Shuhra.com is a multimedia platform created for the discovery and promotion of talent in Middle East and North Africa, and is the first online Arab talent community.

Talented artists are invited to join Shuhra.com’s Talent Bank, with its variety of talent categories, and take advantage of all the great features a talent profile offers. Artists can fully customize the look and content of their profile page to better reflect their artistic identity.

Participants are encouraged to upload their videos, audio or photos and share them with friends and fans. The more views and “likes” a talent’s work will receive the more points they will earn. These points are added up to create a Starmeter score that reflects the participant's popularity.

As part of the Shuhra.com community, participants are offered guidance and support; and are invited to perform in Shuhra.com’s large-scale events held in different cities around the Arab World.

Arab News sat down with Kareem Domloge, founder of Shuhra.com and current chief executive officer of its mother company Primedigiko, and Mishaal Alireza, managing director of I.ZONE and one of the sponsors, to talk about the event.

Kareem Domloge: Shuhra.com aims to visit every major Arab city to be able to discover and help promote all talent. Jeddah seemed ideal for us, to be the first city, in terms of the number of talented people we have personally been able to meet. And also, given the fact that we have a base in Jeddah and sponsors like I.ZONE, Tokyo Games, JVC and AKAI had expressed interest from the start. Jeddah auditions provided a great learning curve for the Shuhra.com team and that will help us to grow and better serve all talent.

Mishaal Alireza: Well we’ve been involved from the start with Shuhra.com and to be honest, what’s not attractive as a sponsor here? You have a great target audience, a strong online presence, and strong sense of community! It was organized, and they came to us prior to the date, and it all fell into place. We are happy to have been a part of such a unique event.

Alireza and Domloge: Although we had an incredible audition, we barely touched the potential available here. A few talented people came from Riyadh and Abha as well, but I believe Jeddah has so much to offer. This is our first time, and as big as it was, it’s nowhere near where we want to get to. It’s not easy to become the No. 1 website promoting talent in the region!

As for Jeddah, with an only male audition, to say we tapped into all the available talent in Jeddah wouldn’t be telling the whole story, since females were not a part of the auditions. We hope to overcome that as soon as we can. Everyone deserves a chance, no matter how old is or what their gender is.

Alireza: For us, talent means anything creative. It could be graphic designing, photography, great vocals, music production and much more. Eventually, we want people to be employed for their talents. Think of it as a mix of a talent-promoting site, but also as a site we hope many users get work from.

Domloge: Shuhra.com caters to every type of talent possible. Every talent is considered and the voting and ranking is only a part of what the site should be used for.  More so, Shuhra.com is first and foremost an online platform, which means that a participant is recognized every day and all year round on his/her profile. They may meet new people, discover new opportunities for collaboration, garner comments from the public on their work and gather support and constructive criticism from peers all the time. It allows their talent to develop!  Shuhra.com in itself does not exploit and judge talent, we leave all opinions to the public. We are simply the platform that allows local talent to showcase their work.

Domloge: As this was Shuhra.com’s first talent audition, it is logical that we faced a few technical difficulties, but we are proud to have been blessed to work with a great team, from our organizers to our production crew that helped facilitate minor difficulties that we faced.

Domloge: Next comes the online voting and our three-part show that will show everyone what transpired during the auditions. I assure everyone that it will be a great and interesting watch! We are heading to Beirut next, God willing, after which we will continue to every major Arab city. We wish to give talented people everywhere the chance to show what they have in a fair and exciting manner.

Domloge: Voting for the Jeddah auditions will begin soon! We ask everyone to go to Shuhra.com and watch all those that auditioned and support them by voting for who they believe entertained them the most. Keeping up with Shuhra.com’s beliefs, you may vote for what you believe is the best in each category, making it fair for every talent respective of the categories they perform in.

Finally, we would like to thank everyone who took time out of their busy day to come and perform. We’d also like to thank the parents of those who showed up and supported as well as those involved in the production aspect. We are truly thankful for the support!