Traveling Geeks

Back to South Africa

I’m off to Africa. Whenever I leave the states on an extended trip, I always think about earlier trips in my life when a departure could have meant a permanent one. I followed the gypsydom of my youth more than most because I figured those “callings” were designed for youth.

They certainly weren’t designed for my elders so I thought, since it seemed like so many walls, excuses, what ifs and responsibilities were attached to all the adults around me, wearing them down like 60 foot ship anchors. If my future was one of adults complaining they never lived out their dreams, using every reason why it didn’t happen ‘for them,’ I figured I may as well ‘create’ a dream or two before the world conspired to take them away from me, which is how it seemed most adults felt at the time.

So leaving always brings about a nervous but intense and exciting energy. With this energy in place, you are much more open to raw opportunities rather than ‘scheduled ones.’ When you leave on a business trip for say, India, China or Germany, you have an idea of who you’re going to meet with, the deals you’d like to cut and your return date.

Creative gurus, change agents and branding consultants can ignite new ideas and passions in people by getting them in a room with a whiteboard or you can simply tell them to go walkabout to a place that has always inspired them or they’ve had dreams of since childhood. Give them an outline so they have some kind of focus and send them off.

Be sure that something will unlock in their unconscious mind, something that will be life-changing for them and more likely than not, positive for the company as well. It’s not a vacation, it’s a walkabout and be sure to emphasize the difference. The latter will clear old energy and bring on the new, a bit like hiring a fresh new face and voice but with years of experience under their belt.

I’m a huge fan of walkabouts and while some do this in some shape or form in the way of a sabbatical, it’s not a standard we’ve come to adopt in this country. Here we live to work rather than work to live. This cultural difference is fundamental and defines who we become, not just as individuals but as a nation.

My journey back to South Africa for the first time since white rule is a journey of re-discovery, it’s a journey of expression through the written word as well as photographic and videographic art, and it’s a journey into the past lives of people who both touched and shaped my world perspective now more than twenty years ago. While I spent most of my time in English schools in Durban and Johannesburg suburbs, below is a shot taken at an Afrikaans school I attended for awhile.

Back then, life’s encounters were largely with teachers, parents, farmers and friends. On this trip, I’ll be talking to technologists, green enthusiasts and creators, energy experts and animal experts, farmers, artists, designers, journalists, bloggers, photographers, CEOs, doctors and shop owners. More from the road. Be sure to follow along on this marvelous journey, not just my own, but the journey of 12 other bloggers who I’ll join for a fifth of this adventure.

Should expats be allowed to vote?

This is an extremely tricky and sensitive debate to have. I think that there are many heated opinions held by people who still feel strongly about their country of birth (South Africa). This feeling clearly leads them to feel some ownership of SA and the countries ruling party.
But I am not so sure.
I […]

Social Capital in South Africa

In 2000 sociologist Robert Putnam published Bowling Alone. No, I haven’t read it yet, but the title sums up his central observation: across the United States league bowling is on the decline. Putnam is concerned by this because it is representative of the general decline in group activities by Americans. And group activities like league bowling, community BBQ’s, and trivia night at the local pub are what generate social capital. The less we interact, the less social capital we have.

So I lost a few thousand dollars over the past couple weeks. Anyone with a modest investment in stocks and mutual funds did. Do I care? I don’t care. Couldn’t care less.

I could lose every single penny to my name and I know that I’d be just fine. I would call one friend and ask to stay at his place for a couple months until I get back on my feet. Then I’d call another friend and ask her to introduce me to the right people to get some job interviews. Then there is another friend I’d call – the one with the extra car – and ask to borrow it for a few months so I could get around. And to make sure I stay fit I’d visit my friend who works at a gym and see if he could give me a free membership.

That is social capital – relationships which also happen to serve as a sort of social insurance. Those individuals are there for us with the assumption that we would also one day be there for them. It is why we network at conferences, why we hand out and collect business cards. It is also why we drop names; as a way of demonstrating our social capital.

As Clay Shirky observes in Here Comes Everybody, one of the reasons fewer Americans are participating in fewer group activities is because it is more of a pain in the ass to do so. “When an activity becomes more expensive, either in direct costs or increased hassle, people do less of it, and several effects of the last fifty years – including smaller households, delayed marriage, two-worker families, the spread of television, and suburbanization – have increased the transaction costs for coordinating group activities outside work.”

That, however, is an observation of America in the 1990’s, at the apex of suburbia, shopping plazas, and cookie-cutter housing. Ever since my generation graduated from college everything has changed. We rebelled against our parents’ glorification of trimmed green lawns and gated communities. We have moved to urban centers and we speak with embarrassment of our suburban roots. And, via the internet, we have met more people than we could possibly hang out with. For any 20-something in urban America today there is no lack of social capital, only a lack of time.

South Africa today reminds me so much of the United States in the 1990’s – dilapidated downtowns, poor public transportation, enormous malls on the outskirts of cities, and lots of gated communities. Pretty much everything my generation is trying to reverse today in the United States. Social capital in South Africa remains extremely consolidated in an exclusive (mostly White) business community.

In the United States there are many institutions with the sole purpose of distributing business class social capital in communities where there is little. Philanthropic foundations are getting especially good at this – inviting young leaders from marginalized communities to conferences where they can hobnob with leaders of the so-called privileged class. I see little evidence of anything similar in South Africa.

As I see it, there are four requirements for “success”. (A word I always have to put in quotation marks.) First is ambition. You have to want something. Second is hard work. You have to be willing to work hard for it, even if that means delegating tasks rather than doing them yourself. Third you need skill. Not talent, which comes naturally, but skill, which can be developed over the years. Lastly, you need social capital. You can be the best writer or the best rapper or the best chef in the world, but unless you know someone who can help you publish your book, produce your record, or get you into an executive kitchen, you’re not gonna make it big.

Yesterday I gave a blogging workshop to a group of around 15 young artists from the township Kwa Mashu. These kids have the ambition, are willing to work hard, and are immensely skilled. (In fact, they are fortunate enough to be immensely talented.)

What they do not have is social capital. They don’t know the directors of theater companies, they don’t know music producers, and they don’t know gallery owners. “These blogs that you’re setting up,” I told them, “they are your paths to social capital.” On their blogs they can meet the right people and they can display their portfolios to show them that they have what it takes. They can also discover other artists around the world, learn from them, teach them, and collaborate with them.

But simply starting a blog isn’t enough. In Here Comes Everybody Shirky makes the distinction between “bonding capital”, which he describes as how much money you’d be willing to loan to any one person and “bridging capital”, which is how many people you’d be willing to loan some amount of money to. Blogging can be a great way to increase your bridging capital: it opens bridges into new communities and opportunities. But to establish really meaningful relationships – the kind that can lead to new partnerships, new businesses, and new clients – it is necessary to meet offline.

That is what is so great about the South Africa-based 27dinner movement, which, in its own words, “aims to bring together informed, networked individuals with a common passion for technology, media and business in an informal but valuable real world space.” The problem with the movement, as you an see here below, is that it’s not exactly the most diverse group of informed and networked individuals.

They are increasing their social capital, but they are not distributing it. South Africa needs a lot more of both. The internet doesn’t automatically bring social capital to a township like Kwa Mashu, but it does make it possible.

[Note: This is only my second time in South Africa and I have only spent about a month total during the two visits so I don’t claim to be anything approaching an expert on South African society. These are just some rough notes based on my observations.]

Blogging South African Innovation

The Brand South Africa team is planning to bring a group of top US bloggers to SA in November.  The idea is to have them blog about what South Africans are doing that’s exciting, cutting-edge and not being done anywhere else. We’re looking for examples of innovation and creative problem-solving in areas such as energy, conservation, health, mining, transport, crime fighting, IT and mobile telephony. We won’t have unlimited time, so the less of it has to be spent in conference rooms watching Powerpoints the better. What we want to do is get the blogosphere buzzing at the great stuff that’s going on here but which isn’t necessarily making the headlines. Suggestions, please.

Once upon a time, I lived on a kibbutz

Returning to Israel after so many years was more than a rendezvous with nostalgia. My current life as a publicist, entrepreneur and blogger met the former me, a teenage girl with a pony-tail on an adventure that more than shaped the rest of her life.

This story is a very long one and not typical of my regular blog posts. For that reason, I’ve shortened the introduction – click on more if you’re interested in reading the entire piece. It’s a story of a journey back in time, back to Israel and the life I knew 23′ish years ago, hitching and living on the road and working on a far left Zionist kibbutz, a fact I didn’t know when I first arrived.

My first experience in Israel was a coming-of-age story in countless ways. I never saw Israel as a new country full of immigrants who went there to find a better life for many of the same reasons the oppressed and the misfits flocked to the States at the turn of the century.

Nearly all of my encounters during that trip so many years ago were with misfits — misfits who were on a journey to find themselves and each other. They came from nearly every corner of the world, had a wide range of belief systems and religions, and ranged from 17 to 70.

(more…)

Cathy’s Traveling Geeks wrap-up

With the mental maelstrom sorted, I’m clear of mind enough to hammer out some final thoughts from my Kinnernet/Traveling Geeks 2008 adventure in Israel.

In the spirit of brevity (and clarity), I’m opting to embrace my not-so-inner-Virgo moon and clear out these last items in short order.

So fasten your seat belt, and perhaps keep a crash helmet nearby, as I whip through a series of powerful and impactful events:

Rogozin School
There is, at some point, a far more in-depth commentary from me about this visit. For now, however, I’ll defer to the words of my fellow TG, Robert Scoble because his truly touching post paints a lovely picture of our visit.

Peres Center for Peace
In December 2006, I had the pleasure of hearing Shimon Peres speak at LeWeb. He said that while governments might posture and make noise about peace, the truth is that it was up to the private sector to establish the infrastructure necessary to maintain and grow a peaceful society. That is what the Peres Center for Peace endeavors to do – bridge chasms between disparate groups by bringing the sides together to tackle common issues (education, agriculture, children).

Good Vision
Sadly I missed most of this presentation. As was the case with pretty much our entire week, we were running late. Based on an earlier version of our schedule, which showed Thursday afernoon open, I had arranged a series of meetings with entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv.

My TG colleagues who took part in these meetings each offered glowing reviews. But rather than try and paraphrase, I’ll point you to Renee Blodgett’s accounting of the visit.

Israeli Entrepreneurship – the Ladies’ Way
This trip to Israel brought with it several opportunities to meet a few of the powerful women rising in the ranks of this innovative community. Susan Mernit wrote a great post that captures the essence of how the woman who populate this incredibly aggressive and rapidly moving technology market manage to blaze trails while remaining utterly committed to forward movement of technology and in supporting other women in the market.

My last meeting finished up at about 7:00pm. The Traveling Geeks were to have one last dinner together, but unfortunately some pressing deadlines back in the States required that I work through dinner (since I’d spend the entire next day on the plane).

I sent the last email, got my bags pretty much packed, and that’s when I made a decision that, while perhaps not the most intelligent choice I’ve ever made, certainly was fun.

Our flight was to depart at about 8am. That meant getting to the airport by 6am. Which meant leaving the hotel around 5:15am.

“No problem,” I thought to myself. “I just won’t go to sleep.”

Oy.

While the tales of the evening are amusing, I have to think about whether or not they’re appropriate to share … (and of course if I have to think about it, that probably means the answer is that I shouldn’t).

But in any case … with the trip now in the rearview mirror and many adventures on the horizon, I conclude this last Traveling Geeks Israel 2008 post… and look forward to the future and more TG adventures!

Israel Photo Collection

I officially uploaded a sample of photos from my recent Israel trip. It was a hard choice to decide what to upload from a collection of more than 1,000 shots. A handful of these shots were taken on my very first trip to Israel now more than twenty years ago and I included them for giggles. Enjoy!

Adam Sher’s Perspective on Art & Life

Through fashion maven and start-up founder Daria Shualy, I was introduced to Israeli artist Adam Sher, who came to Israel when he was 19 from Russia after serving in the “Red Army.” He brought with him his animation style of art, where he has done an entire series of Disney characters in realistic form.

In Russia, realism is much more popular than it is in Israel where artistic expression is much more free-form, a style he says he now prefers. He is now working on more abstract pieces. Of the pieces in his southern Tel Aviv studio, my favorite by far was this self-portrait painting he did of himself with his son.

I was able to spend time with Adam in his studio before leaving Israel earlier this month. Here’s the result of an interesting back and forth dialogue about his life, his ‘coming’ to Israel and how he paved the way for a career as an artist.

Renee: When did you know you wanted to paint? Was it a particular incident or did you always just know?
Adam: I started to paint at a very early age; I always hold a pencil or brush in my childhood memories . I grew up in small village in the Ukraine, where there were no conditions to develop my skills, nor was there any real support from my parents, so it was a hobby until later on.

With pressure from my family, (like a good Jewish boy) I chose to study medicine and after 4 years, I went to serve in the Soviet Army as planned. During my army service (that’s a different story?), we left. After moving to Israel in 1990, I went to college for graphic design and illustration studies and since then, I’ve been an graphic designer and art director.

I have a friend who studied in New York and took me to some of her classes. Here, she showed me what canvas and colors are and the rest is history?

Renee: You speak of traditional realism in Europe, particularly in Russia which is not so much the case in Israel I understand from you and also a friend of mine in Tel Aviv who is an art curator. What are your feelings about both and the value of both?

Adam: Traditional realism wasn’t really accepted here in Israel, maybe because the country is only 60 years old,. After WW2, realism was objected by new art movements. Israeli people tried to build a new society that ignored any tradition, thus influencing the art scene here?

I feel lucky that I didn’t study art seriously in Russia since they focus mainly on technique, and less on creativity.

I think that I’m still a “stranger” here, standing a bit on the outside of the local art scene. Most Israeli artists deal with these main themes: the Middle East conflict, the Holocaust and “self observation”.

I deal more with the aesthetics of average every day things that surround us. Here is what Israeli Maayan Shelef said of my work:

“Adam Sher takes an activist approach to art, initiating artistic events, exhibitions, and community activities. In addition to personal projects he collaborates with groups of artists with a similar vision. His creative process forms a circle; he documents the daily living environment and returns to it in the exhibition stage by choosing alternative spaces that are part of the everyday experience. Galleries alongside nightlife and leisure spaces, institutions and industrial areas. These spaces are like temporary homes for the paintings, as Sher believes that his paintings are meant to be hung in a living room. There they fulfill their conceptual purpose – a connection between the indoor and the outdoor that creates the urban aesthetics. His ambition is to communicate with the viewer in a basic, universal way. His painted world is not ideal or na?ve but sober. The magic and innocence that we find in this sobriety, is what makes us connect to his paintings so deeply.”

Renee: What do you most love about the more realistic work you have done so far?

Adam: I think that my most realistic work so far is the self portrait with my 2 kids (as you saw at my studio (as also shown above) I called it “Millstone” since being a father is a very serious responsibility but it’s the most expensive and important thing you have? after a year and a half break in painting, I went back to the studio and painted Millstone in two days.

My wife doesn’t like the name, but I think it’s honest. For me, realism is not just about a painting’s technique, but its also a method to express our feelings in the most honest way.

I LOVE THAT ANSWER.

Renee: What inspired your work with Disney characters and animation?

Adam: Below Israeli art curator Nir Harmat describes my exhibition “Happy Dead End” where I presented several large paintings of cartoon characters:

“Adam Sher’s embalmed images are realistically copied from miniature Disney plastic figurines found in a dump and bought by the pound. Sher grants new strength to these images. He removes them from their natural habitat and isolates them; taking them out of proportion to a full size enlargement and having them confront the viewer at eye level. In fact, this is a conversion of the real with the signifiers of reality. That is, the images receive autonomic power and the status of functional doubles.”

Renee: What is the best thing about being an artist in Israel? the worst?

Adam: I don’t think it’s that easy to be an Israeli artist because there’s more interest around politics and less on global issues……the artists who have different styles and ideas don’t have too many options to exhibit and sell their work.

Renee: What is the best thing about living in Israel? the worst?

Adam: I’m pretty happy living here. Even though it’s a small country, I feel very connected here, and part of the western culture without an obligation to any tradition (as in Old Europe) or the limitation of being over politically correct (as in the U.S).

The big minus is the ongoing chronic war with the Palestinians that corrupts all spheres of our life here and maybe our escapisms, which is many people’s answer to the situation.

More examples of his work below:

Nimrod’s Coffee of Love

Rosh Pina in Tel Aviv’s Port. The below is a story of Nimrod’s Coffee house which was opened in 2007 with the purpose of immortalizing the heritage “The Good Life” that Nimrod left his sister in his death. Below is the background of the creation of Nimrod’s Coffee of Love.

Nimrod’s sister writes. I admit. I didn’t believe in love. Actually I was one of those who didn’t believe love existed until Nimrod married Iris. And then everything changed. I needed that my only brother would get married in order to believe that true love existed. “What’s the secret of happiness?” I asked him. “The Good Life,” he answered in his simple way.

We left Rosh Pina. Nimrod became a high-tech manager at Microsoft and I moved to America. In my visits, I discovered Nimrod was having a dilemma which was more preferable; to go with his beloved Iris and little Omer and Vick, to our childhood village, Rosh Pina, or take them to the harbor in Tel Aviv.

What is love? Nimrod taught me. In love, there are no boundaries, no barriers. It’s an endless flow.

I had a tour contract in Mexico and Nimrod was in the middle of preparations to the annual Microsoft convention in Israel when the Second Lebanon War started. My parents and I begged: “leave everything and come over to Mexico.”

Nimrod was drafted, as a reserved soldier with a special emergency call. Before he left home for Lebanon, he wrote his beloved Iris a poem:

At about midnight they called me.
It was the telephone announcing machine.
Her voice said: Soldier – Gathering Spots!
You yelled you weren’t ready
Even though you were –
In your sleep –
To pay the price.

I said, pretty thing. It’s routine.
Every soldier-citizen has to go.
I kissed her, I calmed her as if for real.
I hoped to be back before Fall.

When the tank entered the land of Lebanon
I put on my armour,
Praying you wouldn’t call me on the phone.

A simple high-tech man from Ramat Gan
Taking his children to school.
Fighting terrorists at night.

Tell me, will all this help
Tomorrow or the day after
When I come back
And all this business will be over –

In the end you fight to live.
In the end you fight like animals.
For the silence within.

On August 19 of the Hebrew month of Av, the Hebrew Valentines Day, the announcing officers knocked on Iris’s door.

Hagai Segev on Art, Design & Architecture

Hagai Segev, an Israeli friend of mine recently edited and translated the book Improvisation: New Design in Israel by designer Mel Byers. Hagai was a foreign exchange student near my hometown in the early eighties and 23+ years later, we’re still in touch.

Hagai is an international art curator in Tel Aviv, where he spends some of his time doing shows for up and coming Israeli artists and some of his time editing design and art books. He started his career as a curator at the Israeli Museum in Jerusalem where he primarily focused on archeology and architecture.

This led him to conduct historical tours of old Jerusalem, including some of the greats in art and literature like Hungarian nobel prize winner Umbrae Curtis, Umberto Eco, Paul Auster and Irish writer Iris Murdoch.

He planned a large exhibition of art history in Jerusalem for the 3000th anniversary in 1995 and for awhile, was also the Director of the Gallery at the Technion Institute of Technology in Haifa. He grew up on Kibbutz Nahal-Oz near the Gaza strip, not that far from Kibbutz Zikim, where I spent time on in the mid-eighties.

Like Zikim, It was also a kibbutz that had separate houses for children, meaning the children were separated from their parents for chunks of time and slept apart even though they lived in the same community.

Today, he is married to a woman who has three translation companies based on one of the Goddesses of Syria. I spent Shabat with them this year, an evening I won’t forget anytime soon. Sadly, I missed Anat’s exquisite chocolate cranberry cake since I had a redeye to catch.

Hagai gave me an overview of some of Tel Aviv’s history, which included a long slow walk down Rothchild Boulevard. The infamous Bauhaus Architecture from the 1930s and 40s remains, although they apparently moved some of these buildings forward and built larger more modern complexes behind the Bauhaus houses.

Below are examples of some of the designs from the Improvisation book that were publicly displayed at trendy shop LeEla on Bait Banamal in the Port area of Tel Aviv.