Traveling Geeks

T.G.: Bloggers, entrepreneurs, women

On Tuesday, had a chance to talk with a broader range of Israeli women bloggers and tech VCs and entrepreneurs. Some pictures in advance of real words.
Brasov . peta dunia satelit

Garage Geeks, Bloggers, and More

Geeks and Heroism in the Holy Land

Our little ragtag TravelingGeek posse has had quite a time this week. Through our array of experiences – from the unsinkable Sarah Lacy battling what may well be Pneumonia and the startling experience Craig Newmark had while visiting Seambiotic – the wandering geeks have bobbed and weaved through minor adversity, managing to maintain a mostly jovial energy throughout.

But unexpected experience is part and parcel of life here, and I believe are also central to why, as one of my TravelingGeek compatriots, Robert Scoble, commented today, Israel is probably the only place outside of Silicon Valley where the pulse of entrepreneurship beats as powerfully.

From where I sit (which I should mention is on a brand new bus that the Israeli Government got the TravelingGeeks today for our trip to Jerusalem!), it’s clear why innovation and entrepreneurship thrive here.

It’s about fear … or perhaps better to say, lack thereof. Brasov . peta dunia satelit .

sarah the hero!

me rescuing scoble’s camera. believe it or not, he left it at the restaurant! it’s a facebook photo so hopefully the link works… Brasov . peta dunia satelit

TG: Rambam Health Care Campus, Haifa

Talking with the spokesperson for Rambam, the big medical center for northern Israel; learning that there’s a diversity here in staff–Druse, Moslem, Jewish, Christian–more pronounced than in some other areas; there are more Russians here than Arabs, the spokesperson says; you can see the northern border/frontier(Lebanon). The city is more secular than Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, there’s lots of high tech and everyone goes to the beach (this is the hospital spokesman snapshot of the city.)

Like Palo Alto, the city has a high tech center, a big hospital and a technical university; there’s a 2004 Nobel Prize winner in biochemistry–Faculty is also doing interesting work in regenerative medicine (like growing bones back…), as well as in treatment of stress and trauma (understandably, this is the border center…)

Listening to this preso, I understand how irrevocably I am a geek; prototyping medical instruments, treatments and protocols grabs my attention, even when the data is way outside my field; the whole process of exploration, analysis, testing, and development is always compeling.

We’re also hearing their preso on “Medicine Under Attack” –there’s a short film (and lots on the web)–The hospital was treating patients and under threat of missle attacks–this is a huge part of the historical memory of the place, and a history of which they are very proud in terms of the service they delivered.

(Susan sez: I’m a newbie visitor here, and yet I’m noticing that no one in the film is visibly Arab….am I being a total nickpicker to notice this? he staff is clear everyone participated in delivering care and was brave and comitted, serving the Gaza  and other areas as well as the city. Is it a valid observation? I have no idea–the dedication of the medical staff in the film, despite the terrible dangers, is amazing.)

(Added note: There’s the wish to stay here and learn more, talk more, understand the moving stories, the great science, the lessons of war I know I don’t understand at all, but there’s no time for that today; this is a footnote in a lesson I have barely started to learn and may never full experience.)

And another note: This hospital keep giving service to the community and the soldiers 24/7 during the war–that is an amazing thing.)

Rambam’s Trauma Care in Peace Time & WAR Time

From chips to healthcare, we leave Zoran in Haifa and drive north to Rambam, one of Israel’s five major hospitals and the only tertiary care center serving the northern third of the country. They take ‘everyone’ in, so an Israeli soldier could be lying next to an Arabic terrorist. IDF soldiers, UN and US Sixth Fleet troops have all passed through these doors. Some never leave.

The center was named after Rabbi Moshe Ben-Maimon “the RAMBAM,” the greatest Jewish physician of ancient times.

A photographer follows us all into a large overly air conditioned room (I think Israelis ‘think’ that yanks need to have rooms at subzero temperatures because its so hard to find a public space in the states that isn’t “iced”…). It turns out that he typically shoots body parts during an operation.

Rambam’s Director of Public Affairs David Ratner talks to our group. We learn a bit about its history before we get the ‘emotional story.’ It was built in 1938 by the British as a government military hospital. They now take in roughly 83,000 annually, and there are 120,000 emergency department visits and 44,000 surgical procedures.

All of this is handled by only 700 physicians; 23% of these doctors are Jewish, Muslum and Christian Arabs. Located only 35 kilometers from the Lebanese border, they have gained international recognition in trauma medicine since they took care of so many wounded during war time. They’re also making significant progress in stem cell and genetic research.

They host a trauma program four or five times a year where doctors from around the world can come and learn ‘best practices’ of what the Rambam medical team learned while under attack.

When missiles started hitting in June 2006, patients were admitted to Rambam from various sources: from deadly missile attacks in the immediate vicinity, from other hospitals unable to handle the injuries and from helicopters who were bringing in wounded from the border. Today, they treat a lot of people from the West Bank. Arabs and Jews. This is not an issue.

The medical center is also located between two navy bases. During times of peace, there is an area that is being used as a parking lot. During war time, it would only take 72 hours for them to turn this lot into a place where they can treat an additional 750 people.

Trauma comes to them in many forms. David reminds us that a bus accident full of injured children is far worse than three soldiers who have been shot.

Rambam is also doing a lot of work cardiac tissue engineering. Rambam and Technicon are both working on combining cardiac stem cells and polymer to generate artificial cardiac contracting sheet.

This center deserves more recognition than it has received worldwide – perhaps not enough people know. The Rambam Healthcare Center an amazing example of co-existence in Israel and how life ‘could be.’

Israel: Start up energy to spare

In some ways, spending this week in israel is overwhelming; there’s just so much to absorb and assimilate, and I have so little context for it all. Sephardic traditions, Arab traditions, European traditions–I have no sense how they bump up against one another and how the big dose of American culture mixes it all up.

On another level, the tech world here–especially the web 2.0 corner–seems amazingly familiar.The passionate entrepreneurs, problem-solving engineers, and thoughtful VCs I’m meeting are all familar with Silicon Valley culture and building applications on a global scale (have to, Israel is such a small country).

Some of the start-ups teams that I’ve met that have me particularly energized include Pandora competitor and personalized music service meemix, where CEO Gil Shlang, Chief Scientist Dr. Ricardo Tarrasch and some kick ass musicologists/editors seem to be going at it the right way
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Also impressed with the folks at  Work Light, where marketing guy Yonni Harif is building interest in a lightweight and secure application layer that can manage document access and security from within the Facebook environment (and all sorts of other cool things, including secure RSS).

And of course my friend and mobile entrepreneur  Eran Ahronson is inspiring..nothing like building one company after another..inspiring to see someone stay the course and be smart about it.

In other words, there is great start up energy here, with lots of eager developers, free floating VCs and all the talent to support that. (And are there many women-owned companies, especially technical ones? Hate to say it, but the answers seems to be…not.)

Note: Coming from Silicon Valley, it is interesting to see how knowledgeable everyone is
about our little bubble and how much the geeks we’re meeting adore and respect Scoble. For them, he’s both what the aspire to be and the man on the street–and he’s just as gracious and engaged as can be, another inspiring lesson in focus. domain owner dns information . where is domain hosted . domain dns server . ip tech info i cloud web archive . website down . apache web server word cloud . English to Armenian . Brasov Restosundsecge . peta dunia satelit

Travelling Geeks: Visiting Zoran, Haifa

Our geeky roadshow is at Zoran, a Haifa/Sunnyvale company that does digital media chips and processing worldwide. They’re moving into mobile co-processors, laster printing processors, etc.
This company has been at the forefront, they say, of multimedia processing…with everything. I am pretty hardwade indifferent, but the new chip they just showed us that can be used to download movies o to USB sticks and then play anywhere look pretty impressive….

As Craig says, these devices will allow streaming over the net to the box and the chip and stream right into the TV–The chip/system is a prototype, they say, but going into release by 2009 (watch for CES!

Susan sez: Yeah, this is kind of geeky for my tastes, but it’s another step toward streaming video over the next from a home or centralized server..and that is cool (think Slingbox).

Zoran is also showing some other cool tools…Coach 10 DCP Zlight is a new technology that helps correct for light distortion; it’s in the market with camera partners…cool stuff…And of course every geek in the room is drooling over the amazing tools this company is building–correctors for blurry photos, new sources for HD within cameras, all sorts of emablers… cote d’ivoire . politika . domain owner . where is domain hosted . domain dns server . ip tech info . i cloud web archive . website down apache web server word cloud Brasov .

Ish & Crew

so. there was much drama and debate among “the traveling geeks” today. we got a late start and missed our first– and i guess most important?– appointment and were running late the rest of the day. we had some afternoon fun planned to go see Ish’s bedouin village and then hit up an israeli winery. everyone was super excited about this plan. except our hosts, who really wanted us to make up the meeting we flaked on. totally understandable from their end, they are paying for this trip and spent a great deal of time organizing it.

still, we wanted to see ish’s village. the thing about driving around to office parks is they look a lot like silicon valley. site rank and that’s fascinating– as are a good number of the companies– but to understand israeli entrepreneurs, you need to get more than a demo of their products. you need to get the culture.

so we rebelled and went to the village.

i’m so glad we did. let me point out that i’m feeling HORRIBLE still at this point, woozy, coughing, my stomach literally feels like it’s bleeding from the inside. politika . oh, and my left hand had just started to go numb. not sure why…but i chose to ignore it.

we drive up to a concrete three (or four?) story house in a village. it’s the land ish grew up on. but not the house. for the first 13 years of his life he lived in a tent, the youngest of 11 kids. his parents, sister and nephew could not have been more hospitable. they served us bedouin coffee– which takes hours and hours to make and is a major welcoming tradition in their culture. . you had to just shoot it — and it was hot! it was billed as beduoin “tequila”– which worried me. in my house, i’m not allowed to drink tequila because it makes me very angry. website down . ish also said it was so strong it would keep us up for three days. English to Armenian . i have to say– i do still feel pretty awake hours later.

i was talking to a guy tonight who said i saw similarities in the israeli culture because it had been “americanized.” but these people were definitely not americanized. they only got power four years ago. still, there were these moments of genuine motherly or fatherly love and affection that directly reminded me of my parents. this unspoken way of communicating. particularly, towards the end of the visit, when JD was interviewing Ish’s dad and referenced Ish’s upcoming wedding. Ish’s dad did a finally!-thank-the-heavens gesture that any parent, of any faith, anywhere the world would have done. ip information we all laughed and needed no translation.

i still don’t think i’m exactly explaining why i found the whole thing so moving. so either i’ll get more articulate later, or you’ll just have to watch the video and see if you see it for yourself. but that’s the best you are getting at 1 am when i can’t stop coughing!

(btw- renee has pictures of ish’ parents here http://www.downtheavenue.com/2008/04/a-journey-to-is.html and conflicts with me on some ish details! i’m sure i’m wrong. was half coherent. sorry ish!)

poor neglected blog…

i’ve been in israel since friday and i’m finding it very hard to write about. me? at a loss for words? i know, right? it *does* happen.

i’ve been trying to figure out why that is. part of that is because
i’ve spent far too much time in the very non-glam hotel, thanks to an
out-of-nowhere bug that i originally mistook for a simple hangover. it
seems my body had plain had enough of the jet set-three hours sleep-one
meal a day lifestyle i’ve been leading for about a week and a
half now and went on strike. i couldn’t stand, i couldn’t eat. i could
barely drink water. thank heavens for the hallmark channel. parental blocker it turns out
gilmore girls in hebrew is incredibly soothing.

today i felt better. i went out with the group starting very early,
with a very packed itinerary. all of the geeks were totally sweet
asking how i was feeling and giving me the front seat of the very
packed, sweaty van the whole day. i think they mostly felt bad that i
missed some *epic* robert scoble dancing in the clubs of tel aviv last
night…

but being back among the living, and blogging, today, i’ve still found it hard to come up with very coherent posts. i think i’m just processing. israel is such a deeply contradictory place. it’s incredibly repressed but incredibly liberated. there’s an amazing hospitality, but at the same time so much hostility. website down it’s empowering of women– yet deeply objectifies them. and again– the thing that i keep marveling at is how similar people are here– and yet how different.

the absolute highlight of the trip so far was a trip to Ish’s– our tour guide and an Israeli diplomat in San Francisco– Bedouin village. His parents were amazing. i taped a bunch of video, and hopefully can post it at some point, but you can probably get it quicker from scoble, who was also filming. the experience– and why it touched me so much– is hard to put into words. and we’re running late for a dinner so i’ll get into it later. apache web server air distance calculator besides, it really deserves its own post with none of my sick-girl whining mucking it up.

later everyone!