Inside ZAKA's AI Automation Event in Doha

A special thank you to our Country Lead in Qatar, Tarteel Emam, for writing this blog and covering the event, conveying the real spirit of it.

140+ Showed Up: Inside ZAKA's "Automate Repetitive Tasks With AI"

A chatbot answers when you ask. An agent gets to work without being asked twice. That was the spirit in the room on June 19th, when ZAKA, GDG Lusail, and Build with AI brought Doha together for an afternoon built around one idea: stop doing the boring work yourself, and start letting AI do it for you. The event, “Automate Repetitive Tasks With AI,” ran from 2:00 to 4:00 PM at Nestwork Grand Hamad. On paper it was a talk. In practice, it was something closer to a community showing up to figure out, together, what AI automation actually looks like once you move past the chatbot box.

The Turnout

More than 140 individuals actually walked through the door, a strong show-up rate for a Friday afternoon session, and a clear signal that “automation” has stopped being a buzzword in Doha and started being a question people genuinely want answered.

Who was in the room

The audience wasn’t one type of person. University students sat next to working professionals. A few school students showed up too, alongside founders, developers, and people simply curious about where AI is headed next. That mix turned out to be one of the best parts of the day , more on that below.

What Actually Happened

The session combined a talk and an open Q&A, followed by networking. Christophe Zoghbi, founder of ZAKA, led the session, breaking down what it actually takes to move from “asking AI for help” to “letting AI run the work.” Magomed Aliev, team lead at GDG Lusail, opened the session and introduced the collaboration between the two communities. The event was organized by ZAKA, with Google on board as a sponsor alongside GDG Lusail and Build with AI, a three-way collaboration that brought together ZAKA’s hands-on AI community with Google’s developer ecosystem in Qatar.

The Team Behind the Scenes

None of this runs without people working the room. ZAKA’s ambassador team handled photography and interviews throughout the event, led by country lead Tarteel Emam, alongside ambassadors Ebnomar Abdullh, Abdul Basit Ali (UDST), Kel Doliente (HBKU), Mohammad Imaad Furqan (CMU), and Omar Elboushi (QU) representing four different universities across Qatar’s education-city ecosystem.

What People Actually Got Out of It

Ask anyone who stayed for the networking portion and the answer is the same: connections. People from completely different industries met each other, swapped notes, and walked away having learned about AI tools and approaches they hadn’t encountered before. In a space that’s evolving as fast as AI automation, that kind of cross-industry exposure is often worth as much as the talk itself.

What's Next

The energy isn’t stopping here. GDG Lusail is already planning a hackathon for July, a natural next step for a room full of people who just spent an afternoon learning what AI agents can actually do.

The Bottom Line

Most people still think of AI as something you chat with. The room at Nestwork Grand Hamad left thinking about AI as something you delegate to a system that plans, acts, and follows through, not just one that replies. With 140+ people, a cross-university ambassador team, and a hackathon already on the calendar for July, this felt less like a one-off talk and more like the start of a habit: showing up to learn how to make AI do the boring work, so people can focus on what matters.