Updated! Have you checked it out yet? No? Then check it out habayeb (that’s multiple of habeebee). http://www.youtube.com/iluvqatar

Since launching it, it’s reached almost 650,000 views, but the really cool thing is that we’re getting some awesome community submissions! I really do want to see more vloggers, animators, comedy, anything really, on YouTube. Here are a few of the latest submissions:

ILQ has always been about the community. We have always loved showing what everyone can do to make Qatar a great place to work and live. With our new home at Katara, we were only just on the tip of the dunes (No icebergs as we are nowhere near a place that has snow )

Katara has been buzzing over the past months with many activities, and they have partnered up with ILoveQatar for a giveaway. What could that be? How about 2 pairs of VIP tickets for Akram Khan Company’s ‘Vertical Road’ show as part of our ILQ sweepstakes? We’re giving two people out there a chance to win these highly coveted VIP tickets that puts you in prime seating to marvel at this show. You don’t want to miss this show, especially when it features music from acclaimed composer Nitin Sawhney (You’ll remember his performance from DTFF 2010)

How can you participate? It’s quite simple! We’re running this sweepstakes on Twitter.

Just follow these simple rules if you want a chance to win:
1. Participant must be a resident of Qatar.
2. You must be following @KataraQatar for your entry to count.
3. In addition to following, you must RT the giveaway tweet from @KataraQatar to enter into the draw.
4. You can also tweet about the sweepstakes, as long as it contains ‘@KataraQatar‘ and #AKC (We will be monitoring this hashtag for entries as well). This will count if and only if you have fulfilled (2).
5. The sweepstakes will last for 3 days.
6. Winner will be contacted directly via Direct Message and then announced on Twitter.
7. Winner must collect tickets 2 days after it is declared. Otherwise, another winner will be selected.
8. Employees of Katara and their families cannot participate in this sweepstakes.

What are you waiting for? Head over to @KataraQatar and follow them so that you can RT when they post it.

I wanted to give you all a reminder on something fun we’re partnering with Luminescence events to put together. You’ve probably already seen all the tweets, posts, listings, and all that fun stuff, but since we’re getting so close to the event, it’s about time that we brought this back to the top of people’s minds.

There’s a lot of serious stuff in the world, so when Luminescence events told us they had this great idea, we had to be a part of it. It’s a chance for all of us to feel youthful again AND break a world record while we’re at it! It’s an attempt to break the world record for the largest game of Hide & Seek and it’s at Katara too! Isn’t that great? So come on down, and join us! Shout outs go to all the sponsors and partners including Katara, Qatar Red Crescent, and Stenden!

Hide & Seek Twitter
Hide & Seek Facebook
Event Listing on ILQ 

So Dine Out Doha has been getting off to a great start and the reviews and comments are starting to come in! Exciting stuff!

If you haven’t been yet, click here for Dine Out Doha. Be sure to start rating, commenting, posting micro-reviews or even submitting your full fledged restaurant reviews too!

Now you’ll remember we launched what we called the Beta of I Love Qatar at http://beta.iloveqatar.net (it’s actually an alpha). We did something special which was taking the link live even though it was still being built! We did that so that people could watch the site come together! Now the great news is that we should be around 2 and half weeks away from completion!

What’s even more exciting is that we’re going to revealing the awesome new MyLife function as well as the new ILQ Originals which will host a great amount of original content too! We’ve got some great Qatari comics, Online videos, skits, and some stuff that’s under wraps for the moment too.

In the mean while, you can go ahead and sign in (or sign up) in the beta section of ILQ and play around by posting events in the new event section or even start posting in the new forums.

(Don’t worry, you won’t lose anything once we remove the ‘beta’ tag from it).

Anyway! That’s my update!

It’s been a tiring three days at QITCOM but I just had to blog about this as soon as I got home!

iLoveQatar.net won best start up for 2011 and I won Qatar’s Top Entrepreneur as well! I’m so honored  for winning but even more so I feel energized and appreciate the acknowledgement that the people gave. Not only was it a panel of judges that judged the various projects but the public were the ones who voted.

It was something unexpected.

I’m disappointed with the fact that I was unable to attend the Gala Dinner. It had started at 8pm however I was wrapping up the ILQ booth at QITCOM, left at 8:30 and then was stuck in traffic for 30 minutes before deciding to go off to Central Lounge with Bassam Al Ibrahim (iLoveQatar.net’s co-founder), Moh’d Al Ibrahim (an awesome Director or Producer from DFI), and Josh Weiner (A seriously impressive entrepreneur himself!). We were recapping everything we went through and thinking about all the new ideas we had just shared with everyone (more to come on that!).

Earlier in the day we were Interviewed by BBC World, had an interview with QF Radio and I was in the newspaper for unveiling Vodafone’s latest project SouqIt.com.

We also put together a little video showing off the other start ups and business in Qatar and interviewed some great people ourselves. On the first day of Qitcom, the Minister of Business and Trade came on down to our booth along with Sheikha Mayasa, and commented on how proud they were of iLoveQatar.net and even gave us some suggestions too.

I feel so pumped! I can’t wait to show everyone the final video of what we put together for Qitcom. It truly was an amazing exhibition, you would never know that this is the first time it’s ever happened in Qatar from how buzzed it was. And I’m not just saying that because I won an award!

Qatar really is the place to be right now.

Update: I’ve just been told that we’ve actually won FOUR awards. One for Best Social Media website in Qatar and the other for a brand new idea we have to help match quality Qataris with companies in Qatar.

Blog post by Josh from the ILQ team over at ArabNet in Beirut.

The first day at Arabnet is in the books. The day’s theme was focused on addressing the big question: How the Middle East region can better support an entrepreneurial ecosystem. According to Peter Kellner, Managing Partner of Richmond Capital, a global VC, it all starts with education. Universities are where entrepreneurs are created. After education, its about mentorship. Tareq from Endeavor Global, a global non-profit that promotes high impact entrepreneurship, put it another way:

“We’ve found that two things are required for a succesful entrepreneurial ecosystem – 1. the right entrepreneur and 2. deep and tailored support. The biggest barrier to entrepreneurship isn’t capital.”

Interesting stuff, and encouraging news for Qatar. Education City and Qatar University are churning out highly skilled graduates every year. Incubators are popping up for seed stage startups. How can Qatar offer “deep and tailored support” in addition to capital, back-end services, and office space?

Here’s a quick explanation of the new toolbar that’s been added to ILQ!

Hey there all,

After a little bit of an issue someone had with ILQ, I just want to make things VERY clear. iLoveQatar.net cannot be bought and ILQ is an independent company that has one goal. To make Qatar a better place. A group of us simply want to bring back the old way of doing business in the country. With honor and trust. It’s all about partnership and helping each other achieve our own goals.

Now ILQ partners up with and takes sponsorship from ANY company in Qatar that wants to help ILQ make Qatar a better place. What are some of the things we do?

Well through our volunteers group (run by an awesome guy named Speed), where we partnered up with and joined hands with Qatar Living, RedBull, Sigma Paints, Barangay BQ, Vodafone, and others, we drove around Qatar on a hot Saturday morning and passed out bottles of cold water and caps to labourers in the streets! It was our way of showing appreciation to the people who break their backs to build Qatar!

With whatever ILQ can afford (yes we don’t have a huge budget despite the brand becoming popular and well known) we sponsor events and groups like Think Pink (breast cancer awareness campaign), Wear Something Yellow (anti-racism campaign), QAWS, Dogs in Doha, QPCA, and Doha Mums to name a few.

Is it all charity? No it’s not. We want Qatar to be a fun place, where all the people in Qatar can enjoy life here in their own way! So we sponsored and supported events like Tiesto, David Guetta, Montel Jordan, The Red Carpet, Glow, The Peppermint Experience, and even a national day event!

When we’re not doing something entertaining. We’re doing something for the community. We arrange social gatherings. Two of the big ones are ‘The Souq Seekers’ and ‘The Pearl Divers. This is to help people make friends get to know each other and for those that are new to the country, have a group of people that can make them feel comfortable.

Sometimes we’ll be approached by small groups of people that need some help so that they can enjoy life a bit more here. A group of  women needed sponsorship so that they could enter into the Expat Women’s Volleyball tournament and needed uniforms, ILQ was there and continuing the trend of supporting sports a group of young guys wanted to enter the Expat Basketball Tournament, ILQ was there to help them out as well!

Now the community is doing stuff for itself too! A great guy who’s alias is HPT on the forums started a FREE Tennis group (check out the forums for more), another forum member named TimeBandit started a Photographic society, another forum member named FlipFloper does designs and artwork for people, and the list goes on and on (I’m sorry that I can’t list all the wonderful people that are helping to make ILQ what it is today actually!!!)

We also pass out goodie bags at social gatherings. We can’t afford a lot but if it’ll make people happy and spread ILQ and its vision, we do our best to have some stuff ready. So what do you get in an ILQ goodie bag that we pass out at events? The bags were paid for by Dr. Hassan’s medical center so one side says ILQ and the other Dr. Hassan’s medical center, you get a bumper sticker that has the Vodafone speechmark and the ILQ logo (VF paid for that), you get some ILQ heat hearts and squishy balls (we paid for that), you get a speaker dock from Barzan Digital, and the list goes on.

So some people might think that Vodafone and ILQ are pretty close. Well it’s simple, they’ve always been there to support and sponsor the stuff we do around Qatar! If Qtel or Virgin for example wanted to help us we’d gladly work with them as well. In fact, we WANT to work with them.

So what’s the relationship with Vodafone? Well, they bought ads on the website. they paid for our booth, they paid for co-branded stickers, they paid for micro-sites whenever we had a fun idea like www.ramadan-mubarak.com and that sort of stuff.
Who are some of the other advertisers and partners? Global DJs, Starlink, Qatar Airways, Olympic Committee, ICTQatar, Lava, Urban Stars, LoveSac, Barzan Digital, King Koil, Arte Legno, and Dr. Hassan’s Medical center to name a few.

Dr. Hassan’s medical center wanted to spread health awareness amongst children so they gave us some coloring books which we distributed to kids (along with ILQ beach balls) when we supported the Pakistan Women’s Eid Bazaar.

We also tried to build a fantastic, friendly, online community that not only helps each other, but supports each other. Are you an expat and need information about the country that you’re planning on moving to or have just moved to? Well ILQ’s got a pretty nice and light guide too!

So who else wants to partner with us? Well we’re very excited that MTV and Nickelodeon support our vision. They’ve flown out to Qatar to not only see if they can help Qatar and the region develop but to also support our vision believe it or not! We’re VERY VERY proud of that.

So moral of the story? ILQ is loyal to Qatar and it’s various communities. If you are from a company that cares as much as we do, then please hold our hands. We need all the help we can get. Supporting us can be in the form of helping us with events and charitable causes, it can be in the form of placing an advert on the site (because we use the revenue generated off of ads to keep going), or you could even donate some cobranded goodies

So who’s in? or is ILQ a stupid idea? Am I just fighting a losing battle…..

Hey there all! I just thought I’d let people know of the many ways people can support ILQ!

1) Clicking on ads! Yep, the easiest way is to just click on banners! ILQ relies on sponsors, so if you click on banners then that helps us not only maintain the site but also generate funds to sponsor more events!

2) Spreading the word. Let people know about the fantastic community that iLoveQatar.net is.
People can make friends here, find answers on the forums, check out the classifieds, find out the latest events in Qatar, read up on Qatar related news, join one of the largest friend networks there is (Qfriends) and read up on a great guide!

3) Adding ILQ buttons in your signature! Create a button and add it onto your signature or blog! We’ve also made some buttons for you to use here http://www.iloveqatar.net/linkus.php

4) Share your articles and opinions. Why not write and share articles on ILQ’s forums. We’ll be launching a dedicated section out of the forums but until then, you can write reviews or even share some funny stories!

5) Link exchange. If you’ve got a site, ILQ would love to know about it. We don’t mind people linking to their sites on the forums (as long as they either link back or participate on ILQ).

6) Volunteering! We participate and sponsor loads of events in Qatar. It could be something charitable (like a red crescent event or doing something nice for the labourers) OR something more entertaining (like helping out at the David Guetta or Akon events). Yep not only are you helping out the community but you’re also

7) Updating the guide! If you spot something that isn’t right or something that should be added. Let us know! Drop us a line at contact@iloveqatar.net and we’ll get the guide updated.

8) Install the alexa toolbar from (http://www.alexa.com) and then set ILQ as your homepage. [www.iloveqatar.net]

Do you prefer setting google as your homepage? Here’s an ILQ version! http://www.iloveqatar.net/search

Want to set google as your homepage AND help the environment? Then set http://www.iloveqatar.net/search/black.html as your homepage.

Read this article http://blog.iloveqatar.net/2009/11/energy-efficient-google/ for how you’re helping the environment!

I’m sure you guys can come up with other ways of helping out! Whether it be partnering, sticking stickers around, or just helping out on the forums or our facebook group (which as of today has over 8,400 members!)

Oh! Don’t forget to ‘Like’ ILQ’s Fan page http://www.facebook.com/iloveqtr and Join the ILQ Facebook group! http://www.facebook.com/khalifas?v=wall&story_fbid=158935400797225&po=1#!/group.php?gid=36900681716

Although I’m ill with a cold. I figured I’d be a bit more productive than just laying around watching tv. Tomorrow is the ILQ team meet-up so I figured I’d at least have a nice web update to share.

You can now view the spotlighted events on the front page. Besides the list of events, we’ll be highlighting major events or events that are special to ILQ.

We’ve also gone ahead and added a newsletter sign up box to the left of the site! (I’ll be adding one to the right on blog).

Want to sign up? Just click on this link and it’ll take you to the sign up page.  It’s called The Buzz http://eepurl.com/-WUE

Don’t worry, you won’t get spammed and we will never share your email address with anyone. You’ll get a monthly digest from ILQ that lists events that are coming up, note worthy blog and forum posts and maybe a few vouchers or offers here and there!