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.
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Israel: a country too far from Mike Arrington’s house

This headline is only a little in jest. But as I’ve gotten around to various tech companies here in Israel I’ve started noticing a trend: that the further away a tech area is from Silicon Valley the less respect that area will get. The headline is also a bit unfair to TechCrunch/Mike because he’s actually been to Israel and has a couple of writers covering the tech scene here, but if you’re a blogger and let the facts get in the way of a good headline you’ll never go anywhere.

I’ve noticed this when I visited MySpace: they were so excited when I visited because they say that tech bloggers never visit. I was thinking back to my own experiences. Yes, that’s true. Facebook employees regularly meet up with us at parties and dinners and conferences. We run into MySpace employees far less often. These personal connections turn into stories on blogs.

Same when I visited San Antonio. These were companies I never hear about in conversations in the valley. We don’t have personal connections to their employees. Ask yourself, have you ever heard of PerfTech? Kulabyte? Rackspace? Newtech?

Anyway, I’ve been all over to the world. Shanghai. Tokyo. Frankfurt. London. New York. Cork. Dublin. Hamburg. Geneva.

I’ve never seen the entrepreneurial spirit outside of Silicon Valley like I’ve seen here in Tel Aviv. The companies here are doing technology that’s deep, varied, and highly profitable.

Anyway, I’ll write more about this topic over the weekend, because right now we’re about to leave to see Jeruselem and meet with some Venture Capitalists to further understand what’s going on here in Israel.

In the meantime, go to TechCrunch and check out Fring’s new iPhone app. (Fring is headquartered here in Israel, and shows another trend that I’ve noticed here that Israel is WAY ahead of the United States in use of Mobile apps — another thing that’s surprising is how many iPhones you see here, even though there isn’t a single Apple store).

One other thing, Twitter has been where we’ve been having interesting conversations. It was amazing. The other day we were in a van between Haifa and Tel Aviv. Talking with Arrington back in California. Christineleu in China. GiaGia in London. All at the same time.

The advent of Twitter is one thing that’s bringing far away lands into the PR machinery that exists only in Silicon Valley.

I wish I had a month to spend here, so many startups want to get my attention, but I just can’t see them all. But there still is nothing better than meeting face-to-face over a beer to find out interesting stories about people, companies, countries.

For instance, last night several people begged me to write about the proposed Israel Censorship Law. Global Voices Online has already done that, but if it weren’t for being here I wouldn’t have known about the issues that they really care about.

Anyway, off to Jeruselem, stay in touch with us on my Twitter account.

Do you agree or disagree that people, companies, countries can get the respect and/or tech industry PR they deserve if they are far away from Silicon Valley?

religious freedom hits home…

i feel horrendous again today. turns out walking around in the heat for 12 hours then capping off the evening with champagne and immense laughter isn’t a great cure for the flu, or whatever plague this is. ALL i wanted was a bagel this morning. an american christian girl like me wouldn’t have expected that’d be impossible in israel. peta dunia satelit English to Armenian . apparently, at passover time it is. looking back on the time in elementary school i thought it was “awesome” that my jewish friends got to eat matzah with whole new eyes….

ethnic profiling also hits home…

yesterday i found the most rad present EVER for my super hip husband geoff. (who it feels like i haven’t seen for MONTHS) it was a black t-shirt with this rad panther jumping from behind hebrew letters that said “black panthers.” the shop keepers refused to let me buy it because i was american. in fact, it was worse than that. they all fled the store and went upstairs and just yelled at me from up there. after making me wait 15 minutes. it was the most passive aggressive ethnocentrism i’ve ever seen. peta dunia satelit WTF? i thought we were allies?

everyone seems to be *aghast* saying things like this “never” happen in super progressive, hip tel aviv. guess there are just jerks everywhere.

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.’

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.)

Zoran Enriches Our Digital World

We’re currently at Zoran’s headquarters in Haifi, roughly an hour and a half from Tel Aviv. Zoran develop chips. They’re not as well known in the states even though they have offices in Boston and Sunnyvale. English to Armenian . Global offices include Taiwan, China, India, Japan, Korea, Germany, England and Canada.

The name is intriguing. Zoran means silicon in Hebrew, but it is also means excellence in Chinese and is a common male’s name in Yugoslavia.

Zoron’s VP of Business Development Isaac Shenberg talks to us about Zoran’s history, its current markets and where they’re heading in the future. Their revenue exceeded 700 million in 2007.

He claims Zoran was the oldest start up that went public (13 years). In 1992, 100% of their market was in digital cameras, then they moved into digital imaging and home theatre in a box by 2003. They’re now starting to integrate into mobile devices.

Today, the red laser DVD market is a $170 million market worldwide. Zoran owns 26% of that market and is currently #2 in the world. Zoran remains the number provider of chips in digital cameras — they do everything except for censors. Other growing markets for them include laser printing, mobile phones, blue laser DVD, digital TV and cameras.

We saw a prototype of a chip that they’re working on that can bring consumers HDTV quality movies inside a tiny box, a box you’d be able to stream high quality videos to at a price everyone can afford. Blueray. Think of it as a mini slingbox on steroids.

We were also introduced to COACH, their real-time lens distortion correction process. They sell this to OEMs who can decide which feature to use depending on their market and need. Most camera manufacturers are integrating this, except for Canon who is the ‘last fortress to get on board,’ says Shenberg with a laugh.

In digital photography, there are issues with images that have strong contrast. Zoran is apparently the only player who can perform Zlight in real-time. COACH can restore natural details in shadows and recover highlights in the bright areas of an image. They’re also doing things with noise distortion and facial recognition.

Haifa Below

Bay Area bloggers overlook greater Haifa below.

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A Journey to Ish’ Bedouin Village

There’s a wonderful story about Ish, the Bedouin Israeli who is dragging us around the country by van — from tech and cultural centers to his Bedouin village in the north. Ish is one of eleven and lived in a tent in the desert until he was eight.

Today, he tells us about his remarkable journey. Details about this amazing man who now works at the Israel Consulate in San Francisco later. For now, meet his mother and father.

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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!