Made my day
Came back from the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco a couple hours back... not exactly the kind of conference I normally attend, but my colleagues thought we may be able to pick up the odd client there.
While this may still be the case - and I also got to reconnect with an old colleague that I haven't seen in almost 8 years - one thing did occur that made the whole day worthwhile.
Generally, I tour conferences aisle by aisle, stopping occasionally - rarely, actually - to speak to folks in booths that for some reason catch my attention. It's difficult to catch my attention, as I tend to process each booth very quickly, not just on what is said, but a lot of intangibles that give me a sense of whether it would be a waste of time or not. Or at least I like to think so. In a conference like this one, where I already feel like a fish out of water, this process tends to break down a bit, as I end up avoiding the vast majority of presenters.
But for whatever reason, I stopped at this one. For the record, it was one of four total (out of a lot more). I'm glad I did. Not because I have a particular liking for what they do - it's a virtual, hosted, browser driven operating system - although they certainly seem to do it well if that's something you're looking into.
No, the reason was... well, as I was chatting up one of the guys I detected an unmistakable, even though relatively well-hidden, Israeli accent. Peeking at the name tag confirmed that this was indeed an Israeli, so I exchanged a few words in Hebrew before reverting back to English for the benefit of my colleague traveling with me.
Then the other guy came back from talking to someone else, and I caught his name - Adel. Now, Adel is an arab name. Rare in itself, but I've worked with a couple of Israeli Arabs (as well as Druze) when I was still in Israel in high-tech. But then I got the surprise, when the Israeli guy off-handedly mentioned that Adel was a Palestinian. I grabbed his business card and looked. Indeed, he was from Ramallah.
Folks, I don't know if you can grasp how huge this is, but here was a tech startup from Israel's "Silicon Wadey", that was co-owned, co-managed and co-worked by Israelis and Palestinians. I was so damn excited I think I became giddy. If for nothing else but this reason alone, I wish them all the success in the world. I hope they win big time. Because bridging this sort of gap at a time like this requires more than just good people. It requires a lot of patience, determination, and desire to look the rest of the world around you straight in the eye and say "screw you, we know better" - and be right. I asked Adel if it was difficult to have meetings, and he laughed and admitted that months can pass between two face-to-face meetings simply because of road blocks. No shit, I can imagine.
So to the folks of G.Ho.St - I wish you all the best. I do hope your solution is good enough to make you all rich. Maybe I've become too americanized, but in my world money translates to influence. And it is folks like you that I want to have the influence. And to everyone else - go check them out. If you were looking for a virtual OS, see if this one works for you. It uses the Amazon compute cloud, so it is at the very least both reliable and reasonably secure. And it's free. And it's created and run by really good people who, without even realizing it (they were kinda shy about it), and without it having to do anything with what they set out to do, are changing the world for the better.
While this may still be the case - and I also got to reconnect with an old colleague that I haven't seen in almost 8 years - one thing did occur that made the whole day worthwhile.
Generally, I tour conferences aisle by aisle, stopping occasionally - rarely, actually - to speak to folks in booths that for some reason catch my attention. It's difficult to catch my attention, as I tend to process each booth very quickly, not just on what is said, but a lot of intangibles that give me a sense of whether it would be a waste of time or not. Or at least I like to think so. In a conference like this one, where I already feel like a fish out of water, this process tends to break down a bit, as I end up avoiding the vast majority of presenters.
But for whatever reason, I stopped at this one. For the record, it was one of four total (out of a lot more). I'm glad I did. Not because I have a particular liking for what they do - it's a virtual, hosted, browser driven operating system - although they certainly seem to do it well if that's something you're looking into.
No, the reason was... well, as I was chatting up one of the guys I detected an unmistakable, even though relatively well-hidden, Israeli accent. Peeking at the name tag confirmed that this was indeed an Israeli, so I exchanged a few words in Hebrew before reverting back to English for the benefit of my colleague traveling with me.
Then the other guy came back from talking to someone else, and I caught his name - Adel. Now, Adel is an arab name. Rare in itself, but I've worked with a couple of Israeli Arabs (as well as Druze) when I was still in Israel in high-tech. But then I got the surprise, when the Israeli guy off-handedly mentioned that Adel was a Palestinian. I grabbed his business card and looked. Indeed, he was from Ramallah.
Folks, I don't know if you can grasp how huge this is, but here was a tech startup from Israel's "Silicon Wadey", that was co-owned, co-managed and co-worked by Israelis and Palestinians. I was so damn excited I think I became giddy. If for nothing else but this reason alone, I wish them all the success in the world. I hope they win big time. Because bridging this sort of gap at a time like this requires more than just good people. It requires a lot of patience, determination, and desire to look the rest of the world around you straight in the eye and say "screw you, we know better" - and be right. I asked Adel if it was difficult to have meetings, and he laughed and admitted that months can pass between two face-to-face meetings simply because of road blocks. No shit, I can imagine.
So to the folks of G.Ho.St - I wish you all the best. I do hope your solution is good enough to make you all rich. Maybe I've become too americanized, but in my world money translates to influence. And it is folks like you that I want to have the influence. And to everyone else - go check them out. If you were looking for a virtual OS, see if this one works for you. It uses the Amazon compute cloud, so it is at the very least both reliable and reasonably secure. And it's free. And it's created and run by really good people who, without even realizing it (they were kinda shy about it), and without it having to do anything with what they set out to do, are changing the world for the better.
posted by Blinkered at 8:54 PM
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