeable level and replicate our ideas in surrounding countries.
How and why did you come up with Morsi Meter?
This story has three scenes. The first one when I was talking to Safwat Mohamed about his expectation for the presidential elections; He told me that we need to have something like Obama-o-meter to monitor the progress of the elected president. I told him we can do that for the campaign commitments but we have to wait to know who will win.
The second scene was just after the announcement of the elections. I was chatting with Amr Sobhy about the idea. Amr convinced me to launch the website tonight in less that 6 hours the website was up and running!
Nagla created out social identities and Ali designed our logo. Amr and me worked on the website. On the 25th of June, 2 am we launched the website. We were about to sleep but surprisingly the website received enormous amount of traffic. And by 3am we had 10,000 fans on our Facebook page. At 5am we were all over the news. By 10am where were everywhere!!
The first one hundred days are nearly over, what do you plan on doing with the site/results after that?
We still having some internal discussion about what to do after the first 100 days. The project is obviously focused on a 3-month period of monitoring for the new president. We can use this learning experience as a launching point for longer projects. I’m pretty sure that we will come up with a great idea that serves the initial purpose of the website; changing the mindset of people from looking at the president as the “leader & savior” towards more of “The employer in his probation period”. Measuring 2 things, whether if those promises were met or not and whether people feel that on the ground or not.
You started Kahrabtak.com also, tell us more about that?
As the power cuts started to happen everywhere, we wanted to draw a map for that as we believe that there is more than over usage issues. The Prime Minister asked us to save power, however we still see street lamps operation in the morning. As long as there is a problem, we will keep our eyes on it.
So what does Zabatak have cooking in the works?
We are working on a global alliance with people from Morocco, Tunisia and Libya to replicate the same ideas we made here in Egypt to other neighboring countries. We all share the same problems of the old corrupted regime and we have the spirit and the need to make our countries a better place.
Outside the world of the Internet, what do you like to do?
I’m married with a 2 year old beautiful daughter. I work as a senior software engineer for a major telecom operator in Egypt. Part time entrepreneur working hard on my startup.
What do you think the future holds for a country like Egypt?
As long we have the spirit and the belief. Egypt will become better every day.
WE SAID THIS: You heard it people, be the chnage you want to see in the world, and Abbas Adel is definetly taking charge of that on behalf of a lot of Egyptians!