Israel rocks. לויק לה מר

Arrival in Israel
It was my very first time there and obviously I had some "clichés" in mind. I was told the security was crazy at the airport and I was not disappointed. It started at the gate in Europe, special gate, additional security checks. Arrived there, I spend 15 minutes in front of the police officer asking weird questions. Is this your first time in Israel ? Yes. Do you have family here ? No. Do you have relatives ? Yes. What kind ? Friends. What friends ? Business friends and just friends. What are their names ? Yossi Vardi, Ouriel Ohayon and others. Where did you meet them ? In Davos and at business school. What is Davos ? It is the World Economic Forum event. What business school ? HEC in Paris. Who is Yossi Vardi ? The founder of the Israeli company ICQ (I joked on that with Yossi who said it was an insult). What is ICQ ? Are you joking ? No. It is an Internet company. What kind ? Instant messaging. When were you at school with Ouriel Ohayon ? I told you, in Paris at HEC. Is he living here ? Yes. For how long ? A year and a half etc etc. And now the fun part, I arrived without having an exact address, just the city name, Kinneret. What hotel do you stay ? I don't stay in a hotel. Why ? I participate in a conference. There is no hotel ? No, it is a camp. What is the address ? I don't know. Wrong answer :-) It took me another five minutes... Yat Siu had exactly the same problem, even worse actually as he asked the officer not to chop his passport because he goes regularly to Arab countries that may not like it and he got another special interview for asking that. Anyway, it was not so bad as contrarily to other countries, most police officers are very nice and young Israeli girls... which helps continuing the conversation.

Kinnernet

Thanks again Yossi for having invited me to this crazy event. The theme is creativity and about one hundred Israeli geeks and entrepreneurs participated, as well as ten participants from abroad. Everybody came with their favorite gadgets, from the very oldest computers and calculators to small helicopters, weird "motorbikes" and even small rockets were launched, a fully equipped truck was taking video from a sky balloon. Creativity was everywhere and I was very happy to meet all the geeks and entrepreneurs. Everybody came back to some kind of children way of thinking, open to anything and thinking that everything was possible, it is quite hard to keep this way of thinking as you get older and that was very refreshing. There are lots of Kinnernet2005 pictures available here.

Export Institute
I was also invited to make a presentation at the Israel Export & International Cooperation Institute and meet the Israeli VCs and entrepreneurs. There was also Simon Levene of Yahoo, Edmund Fish of AOL and Steffi Cerzny of Burda on the panel. It was fun for me to see that Six Apart was at the same level as Yahoo and AOL on the invitation. Anyway, I moblogged the audience and started by explaining how easy it is to moblog even from a phone, drove them into political blogging (One Voice that tries to help solving the palestinian conflict with a weblog, DSK, monputeaux), into "you and me" blogging (c'est moi qui l'ai fait and xslf local Israeli blogger friend), CEO bloggers, etc. After the conference I met with many entrepreneurs and I was amazed (actually during the whole trip) on how this country is entrepreneurial, creative and has passion with high-tech and Internet. The surprise came when I realized that there are only around 10 000 weblogs in Israel, I would have thought that people that get so much the Internet would be more active with blogs.

During my trip I could meet with blog entrepreneurs, representing notes.co.il, a closed blog community targeted at journalists, politicians, CEOs, and Nir Ofir of Tapuz.co.il, more targeted to the Young Israelis (thanks again for the sunny breakfast, Ofir).

Thank you Ido Kenan for having written this article about Six Apart and me in one of the main daily newspaper in Israel.

Thanks to my friend Ouriel I could discover Tel Aviv and the cool bars at night, the nightlife is very active. Ouriel says that it is difficult to have artists coming to Tel Aviv therefore there are few cultural events as we have in Paris (theatre for example) and that is why the Israeli like so much to socialize in the evening, it is the activity they like the most. There is one hip and cool bar every 50 meters in some Tel Aviv areas. It is common there that somebody you do not know starts speaking to you and it is very nice. Israeli are happy to meet and always very warm welcoming foreigners. Thanks again Ouriel for hosting me there.

Security.

With great emphasis in the last two years, everything we hear about Tel Aviv on TV is the terrorism so the image we have is obviously that of a totally insecure and frightening city. I had several discussions about this with the people I met and you feel immediately that it is in everybody's minds as most of the Tel Aviv inhabitants either know somebody who lost friends or family or lost a relative themselves. For the last six months, there have been no incidents in Tel Aviv and I should say I felt very secure. I walked around late at night and took cabs alone, went in many public places where each time I felt very well. Of course the fact that you are screened before entering any place or bars reinforces this feeling. The very few negative impressions I had is when I saw several civilians carrying guns as you carry your mobile phone (actually we shared rooms at Kinnernet and my room mate, a young teacher in robotics, had one so it was my first night sleeping with a gun in my room) and also the fact that everybody told me to avoid taking busses and actually to just avoid getting too close to busses.

I could have visited Jerusalem today but fortunately I did not as there were tensions there.

I was also surprised that most Tel Aviv inhabitants do not really care about religion. Tel Aviv is quieter on Friday and Saturday but still quite busy, restaurants and bars are full at night, and I do not think I have even noticed a kosher restaurant (I did not pay too much attention either I should say) and all my friends said that the best restaurants were not kosher and were packed.

I had excellent food in Tel Aviv, all kind, excellent meat and of course shaksuka.

The answer I was often given by the friends I discussed with is that the Jews outside of Israel were much more respectful of their religion than in Tel Aviv because they were far away and that is how they "keep the culture and spirit", where the Tel Aviv inhabitants do not seem to care much. There is a large non-jew community in Israel, as an example one million russians were accepted to immigrate into Israel in the last few years, most of them non jews.

Everybody speaks good english in Israel, I wonder why european countries and France do not push more the kids to learn more english, a key for better integration in our globalized world.

I was warned that I needed 2.5 hours before my return flight home to get to the airport and that was a good advise, the security and the questions asked going back are even longer. My bags were screened like never before, the officer took the shoes I had in my bad and spent 5 minutes on each of them, as well as on my laptop and any electronic device, ipod, even the french monthly magazines I had took 30 seconds each (I wonder if one can hide explosives in a paper magazine).

Anyway, I came safely back home the head full of good memories of my trip and all the people I met there. See you all soon again and thanks for all the fun. For those of you wondering what the end of this post title is, לויק לה מר is my name in Hebrew.