DUBAI, 22 April 2007 — The three-day “Ideas.Arabia International Conference” starts today at the Al-Bustan Rotana Hotel here. It is an opportunity to share best practice and tips on how to tap and gain from employee involvement.

The “Idea of the Year” competition will hand out awards in different categories, including the “Idea Of The Year” that will recognize a suggestion adjudged the best in all areas.

Other award categories are technology, productivity, customer services, environmental, health and safety and financial. All ideas entered in the competition should have been implemented in 2006, and should have resulted in significant benefits for the organization.

Organized by Dubai Quality Group (DQG) — a non-profit organization dedicated to raising the performance level of the local business environment — in partnership with Dubai Aluminum Company Limited (DUBAL), the conference will host lectures by internationally renowned speakers.

“Dubai Quality Group is excited to see the extraordinary growth of the Ideas.Arabia Conference, and we have attracted some of the biggest industry names as sponsors in only our second year. We are delighted at the support these companies have extended to the Ideas.Arabia Conference and we look forward to maintaining our partnerships with them through the years,” Marwan Sawaleh, chairman of DQG, said.

The conference will kick off with a one-day workshop entitled “Suggestion Scheme Evaluator Training”, which will cover each area of traditional suggestion evaluation including roles and responsibilities, eligibility considerations, determination of benefits and appropriate communication methods.

“An interactive module will then be used to determine innovative approaches to each of these items. The workshop will be followed by two days of presentation sessions conducted by experts from different countries and organizations”, said Abdulqader Obaid Ali, chairman, Ideas.Arabia.

“The activities have been designed to show how participants can incorporate best practices in their own organizations. This will ultimately help them reduce evaluation time, minimize evaluation costs and increase the effectiveness of the process, benefiting both the employees and the evaluators,” Obaid Ali added.