Mens et Manus In Saudi

The Tamara Hackathon has just finished. We were surprised how well it went. In 48 hours, 36 teams built AI-generated ads using code and models.

Most hackathons I’ve seen in Saudi don’t end this way. They end with slide decks. I sometimes call them ideathons. Because the part that makes engineering different, which is using your hands, isn’t there. This time it was.

I have been worried about this beforehand. What if the whole thing ended up like the others... a couple of nice ideas on slides, but nothing you could actually run? That fear was always there in the back of my mind. But what happened surprised us. All the teams built.

One of the most interesting things we noticed was how much changes when people are pushed to build. Usually young people are told to present ideas. To talk about them. To plan for some distant future. Rarely to actually make them. And because they’re not asked to make anything, they start to think that talking is the same as doing. But it isn’t.

When you make them use their hands, the difference is immediate. They struggle, but they learn. They find problems they never imagined when it was just a theory. And when they finally produce something that runs, you can see it on their faces. They’ve crossed into a new way of thinking.

I think about this a lot. Maybe too much. I’ve been obsessed for years with MIT’s motto: Mens et Manus. It means “Mind and Hand.” I remember talking about it with Mohammed bin Jalwi when we were first starting Rowad. you would wonder why did this motto matter so much? Why did it stick in my head?

I think it’s because it explains something I’d been feeling for years. That knowledge doesn’t mean much until you try it with your hands. You can read all you want. You can plan and predict. But until you sit down and try to build it, you don’t know.

Even the word engineering points to the same thing. It comes from the Latin ingenium: to apply intellect to shape the world. That’s what engineering was always supposed to be. Not just clever ideas. Not just talk. But using your mind through your hands to make something real.

It’s strange to think how much we’ve drifted away from that. Our whole systems are built around theory... schools, competitions, conferences. Most of them reward talking about what you’ll do rather than what you’ve done. And eventually people will adapt. They get good at talking... and selling. But it doesn’t make them builders.

A hackathon like this flips that. Suddenly the only thing that matters is what you can show. Not how good was your idea. Just whether you made something that works.

Of course one hackathon isn’t going to change the culture overnight. I’d be suspicious if it could. But that’s not why it matters. What matters is that it shows what’s possible when builders are pushed to create. And that matters more than it looks.

Because the problem isn’t that people here lack talent. It’s that the culture pushes them toward theory. Toward talk. Toward ideas.

That’s why I will keep coming back to this idea. If we want a great tech ecosystem, we have to build a culture of using our hands. That’s what Rowad is trying to do. And this hackathon gave us a glimpse of what that could look like..

#StartByBuilding

Notes

[1] The Latin word ingenium means to apply intellect to shape the world. It’s the root of “engineering.”

[2] Thanks to Tamara, and especially to Abdulmajeed Alsukhan. From the start he believed in this hackathon. He has always believed in finding talent and pushing them to act. Under his leadership Tamara hasn’t just excelled as a fintech, it has also been willing to test, to support the tech community, and to do it from a place of real conviction.

Thanks also to my friend Hashim Alsharif at Tamara. He was the one who kept pushing for this hackathon from the very beginning. I remember how unsure we were at first. What if it didn’t work? Hashim never let go of the idea. He’s a fanatic, and that’s exactly what made it work.

[3] Thanks to Mohammed Aljalwi, who has been there through this whole journey. A great mind, and a friend. Rowad is proud to have him. He was there at the very beginning, when we first started talking about Mens et Manus. And he’s been there in everything that’s followed since.