Alright, already. When I snapped this photo on Thursday afternoon, I promised it would be on my blog. Both my blawg (pronounced like an American) and my blohg (pronounced like an Israeli or Latino), so here it is at long last.
What’s the story?
This was on the very last day of ROI120 and one person from each track was asked to make a brief presentation about what the group accomplished during the conference. My track was Jewish Content and Technology, although really it could have just been called GEEKS! and that would have covered us. (Yes, even you, Eileen.)
We were given a series of questions to answer, but I’d already decided what I was going to do before I was given instructions. As I told Everybody, the diversity in our group was in the skills we could offer other ROIniks. First I had everyone in the group stand, then as I called different skills from the list, people with those skills stood up. Blogging. User interface. Pragmatic programming. Media strategy. Networking and introductions. Brainstorming. Training.
I went through a list of about 20 different skills and towards the end, people from other groups stood up if they had those skills as well. I thought that was pretty darn cool. I heard rumors that people liked our presentation and being able to see all the skills we bring to the table as Jeeks. (Jew + Geeks)
Who were the geeks I spent the week with at ROI120?
Andre Oboler from http://www.zionismontheweb.org, which he created to try and beat-up anti-semitism with search engine optimization. He’s got some cool stuff coming up, so watch that space.
Aryeh Goldsmith is the uber-programmer of the Jewish world and he brings us www.JewishInnovation.org. (Aryeh pretty much didn’t sit down during the skills presentation, so seriously, you can call him.)
Daniel Ratner was in the track with me last year and was representing Canada with First Floor Pictures and Young Judea.
Eileen Levinson is a graphic designer with some cool Jewish content coming down the pipes, promise.
Hannah Janal has lived everywhere and is currently in Tel Aviv working with my new friend Ivri Lider on his English Album release.
Meeting Harry Rubenstein was like meeting a long-lost relative. Both of us are old-timers in the world of Jewish Blogging. His big project is Jerusalemite (think Gapersblock + Yelp for Jerusalem.) My only regret is that his wife from the kick-ass Designist Dream wasn’t also at ROI.
Jacob Shwirtz is one of my regular IM buddies since last year. We’re two peas in a geeky pod, us two. His day job is doing amazing work for MTV and VH1 like Next Or Not.
JT Waldman is doing insanely cool stuff with JPS and on his own. Come on the Megillat Esther as a Graphic Novel! How cool is that? And he’s also an amazing networker. I hope he put me in his pocket.
Leah Stern, she pronounces it Lay-uh to my Lee-uh, is an uber reporter working on a new tv channel all her own called Falafel.tv. Don’t underestimate her b/c of her stature, the woman’s has reported from front lines, Ethiopa and is more capable of talking me into aliyah than anyone else.
Micah Bergdale had interview after interview since he’s one of the folks doing outreach to the Jewish Community on behalf of some guy… oh, yeah, Barack Obama. And when you’ve got someone from Jews for Obama in Tel Aviv, you sit down with him for an interview.
Present in listening and learning mode was Michael Geller from the AJC. Michael and I are going to be friends for the next 120 years, I promise. He made me laugh and also let me cry when we were leaving Tel Aviv.
Representing from Mexico was Moises “Moi” Kirsch with Jinuj.net and the MoiBlog. Moi is an amazing guy that currently works at HP.
I’m certainly too old to participate, but hope that I can find an excuse to spend two weeks with Nir Kouris next summer at eCamp Israel. (What do you say Nir? Can I come?) It is an international digital summer camp to highlight the tech success story that is Israel.
Ori Neidich was one of the other folks who answered the “who are you, what do you do” email before ROI. We ran around adding each other on Facebook and Twitter, met each other the week before at MashBash, but it wasn’t until ROI started that I realized I’d been following him on Flickr for a year. Looking a little more at the geeky shit we both do, I’m amazed it took us this long to meet.
Last year, I introduced Tomer Altman to Yahoo! Pipes and this year Tomer introduces all of us to the Jewish New Media Network.
Last but not least is William Levin, creator of ShaBot 6000 and probably my longest standing jBlogosphere crush. ShaBot was an important, irreverent source of learning for me during my conversion. William is awesome in person and ready to make a flash video for your organization.
Finally, finally, is JIMMY from Mexico City who didn’t put his url on our list of participant URLs, but JIMMY was a great moderator and funny, funny man.
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