UAE Minister of Cabinet Affairs Mohammed Al Gergawi has only a single post on social media platform X. The post on his verified profile is from 2019 and that is just a dot.
On Thursday, the minister shared the story behind it at the 1 Billion Followers Summit in Dubai. “I can be philosophical and say that it is symbolic because words are made up of a million dots,” he said, in response to a question by host Ammar Taqi. “However, the real story is completely different.”
Gergawi then went on to explain how Twitter founder Jack Dorsey flew to Dubai to meet him. “At the time, my team said it would not be nice to meet him without a Twitter account of my own,” he said. “I tried to argue but they wouldn’t listen to me. So, I started the account and put out one tweet. Based on that, they verified my profile.”
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Once the meeting was done, Gergawi wanted to delete his profile. “I am not a social media kind of person,” he said. “I am an analyst. I analyse things. Social media is not my forte and I didn’t want to be on it. However, my team refused to let me do it. So, I changed that single tweet that I had and simply put a dot in its place.”
Gergawi’s session, titled Government and New Media, was also attended by Minister of State for Artificial Intelligence Omar Al Olama and Minister of State for Advanced Technology Sarah Al Amiri in the audience.
Despite not being an active social media user, Gergawi had some words of advice for content creators. “It is important to remember that content creation is a fast-paced process,” he said.
“Success is quick to come and so is the possibility of failure. So, people must have their feet on the ground and remain humble.”
He also reminded content creators that they have a responsibility towards their families, countries and society at large. “They should have positive and constructive content,” he said.
“They can make or break societies. They can cause rifts between communities. So, it is a very big responsibility.”
Earlier in the day, Saeed Al Gergawi, vice-president of Dubai Chamber of Digital Economy, gave a presentation about why content creators should pick the city as their base. “This city is in constant challenge with itself to make things better,” he said. “The Dh150 million fund for content creators speaks volumes about what the country is trying to do. It not only creates the ecosystem for content creators but also equips them with the right tools.”
He added how Dubai’s creators’ economy would contribute to the GDP of the city. “The Dubai Creative Economy Strategy aims to grow cultural and creative sectors to 5 per cent of the GDP,” he said.
“The content creator’s economy is the soul of the digital economy. Our role is to be able to help you to thrive in Dubai.”
He said Dubai’s policies have begun to bear fruit. “In the past five years, we have seen an exponential increase in talent in the country,” he said. “Dubai is becoming one of the very few cities where you can hire anyone from anywhere across the world. The quality of talent we are seeing in very high.”