Today I chat with Anass – a good friend that I got to know him back in 2016, Anass was born and raised in the Netherlands, originally from Morocco. He studied all over Europe, and the UK. I talk with him about Identity, languages, educations systems and working in software companies like Google & Atlassian.  Also, we got a bit into business & marketing,  and finally we talked about his experience being a digital nomad for 5 months. I personally got a lot from this conversation, I hope you will have the same. If you have any feedback or comments, feel free to hit me up on twitter @akhmees . One more thing before you go. There are a few audio glitches that shouldn’t affect your experience. Enjoy the discussion

Follow Anas & Abdulrahman  

Questions I asked Anass: (My notes – not refined)

You come from a very diverse background, what are the advantages & disadvantages for such a thing? Did it give you a unique perspective on how you perceive life? Down side of it? Does it impact your identity?  e.g: you feel lost – You may not be considered as a dutch or a Moroccan – you have mixed stuff from the both worlds  know you speak multiple languages with different levels of proficiency, and I have a few questions related to that, let’s start with the first one What languages you had to learn because of where you grow up / studied? What languages you learned out of interest? Hypothetically speaking, If you have to keep two languages – what those languages would be? Did it change the way you were perceived?  Most importantly, in In two settings: 1- In a day to day settings ( e.g: Because you spoke that language, you are treated differently – e.g-  2- In business settings ( Because you speak a specific language, you were able to connect, create a personal connection etc. ) While digging into your profile, I’ve noticed that you have studied in the Netherlands for undergrad and in the UK for the postgraduate … Can talk briefly on the main differences between the two education systems? If you go back in time Would you change majors? would you choose somewhere else? Since you studied marketing in the postgrad and later on you joined the industry in Google and Atlassian : Did you see a gap between what’s been taught and what the industry wants? Business & Marketing as a taught subjects, there’s a debate on whether A-Marketing & business people are suitable and can be plugged-in regardless of their expertise in the field –  B-Engineers/product owners and you teach them business/marketing and they would be better fit – What’s your take on that? Is this true for all companies, or it depends?  Regarding the work environment Can you talk about the main differences by working in Atlassians vs working for Google? Mostly about the  size – how does it feel working for a company with 3000 employees vs 10’s of thousands of employees  I always interested about the brand and how people react to your credentials in professional environment – so I guess my question, Do you feel  having Google on the resume opened doors for you? Moving to my favorite topic, and it actually reminded me how we met – at the end of July 2016 , you left an empty desk at a nice office in Amsterdam to work and travel around the world – AKA digital nomad  How long it lasted? Walks us a bit on the reason behind doing that? What did you learn about yourself? What your thoughts on the future of remote work?

At the end of 2017, I was visiting Dahab, a small town on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt. One day I was looking for a coffee, and a neat restaurant caught my attention, it wasn’t clear what they were serving, so I asked the guy who was standing in the entrance. His name is Karim, and he told me about his new restaurant called Zanooba where they serve slow-cooked food, and he asked if I wanted to try it. I said why not! Later in the evening, I stopped by the restaurant, and while I was waiting for the food, Karim and I started to talk, and he told me briefly how he quietted his job and moved to Dahab, that night I ended up spending 4 hours in the restaurant. Today I decide to call Karim and talk with him about Dahab, leaving the cooperate job, slow cooking and decision making in life!

Links:

Zanooba FB page

Abdulrahman’s twitter

Today I chat with Dag Vegger. An engineer and adventurous. I met Dag in Florence, Italy where the family and I were having dinner, and my son Abdullah were playing and making a lot of noise. Dag was sitting next to us, and he was reading on Kindle during the dinner. I approached Dag afterward and wanted to apologize for the sound that my son made and ended up chatting with Dag for half an hour about folding bikes, books and so many stuff! He shared his blog with me that evening, and I spent the night reading his stories, where I concluded ……. this guy is impressive! Today I chat with Dag about travel, minimalism, folding bikes and books.

 

Dag blog:

https://dagsresa.wordpress.com/

If you have any comments or feedback, feel free to hit me up on twitter @akhmees

Today I chat with Chris Saden. A teacher, an engineer, and student. I came to know Chris when I enrolled in Udacity Data Analytics Nanodegree where Chris created along with Facebook data scientist a module called “explanatory data analytics with R”. It was one of my favorite modules in the Nanodegree and Chris did an amazing job guiding us through the course, that led me to check out his background, which was surprisingly unconventional. He comes from science & art background, he used to be a teacher for high school students and then joined Udacity to create a couple courses in data, math and other stuff. Today I chat with him about teaching, creating an impact and learning how to learn