Astrolabs launches pilot course for its Academy

The Dubai-based entrepreneurship
platform Astrolabs is set to launch
one of its latest components, the Astrolabs
Academy, which will offer a series of short,
content-intense courses meant to enhance the talent pool available
to tech startups in the region.

“Astrolabs Academy is meant to
bridge the gap of talent that any startup founder, and for that
reason, any tech company in the region, faces when they look for
talent,”says Louis Lebbos, one of
Astrolabs’ two founding partners. “The vision is for it to be the
destination for where startups/tech companies go to recruit people
who are well trained in very practical functions.”

The Academy is expected to go live
in the beginning of next year, but over the next six weeks the
Astrolabs team will be testing the waters with two pilot courses.
The first course, entitled “Navigating Google Analytics: From Setup
to Customization,”will be held on November
1st and will teach participants the ins and outs of the statistical
service via a hands-on workshop format. 

The second course, “Experience
Design Fundamentals: Foundations to Journey
Mapping,”will explore the user interface
(UI) and user experience (UX) aspects of digital design over the
course of two days. Astrolabs is bringing in two expert
practitioners from the US to lead the course.

The classes will be in-depth, but at
the same time “accessible to everyone… but they will push someone
with expertise even further,”explains
Lebbos. 

The technical skills required for tech startups to
operate effectively will be reflected by the Astrolabs Academy
course list, which will feature topics such as digital marketing,
web and mobile analytics, coding, web development, UX/UI, and big
data. There will also be business basics courses that will teach
management teams about essential business functions such as hiring,
managing talent, and the lean startup methodology.

The Astrolabs team is aiming to
develop courses and workshops that are at a “world-class
level,”says Lebbos. While the Astrolabs
team is qualified to lead classes in some topics, others, such as
the UX/UI workshop in December, will require outside experts to be
brought in. In cases such as this, practitioners with real-world
experience and success will be called upon, rather than classroom
instructors. 

There are a number of other training
options available to aspiring entrepreneurs and startup employees,
but according to Ahmad Abughosh, Astrolab’s Learning &
Development Manager, “most of the learning is either online or it’s
not technical.” 

Many of the accelerators,
incubators, and co-working spaces in the region offer various
training sessions, workshops, and
bootcamps, most of them offering
entrepreneurship basics, from branding and marketing, to accounting
and pitching. While some do offer the occasional technical workshop, which provide participants with basic
know-how in topics such as coding and hard/software development,
the majority of these sessions are non-technical in
nature.

An example of an organization
providing technical training relevant to the tech startups is
Digital Lab
Middle East, a Dubai-based digital marketing consultancy
and training institution that offers technical workshops in an
array of digital marketing topics. 

Given the Web’s countless MOOCs and
training courses, online is perhaps the most abundant source for
technical training options for the MENA region. While these are
quite convenient and typically affordable, they are, in terms of
effectiveness, hard to compare with in-depth, hands-on
workshops 

It is within this niche — physical
hands-on courses covering the whole gamut of technical skills
needed for tech startups to function — that the Astrolabs team is
trying to position the Academy.  

There certainly appears to be a need
for such an in-depth educational program focusing on relevant
technical capacities. While covering the startup communities in
Egypt and Jordan over the past year, CEOs and founders have
recounted time and time again their trouble finding adequately
skilled people to help their startups grow. Perhaps the Astrolabs
Academy can be a part of the solution to this issue.

Wamda readers wishing to
participate in either of the Astrolabs pilot courses can use the
coupon code “wamda”when purchasing
tickets to save 15% on the Google Analytics course and 10% on the
UX/UI course.

If there is a specific topic
that you would like to see covered by the Astrolabs Academy, reach
out to Astrolabs’Learning &
Development Manager, Ahmad Abughosh, at ahmad@astrolabs.me with your
suggestion.