During my sojourn in Israel this summer the PICZ crew took a little trip to northern Israel. We paid a visit to the industrial park Tefen and then headed to the Haifa office of Google. After our group marveled at the astro-turfed roof deck and ransacked the fully-stocked ice-cream freezer and soda machine, we had the pleasure of meeting Joelle, one of the chief technical officers of Google Haifa. She was a jovial woman who prided herself on being a geek and was pleasantly surprised when members of our group threw out some nerdy questions.
The claim to fame of Google’s Haifa office is the creation of the predictive word completion that occurs in Google search fields. As impressive as that is, I was more intrigued by the macro principles that nurtured this type of innovation. As Joelle zipped through her Powerpoint she lingered long enough on the slide describing Google’s management philosophy so that I was able to whip out my notebook and jot down the following:
Josh Porter’s book, Designing for the Social Web harps on this issue ad nauseam…don’t add so many features that your product becomes diluted and meaningless. Don’t be a vitamin that supposedly makes you feel better. Be an Advil that addresses an acute pain. When designing the Tagged Tanakh and the scope of YAVNET this is our paramount danger. We can’t be everything to everybody.
Check out this video that nails the ramifications of this issue. Pay attention not just to the “end user” but the designer who has to make this all happen.
Submitted by Ellen Frankel on Fri, 07/18/2008 - 18:34.
This year, 2008, marks the 120th anniversary of the founding of The Jewish Publication Society, making the Society the oldest non-profit Jewish publisher in North America. JPS is also the only non-partisan, multi-denominational, non-profit publisher of Jewish books in English in the world. We have had a glorious history, producing significant Jewish books for the broad spectrum of the Jewish community—and for a much wider audience as well. And we have every intention of carrying on this tradition far into the future.
However, something has changed. Book publishing is now an industry in turmoil. The internet has challenged the way that publishers acquire, produce, market, and distribute books. Books themselves find themselves competing for attention, especially from young people. People nowadays learn and amuse themselves in many ways—e-books, audio books, movies, TV, distance learning, video games. A printed volume between two covers is no longer a slam-dunk for a leisure activity of choice.
So much for live blogging:) I’ve fallen off the blogging bandwagon for the past two weeks. I’ve been so busy “innovating” that I’ve had no time for stodgy and predictable ol’blogging. I mean who actually reads these posts? I challenge you to leave a comment!
The ROI 2008 Summit brought together innovators from around the world to share their ideas on various topics. Arts and culture, environmental issues, youth education, and visions of Israel occupied most of the 120 participants while the geeks and freaks (including yours truly) came together to discuss content and technology. With fifteen laptops churning and outlets overloading, we got off to a rocky start as we collectively crashed the network, befuddled wondering whether we could present our work without the all mighty internets working…
With an Ha’aretz reporter in attendance and some of our track members shuttled off to do TV and radio interviews, we saw an apparent interest in what the techy Jews had to say. For a nice overview of what each of us presented to the group, check out this post by Leah Jones, a Chicago blogger and Digital Evangelist who also shares my minor obsession with Spanish/Latino culture.
Recently, 120 up-and-coming members of The Tribe from twenty-eight different countries ascended to Jerusalem to network, consume lots of wine, and “innovate.” With a third of the constituents hailing from Israel, another third from North America, and the remainder from the global village stretching from New Delhi to Krakow, one fact was abundantly clear at the ROI 2008 Summit : South American Jews have more fun!
Somehow the analytical and social hang-ups that plague most of the Jewish world dissolve in laughter and clapping around these jovial people. In the closing forum of the summit, primary evidence from participants as well as statistical data gleaned from surveys conducted during the summit confirmed this reality. Judeos Latinos gozan la vida y el Judaísmo!
Some people swear by newsfeeders like Google Reader or NetNewsWire. These massive dumps of data are kind of like drinking information from a hose, and tend to be overwhelming. I am in fact a bit “old school” in that I simply open up a new tab in my browser and go to the blogs/sites that consistently have information that I crave. DrudgeReport, HuffingtonPost, Daylife, and IHT for news, AintitCool, Transbuddha, or Digg for fanboy news, and GigaOm, BoingBoing and TechCrunch for tech news. Yesterday Techcrunch launched a new project that I feel YAVNET should seriously consider.
Unpacking the ideas around innovation and entrepreneurship can be a dodgy task. In America, most people prefer linear straight-forward approaches that assure quality and accountability. I’d like a Six Sigma with a shot of SCRUM, please. While I was studying in Vancouver at VFS, my instructor in 3D Design, who also worked as an art director at Next Level Games, told me that the most important skill he looks for in a potential new employee is the ability to create without parameters and defined end-goals. Being comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity might feed the creative process but it makes Trustees and potential donors roll their eyes.
The generational divide between Baby Boomers and those of us that follow is the new great divide, the new red/blue state chasm. Exit polls, interaction with technology, and relationships to social institutions like marriage and parenthood vividly diverge if you are born after 1968.
With self-proclaimed JewBu, Robert Downey Jr. smacking down the big screen with Iron Man and a plethora of comic book movies in our future, it is fair to say that the sequential artform has conquered pop culture. The money is just flying all over the place. With Stan Lee producing three flicks, Ron Perlman returning as Hellboy and Eisner’s Spirit coming in for Xmas it is safe to say that the relationship between comix and Jews is more than self-evident. To learn more about the history of this connection, check out this forthcoming book by JPS. Who knows why comics like Wanted or Whiteout get made into movies will others remain untapped?
YAVNET has been in development for over a year now. Since April 2007 we have been researching, exploring, and testing various ideas related to making Jewish knowledge more accessible and dynamic. (Look for our earlier thought experiments in the Projects section soon.) Articulating our goals and how we intend to achieve them is our primary activity. Analysis and action baby!
