January 26, 2011. Istanbul Turkey. It is always nice to visit my home country, but even better to be there during the week of my birthday. The last time I had this opportunity, I was 1 years old.  My visit coincided with the US State Department’s Invest for the Future Conference.  The Invest for the Future  program focuses on towards improving the economic situation for women across Southern and Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

The conference with 150 participants from Greece, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia and Turkey began with a keynote video message from US Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton followed by a speech by US Ambassador-at- Large for Global Women’s Issues, Melanne Verveer.

My session covered the exciting Use of Technology to Scale up Business, along with my dear colleagues Bugra Karabey,  Deniz Ercosun, and Özge Sarioglu. Please find download a copy of the presentation that I delivered (sans videos). Please post your comments below or share them through the Contact form.

If you would also like the videos, please pull down the deck I presented during the Egypt Connection 2010 conference: Touchless Technology – the creative inspiration of a future today

How can technology scale your business?   Get started now with  these 6 steps!

The critical calls to action to help empower your business are as follows: 

1. If you are an entrepreneur, be sure to join WebsiteSpark for tools and offers to extend your personality and business online using the most cutting edge tools – for free! This is a global program and there is absolutely no cost to join.
2. Download the free applications in the Microsoft Web Application Gallery. We have over 35 applications, including eCommerce, Blog engines, and easy site building templates.  And they are all free!  And often you’ll find them localized to your native language. If you like an app and would like it in your native language, please let me know.
3. Attend a Web Camp in a city near you, and/or register to attend the biggest technology conference of the Middle East, Tech EdMiddle East 2011. I will be covering several sessions about web story from a Middle East & Africa point of view.
4. Extend  your reach with Social Network Optimization using Web Matrix.  In my session, I spoke of Queen Raina’s efforts to drive cultural awareness for Jordan with the Twisit Jordan project. YouTube - Twisit Jordan. Using the Web Helpers in Web Matrix, you can do the same, and have the Facebook Likes for your company or blog blended in with Bing search results!  The power of word of mouth is always stronger than any advertisement campaign.
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6. Share global. Host Local. Ensure you are claiming your market share. Host your business in country with the offers that are listed in the deck. Turkey is classic example of a country who is leveraging their web developers and human talent to create business online.  In Turkey. Most countries host in the US and Europe, causing a missed economic opportunity.  Take a look at Egypt and Turkey. Two countries with similar land mass, population and developers, and compare their market share and GDP on the web. More offers are available on the Hosting Gallery.

Microsoft presenters at the conference(from left to right): Asli Bilgin- Microsoft Developer & Platform Evangelism, MEA Web Strategy Lead, Bugra Karabey-National Technology Officer, Microsoft Turkey, Ozge Saritosun- Kurtuloglu- Business Operations Manager,MEA Communication Sector and Jeffrey Avina, MEA Citizenship Lead at the panel discussion.