ABOUT / ESLAM EL REFAE
I use technology and culture to move people, brands and organizations toward better choices and better things.
01 / It began with the internet as a new cultural space
I entered digital in 2006 as a blogger and technology writer. I was interested in the tools, but more interested in what people did with them: how ideas travelled, how communities formed and why some things became part of everyday life while others disappeared. That curiosity became work across digital marketing, audience growth, media, user-generated culture, products, software, SEO, entrepreneurship, consulting, agency leadership and public-sector transformation.
02 / THE QUESTION
I learned that valuable material does not create value by itself. It needs judgment: what matters, how it relates to everything around it, who needs it and what form will help them use it. That is why my work now sits between AI, content and knowledge.
03 / Technology becomes culture
Over time I learned that technology stops being “technology” surprisingly quickly. It becomes a habit, a business model, a new expectation, a way of speaking, a new kind of job, or a different way to organize life and work. That is why I am interested in technology and culture together. You cannot understand one without eventually confronting the other.
04 / AI makes that question larger
It changes not only which tasks software can perform but the economics of creating, learning, analysing, communicating and building. My advantage is not that I discovered technology when generative AI arrived. It is that I have watched technological waves move from novelty to infrastructure—and worked inside the businesses, products and audiences they changed.
05 / FOUR MODES
I do not see these as separate professions. They are four modes of the same practice.
I read widely and connect things across disciplines.
I look for useful signals and place them in context.
I turn understanding into words, products, concepts and experiences.
I care about what survives contact with reality.
06 / A career in practice
My career has included helping grow Bey2ollak’s user base from roughly 700,000 to more than 1.3 million; co-founding Bteekh and Egyncy; working on international growth for Atlassian products at Infosysta through content and SEO; taking on marketing and product-development responsibilities around App4Legal; transforming Brandria from a production boutique into a broader digital agency; and directing digital transformation work for CAPMAS. Different experiences, one discipline: an idea is not complete until it works in reality.
See selected work07 / The perspective I bring
My background in sociology and media shaped how I look at audiences: not as demographic boxes, but as people operating inside histories, social structures, language, aspirations and contradictions. I combine that perspective with years of working across products, audiences, content and organizations in Egypt and MENA.
08 / What I believe
It changes behavior and expectations.
Ignore it and supposedly universal ideas stop working.
Knowing what deserves attention matters more as information gets cheaper.
A document that refuses to choose is not strategy.
You understand an idea differently once you try to build it.
They are the point of the work.
09 / WHAT I AM BUILDING NOW
I help people understand change well enough to make better things and better choices. Sometimes that is consulting. Sometimes a product, essay, prototype, workshop or conversation that changes how a problem is seen. The form changes. The work underneath it does not.
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