No Educational Games For Me, Thanks.

As I am recovering from the worst case of flu I have ever encountered I’m beginning to list all those blog posts I cooked in my head for the past two weeks. Over a 26 hour flights schedule home I was contemplating all that I have learned and experienced in the two consecutive conferences I attended in Austin Texas this month: the SXSWedu and the SXSW interactive.

Both conferences offered many events, sessions, workshops, keynotes, parties and shows around the two topics which I find most interesting and relevant these days: educational technology and games. The mix is inevitable, but is also, unfortunately, too often a very disappointing mix.

It’s like every student going to study how to become a teacher is going through a crash course titled “games” which is actually a course in how to try and appeal to your students by trying to talk the kids’ language, the games talk. And so they are trained in taking the boring stuff out of the text books and turn it into a “fun” page, or take the assignments and try to convert them into something that might fool the kids into thinking the boring set of actions they are required to do are in fact a game.

Kids are no one’s fools, and all those flash card apps are, sorry to say, really, passé. Creating a new game, a real game, which is both fun and educational, is nearly impossible. And I admit that one of the biggest disappointments at both conferences is that I have met no real innovation: not in education nor in games. Sure, there were some cute ideas. But when a teacher like Lucas Gillispie can take real games, like WOW or Minecraft – and apply them in the classroom, you can’t help wondering why bother developing an “educational game”? What’s the point?

I think the term “educational games” is wrong in its basis. Of course it is the right of those developers in this area to call it this and feel that this is what they do, but as for me, I prefer the term learning game, as a game one might, perhaps, learn from, rather than a game that presumes in can educate, or teach. But then I’ll take learning over education any day.

Graphic Designers, Start Up!

Why is it so rare to find a startup founder who is a graphic designer?

Are graphic designers not entrepreneurs? This couldn’t be accurate as so many of them found their independent studios. But it seems like they are avoiding the startups world. And it’s especially notable in a country titled “the Startup Nation”.

I’ve spent the last couple of months trying to recruit a graphic designer, illustrator or even an art director to join our startup – in vain. . It’s an amazing startup with a big promise to change the way kids learn and perceive learning, or knowledge. I had no trouble “selling the idea” to several amazing artists.  The 3 designers that seemed to be into it got as far as a second work meeting before they announced the project will demand too many hours for them to commit to.

What do you mean?

When you join a startup you make a commitment. That’s what you do. Like the programmer who joins a startup, like the marketing or bizdev or product person or community manager who joins a startup. Yes, you join a company means you make a commitment to work for this company. And when it’s a startup doing its early steps this means you give it the hours that you have after your day job, until funding is in and you can fully dedicate yourself to that same startup you joined.

That’s what people do when they join a startup. Why not graphic designers?

 

I’ve been trying to crack it. One artist told me “Graphic designers are one of the most exploited sectors there are. People are always asking them to do a “quick design”, with a promise to compensate retroactively or with company stock options, but at the end the stock options are worth nothing, or the company didn’t raise funds, and so we don’t get paid. Experienced designers are familiar with this pattern and will not repeat this mistake”.

“Wait”, I told her, “you can say the same thing about the programmer who coded for hours, and days and weeks and might or might not benefit from the startup – if it gets on.”

“Yes, but it’s not really the same thing”, she said, “Graphic artists are usually paid less then programmers and so they are forced to get more after-hours projects to survive. If they will not get paid for their after-work project, their financial stability is hurt”.

I was willing to go with this theory until I found out this is not really the case. The gap between the salaries of a programmer with 5-6 years of experience and a graphic designer with the same number of years is not that big. It seems to me programmers are simply more the types who would take on a risk. And graphic designers underestimate the risks in running a services firm.

“The simplest answer. Designers are trained to be agents. In almost every environment we act as agents in service to someone else. Even internal corporate design departments usually act as an agency whose services are rendered at the bequest of others” writes on Quora Dave Malouf, a professor of Interaction Design at the Savannah College of Art & Design in Savannah, GA and a current co-founder of a startup.

That’s an interesting concept really. “…designers are more visionaries than they are executors”, writes James Sinclair, a Business Growth Consultant, “with all of the skills and talent and understanding they bring, without someone to place constraints, it will never ship.”

But that brings me back to square one: when invited to join a venture, an idea you really like, why are graphic designers so reluctant to join?

SXSWedu 2013: Here Comes the Parents’ Voice

Oh my G! What did I do? I really want to speak, carry my thoughts and ideas about education and spread those ideas. Grow this conversation. Who knows, perhaps even make a difference, drive a change.

So I proposed a short talk to SXSWedu.  After browsing topics and proposal and previous years talks and other edu conferences panels I decided that the best contribution I can make to this event is to voice parents.

In this oh so exciting conversation about the education reform that every country in the world is apparently going through, and that promise of a true revolution carried from stage to stage, there’s has been very little space left in the conversation for parents.

I hear amazing teachers, inspiring principals and administrators, great innovators, researchers, consultants, advisors, politicians. All or most are representing the revolutionized education system. The promises. Some, of course, are also parents. But it’s not the parents they are representing.

I want to voice the parents.

If I could, I’d voice the students too. I’d bring them along.

It’s like trying to draw a triangle using only one line and one angle.

Earlier this year I’ve had the pleasure of listening to almost 70 parents in one classroom voicing their educational vision in a meeting with the class’ new head teacher. I wrote about one surprise wish here.

But I’ve been talking with so many people, from all sides of the system. And kids too. And although this is not a scientific nor an academic research, I have to draw some conclusions.

I think teaching is one of the most challenging professions existing today. More than anything it is challenging because teachers are experiencing an earth quake in classrooms like no one else. Expectations are sky rocketing, but systems are so limiting.

And that’s why they find themselves too often in a battle against demanding and misunderstood parents. There are just too many wants, too different demands coming in, from too many directions.

Now, tell me, what do parents want???

You can post your answer here or join the conversation on Quora

—

Here’s a podcast of the actual talk: http://snd.sc/ZGPMVy I will be happy to hear what you think.

The Twists & Turns on a Startup’s Way

I thought I was ready to meet with two of my first choice investors and introduce them to my fresh startup, as a decision has been made to change the whole plan. Take two giant steps back and revise.

I’ve been working on my new venture for the past 4 months. Along the way I partnered with a CTO so I am not entirely alone, although I’m full time here and he is still employed elsewhere. The direction was clear and precise and we need this funding urgently, so my CTO can work full time, along several more team members. But when the time came to prepare for investors I did it. We did it. We started to question and doubt everything: I started to ask myself the toughest possible questions. I re-examined my model, crucified the creative ideas, criticized the result – that Game Design Document (GDD) we’ve been working on and decided I wasn’t pleased enough to take it up with investors just yet. It might have been good enough to get some production budgeting, but it’s not good enough to win an investment. Too many holes.

It often happens with startups. I know so many stories of a startup that started with one idea and diverted to another direction along the way. Reasons may vary. Although it has tremendously slowed us down, or rather sent us back, I am happy we have found this diversion now, rather than in another 10 months for example and after we has spent a lot of our investors’ money.

Not many people can afford twists and turns along the way. I really like the story of Paypal, which I got to hear from Max Levchin, one of the cofounders, at a GarageGeeks event in Holon some 3 years ago.

Fieldlink is the company which later became PayPal. It was founded by Levchin, an online security specialist, and Peter Thiel, a hedge fund manager at the time. The two met in 1998 when Levchin approached Thiel in New York for financial backing for a company that would develop a system for transferring money using such wireless devices as cell phones and palm pilots. Levchin and Thiel joined forces, obtained $3 million in backing from the Nokia Corporation, relocated to Silicon Valley, and opened Field Link, which produced encryption software for handhelds. Unfortunately, the idea did not win a lot of popularity. So the founders decided to go towards another direction, with another name, Confinity. In October 1999 it launched PayPal, a service by which money could be sent electronically by handheld devices. PayPal didn’t get much more than Field Link.

But the real twist happened a little later, when the two partners realized that there is not yet any means for electronic payment online, while ecommerce is booming around. A payment system tailored for the web, they realized, is something the market not only lacked, but needed urgently. And the rest is really history, as Confinity was acquired by X.com in March 2000 and the company that was created then, Paypal, was acquired by eBay for $1.5 billion in stock.

May more entrepreneurs do wisely and gain big.

That (ADHD) Epidemic Again

To write or not to write, that is the question. But I am writing out of a sense that this needs to be shared. It really does. My son agrees with me and gave me his consent.

There are so many parents in a similar position and many many more kids who find themselves in this place, similar to my son’s.

He is almost 15 years old. He was diagnosed as a gifted child a little more than 7 years ago, when he was going from 1^st grade to 2^nd grade. At the same time he was diagnosed as ADD, and last year it was changed to ADHD.

So we already know he is a smart kid. Over the past 3 years he’s been using Ritalin on and off, mainly for exams and was doing more than OK in school, at the special class for the gifted. But Ritalin made him feel sick most of the time and we decided it’s time to question the treatment and took him off it several months ago.

Let me tell you that he is a happy kid, he loves to laugh and to make other people laugh. He is very sociable, always has some good friends around. He likes sports, especially soccer and used to do Capoeira too. He likes to travel and loves to eat and cook (when I let him). He is a very creative artist. Been drawing and photographing since a very young age and he is also very musical. He is now in his 5^th year playing the trumpet.

Which brings me to the recent story. 3 months ago he started 9^th grade in this very lucrative high school – The National High School for the Arts “Thelma Yellin”, as a trumpet player in the Jazz department. The school year started just wonderful. Everything excited him – from the new students he befriended, to the teachers who seem kind and caring, to the whole “Fame” like atmosphere the school offers.

But while this school offers a lot it demands no less. The current class system comprises of 8 core topics (like math, English, history, chemistry etc.) and 5 Jazz topics, from The History of Jazz to Improvisation. That’s 12 different topics to master. That’s a lot. And it’s especially a lot for an ADHD student.

While ADHD people have more receptors open and apparently can grasp more than the average person, a lot of what their mind grasps is irrelevant information, or “noise”. The noisier their environment the more noise – exponentially they are grasping, and the less relevant information stays in.

That is, of course, where Sir Ken Robinson’s words echo in my brain. Are we having a global ADHD epidemic??

Epidemic or no epidemic we are sitting with our son at the teacher-parents conference. The teacher nods her head and points to the low grades our son has achieved this semester. It’s very strange, given his IQ, she says, not in these words exactly. And then the motivational talk is directed at my son. She’s really nice, and I am sure he is not the first ADHD student to have passed under her wings. Still the words come out: “You must try harder” – and I see how his eyes are getting narrower. “You must concentrate”, his shoulders sink. “You need to think what can improve your performance in the classroom”, or something similar and I feel the lump in my throat and the humidity in my eyes.

“He can’t”, I say. “It’s not a decision he can make. It’s not an action to perform.” And I am thinking about this epidemic. “It’s like an illness or a handicap.” (Would you ask a kid to be taller so he can score better in Basketball?)

The teacher looks at me. She seems surprised. More at herself than at me, or perhaps I am imagining it. “Yes, I know”, she smiles an understanding smile: Illnesses are treated with medicines.

And so once again I find myself at this crossroad, where in order to allow my son to grow and develop and learn in the school he desires and deserves – I must sedate him. Is he going to need Ritalin to thrive in the real world? For higher education? Would he need Ritalin to work with his fellow band players? At which point does the ADHD ceases to be an epidemic and continues to be an evolution? And how much of this epidemic is caused by outdated education systems?

The Pitch & The Name, The Chicken & The Egg

Last week I took a rare drive to the TechAviv Founders meetup at Herzliya IDC. Not a drive I take lightly, mind you. But a rare opportunity with the kids taken care of, my lift both ways arranged, and enough coffee to keep me alert at the hours which are correctly referred to as “twilight”.

It was a great opportunity to meet with the community of entrepreneurs and investors I am proud to be a part of. Was nice to meet old colleagues, some new ones and of course Yaron Samid, who first introduced this meetup as a guest in a meetup I organized some years ago (continues here ).

Dave McClure gave a great talk and conversation around pitching. It’s great to be able to practice your pitch in a sympathetic environment, and get a really useful feedback to help you improve.

I was surprised though at some of the pitches, not to mention company names I heard during the evening. It took me right back to my consultancy days, when most of my business was creating names and doing renaming projects for startups and helping them create their pitch and communications strategies.

Name Thy Baby

So let’s start with a name. Or – let’s not. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about naming companies and products is that too often people come up with a general idea for their startup and their second step is immediately to name it. As if this baby, if not named immediately, will never learn to walk. They take great pride of the name they have created, sometimes they sound prouder of the name then of the business.

But a better way to do it is to use a temporary name, working title, project code-name and delay the naming until you are sure of your markets, your business model, your marketing & communications strategy and the overall terminology your business is going to use. Not to mention languages. Lots of Israeli entrepreneurs assume English automatically – but that’s not necessarily your target audience or all of it. If you might be targeting more than English speaking markets, beware embarrassing mistakes like “Pajero” “Pinto” “Mist” etc.

It’s almost a chicken and an egg question, only people here are so certain the name comes first. It shouldn’t. Your pitch should.

The other thing I noticed about the recent names I heard was intentionally using misspelling or a mixture of words one simply can’t spell from hearing only. Be very careful about these inventions. You might be a tech genius but when it comes to naming, using an expert could be the wisest and most cost effective move you can do at this very early stage in your company’s life. 

But this is really just the tip of the iceberg. You can look at a sample process here or look for more great tips on Google.

Pitch At All Costs

It might be that 15 years as a journalist in print journalism made me very efficient with words, especially crafting headlines that can tell enough in a limited number of characters and leave enough mystery so the reader continues reading. But this is exactly what you should do when you are pitching your company to an investor, partner, employee or supplier. Don’t attempt to tell the whole story. One of the main things to remember of course is who your audience is.

Take the same news item and compare the headlines it gets on various media. The differences result from the audience a medium is directed at. The same goes for pitching. You should always prepare a set of pitches for potential audiences. Not totally different pitches obviously, but different ways of saying the same thing.

To make sure you are using the right pitch – prepare before you go to an event where you might meet Dave McClure, for example. There’s enough information online about him and what he is looking for. So if this guy is looking for companies with traction – and you have traction – then grab his attention with his declaration of interest. Not with the fantastic and original un-spellable name of your company, nor with the story of what it is you do – that does not belong in a pitch.

And just for the sports – if you want me to draft some sample pitches here for you – I dare you to send me a paragraph (up to 3 twits long -520 characters) – and I’ll do my best. First 5 to send me (comment on this blog post) –win.

Mom is a Rock

Yea, mom is a rock. Mom can be a rock star too. She’s the coolest, and she’s always there. For the kids, that is, and the hubby, and oh, my god, for the dog too.

But what about mom for mom??

There’s a beautiful poem, written in Hebrew, by one of the most gifted poets I’ve read, Dahlia Ravikovitch. It’s called “Pride”, and here’s my attempt at translating this fantastic poem:

Even rocks break, I am telling you

And not for old age.

Many years they lie on their backs in the heat and the cold,

So many years,

It almost makes an impression of peaceful.

They do not move from their spot and so the cracks are hidden.
Sort of pride.

Many years pass with expectation.

The one destined to break them has not yet arrived.

And then the moss flourishes, the seaweed excite, and the sea emerges and returns.

And it seems like there’s no movement.

Until a small seal will come to brush against the rocks

Will come and will go.

And suddenly the rock is wounded.

I told you, when rocks break it happens by surprise.

Not to mention people.

I think ever since the first time I read it, as a high school student, it has been one of my favorite poems. I always felt like there are so many places to take this poem to, and so much to learn from it. And yet today, at a surprising halt, I discovered that I have learned nothing. And I feel doomed to repeat mistakes and sink deeper into this whirl of endless chase after a real peaceful day. And the only thing masking my cracks, is my pride.

Schoolyear: A Good Start

Two whole months into the school year and I must say something. So here it comes. I have two boys in school this year, as my daughter has graduated high school last year. Now I have one son who has started high school this year (9^th grade), and my youngest son, who is now in 5^th grade.

The new high school is so different from the one I encountered with my daughter! There are some obvious reasons, but some are really a matter of choice. A management choice.

My 14 year old son is going to Thelma Yellin High National School of the Arts. By the looks of it you could not suspect that this is one of the most lucrative schools in Israel, or that it is private. It’s an old building with crumbling trailers as classrooms. But who cares? Certainly not the people who go there. The creative atmosphere is strongly felt through sounds and sights. But it’s also felt through the teachers, staff and management attitude.

The grading system is different. Grades will go up, for instance. Not something you see every day when they’re all doing average. “We want the students to be happy”, said to me one of the consultants, not a slogan. Really meant it. For a change I don’t feel like I am forced into a combat for my kid’s survival or dignity. It’s built into the system. There’s still a long way to go. I know. But at least it’s a good start.

My youngest is into his second year at the Waldorf Education school. It’s 5^th grade and I am terribly impressed by the way they chose to introduce one of the more important learning skills. They have started this year with stories the teacher is telling from the mythologies of India, Persia & Babylon. He has been telling the story and the kids are to write the story in their notebooks and decorate them with illustrations. They can add descriptions and scenes that they come up with to enrich the stories, if they wish. But they have to listen, memorize, summarize, write and visualize. Not easy or simple. But the skill is so valuable and so well developed through these tasks.

Now to end this hard work the class has went on a 3 days field trip. Slept in tents, walked tens of kilometers, met with elders who shared their stories about the history of the country and the region. Learned discipline, nature, history and fraternity. Aren’t these skills as important to any child’s future?

Analysis of a Failure

Closing down. Shutting the doors. Dissolving. Folding. Gathering. Saying goodbye. Wrapping up. My startup of the last 2 years, Saveby, now belongs to the past, or to the future of someone else. All this silence on my blog recently is due to the fact that I find it is so hard to say the words, reveal the truth, admit a failure.

Although, some good may actually come out of this failure.

We gave it our best, my partner and I. We believed, and still do, in the power of the crowds in ecommerce. We still believe that buying is an action carried out by a consumer, and shouldn’t remain a re-action to a merchant’s action, as it still is today.

But what we believe in, or how fantastic is the system that we’ve built or the patent we designed, is irrelevant to our decision to quit.

Recently I had a conversation with one of the top entrepreneurs in Israel: an experienced, seasoned, diversified and daring man. He has closed his startup just a short while before we have decided to part from ours. It was a funny meeting, in a way. Me, mourning the loss of a few tens of thousands of dollars that my partner and I have poured out of our pockets into this startup, and him, counting a loss of several tens of millions of dollars put into his startup by a lot of good investors. I thanked god, at this stage, that I haven’t lost anyone else’s money.

But we spoke about the analysis of failure. Things look so much clearer when you look back on them. There are some mistakes you know you have learned from, and other mistakes you know you can’t always avoid. Still, next time, you’ll be more aware of the dangers.

It brought back a conversation with one particular VC who said how they prefer to invest in an entrepreneur who has experienced failure, as opposed to one that has only experienced success.  “Those who have failed will always analyze what they have done right and what went wrong. Those who have succeeded could be just lucky”.

So, we were not lucky. One mistake I feel that is particularly important to share is that we believed the further we advance without the involvement of strangers’ money, the better chances we have of getting any investment and a good valuation.

We should have known better. Get investments as early as possible, even if those are small and expensive –will cost you a large percentage of your startup. The further you go on your own the bigger is the risk that you will run out of funds before you reach your goal. Which is basically what happened to us.

The other very important thing we learned is that it is better to recruit active partners, who would be in it for the long run, then to hire freelancers who are in it – best case scenario – for some stock options. Depending on freelancers or outsourcing is really dangerous. Although, I recall, our search for a third cofounder took too long and was unsuccessful. Should we have waited longer? I don’t know.

But depending on outsources is that sort of mistake which is hard to avoid. At least I am now better aware of the danger in it and would manage it differently next time.

Yea, I’m right back on that horse.

Stay tuned.

Let Them Be Bored

“Let them be bored, teach them how to make it through boring stuff”.
I think that was the most interesting request I have ever heard a parent ask a teacher before. It came partly as a comment to me saying that my greatest expectation of my young son’s school is that he will learn how to learn.

The conversation took place in the first meeting of the parents in my son’s 5th grade with the new class teacher. In this introductory meeting he asked each of the nearly 70 parents that gathered in the classroom to describe their education vision, wishes, hopes and expectations of the school. It’s a Waldorf school and many of the parents said they chose this school simply because they hated the alternative – the “regular” school system. But listening to each one describe a vision was interesting and inspiring. Parents aren’t asked often enough this very clear and simple question. I have 24 school years of parenting behind me (12 of my daughter, 8 of one son and 4 of the other son) and this was the first time. Learning what members of this community are expecting lay the foundation for a supportive community for the joint ride to education and scholarship.

“Learning how to learn is important and valuable”, this father continued my thread, “but while we teach our kids the process of learning, they must also learn how to cope with the boring side of it, the tedious tasks: they can’t expect everything to be interesting and attractive all the time”.

It got me thinking. I thought about all the times I hear or read about engagement in the classroom. All the intensive dealing with using technology in the classroom, so that kids will have an interesting time and action packed learning experience. We often get out of our minds in that effort to make the schooling experience so rich. Anything to keep them in the process.

But the basis of learning is a human need. Like we need food and drink and love, we also need to learn. At early childhood it is a survival instinct. How many times would the baby try to walk and fall until he gets it? Or the toddler repeats the stacking of building blocks until he figures out the right way to do it without them falling? Hear any complaints about the process? I don’t think so. Do parents interfere in that process, or work hard to make it more interesting?

So what happens when our kids get to school? To be perfectly honest – boring happens. Boring takes over. The balance between boring and tedious on one hand and rewarding or satisfying on the other hand is broken. Getting a smiley sticker on the notebook isn’t a reward worthy the investing of a whole hour in solving arithmetic exercises. This doesn’t feel like a rewarding experience. My daughter, Shai, thinks that sometimes the clear path or a result, conclusion or some other grand finale, can also make for a rewarding or gratifying experience. But it’s the little tedious tasks you do with no clear vision of where it is leading you, or when will it end, that earn the title “boring” and end up detestable.

On a slightly different note: we got a dog last week. Her trainer works with the positive dog training method. So each task the dog does to our satisfaction earn it a big reward, either in the form of something to chew or in the form of love demonstrations. It’s amazing to see how quickly this young dog learns through a simple promise of a rewarding experience.

Creativity and Giftedness Year, and an Entrepreneurship Challenge

It’s the International Week of the Gifted this week, and we’re heading towards The International Year of Giftedness and Creativity. I like the tying together of giftedness and creativity. The government tests used in Israel to test kids for the special program for the gifted do not have room for creativity. They are mainly concerned with how high is the kid’s level is in math and reading comprehension. Creative giftedness has no room in those programs, and that’s a shame. Especially when you consider our country being titled a “startup nation”. 

As a team member of The Global Entrepreneurship Week I’m trying to tie giftedness and entrepreneurship together in a new volunteer project: The Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge. I intend to launch it in November 2012, during the Global Entrepreneurship Week 2012.

It’s a simple idea really: collect challenges, problems, dilemmas, wishes, hopes, dreams – from business people, investors, government institutions, social and environmental organizations – and from the kids themselves.

Problems can range from the millennium goals as defined by the UN, to simple challenges like creating a new mobile game that does this or that, to wild crazy ideas like develop a floating school bag that isn’t so heavy.

I’ve seen young kids discuss the budget crisis in hospitals and alternative ways of solving this. I am pretty sure what they can come up with isn’t the same as what the experienced consultants suggest. I’ve seen other challenges like better design for schools, entertainments solutions in poor neighborhoods, scientific education in kindergarten, and musical education for the elderly. All are fantastic challenges and I can’t wait to see what kids will do to solve them and how many more gifted and creative kids we will discover in the process. No tests involved.

A call for challenges: at this stage, and until November, I am collecting ideas and also registering schools who want allow their students to participate. Please help by adding your challenge in your area of interest, from your own experience or frustration, either as a comment here or as a post it here: http://wallwisher.com/wall/echallenge and don’t forget to pass it along to your friends, colleagues and neighbors.

Share a Little Happiness

A surprise trip to the US, to New York and San Francisco, has changed my plans for this summer. Between my daughter’s dream to go to the Roger Waters concert “The Wall”, her being invited to a Thiel Fellowship (20 Under 20) summit in San Francisco and my desire to meet more of my education related contacts worldwide, my husband has surprised me with a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card, in the form of a flight ticket to the US with my daughter.

This was a different travel for me, as I didn’t have too long to schedule meetings, and I found myself having a relaxed time between just a few meetings. I even had time to play tourist in California for 3 days, experience Couchsurfing for the first time ever at the house of Hillary and Marcus in Santa Cruz and drive to Monterey and Carmel.

Since I am developing a new startup now, that has a lot to do with knowledge and curiosity, every little thing plays a part in creating an inspiration. A friend has suggested I look at Couchsurfing when I had trouble finding accommodation for our stay in the West Coast. He did not know how wonderful a suggestion I found it. My favorite kind of tourism is People Tourism. The kind of tourism that allows you to meet local people, talk with them, spend time with them, and learn about their places through their eyes. You learn about the problems and challenges, as well as advantages and “secret best”… And it’s always a great opportunity to make new friends.

Sharing Ideas & Inspiration

Couchsurfing is a term used for people moving about from one friend’s couch to the other. The company, however, started as a tourist service in 1999. Wikipedia tells that The Couchsurfing project was conceived by Casey Fenton in 1999. “According to Fenton’s account, the idea arose after finding an inexpensive flight from Boston to Iceland. Fenton randomly e-mailed 1,500 students from the University of Iceland asking if he could stay. He ultimately received more than 50 offers of accommodation. On the return flight to Boston, he began to develop the ideas that would underpin the Couchsurfing project.”

Obviously the immediate reaction I got from my closest loved ones was “they must be serial killers”. It made me wonder why would people perceive Couchsurfing hosts as more dangerous than, say, AIRBNB hosts? I think that the fact that people open their house to perfect strangers and on top of it do not ask for a financial compensation – that, apparently, is perceived as an act of a crazy person, there for leading to the perception there are social deviations on Couchsurfing.

Think again.

In a way, Couchsurfing isn’t that different from Wikipedia. People sharing knowledge – people sharing their roof. In fact, on so many of our daily surfing we share. We share our lives on Facebook. Our thoughts on Twitter. Our photos on Instagram. We share our travel plans and experiences and reviews. We share entertainment and games. We share shopping experiences. We share, reach out and touch strangers and, well, it feels good to extend the human touch.

Now back to work on my new venture. Sharing learning.

What Would You Call a City’s Achievement in Education?

Last night I attended the graduation ceremony of the 1,420 8th graders in my city of Ramat-Gan, my son was one of them. It’s a big ceremony as graduating 8th grade marks the move from elementary to high school.
Some statistics they pointed out very proudly in the many speaches they had there was that there are no drop-outs in Ramat Gan. Strangely enough, I didn’t think the possibility of a dropout even exists, since the law in Israel defines education till the age of 15 “mandatory”. It goes to force both the parents and the local supplier of education to put the kids in a school.
But still, it sounds pretty.
I have a lot of criticism on education and education systems. There aren’t real alternatives to public education in Israel (only semi-private systems, that are still, in most cases, controlled by the cities/local councils).
There’s still a very long way to go before the many problems of education will actually be solved, but if there’s something I can be proud of in my city is their constant effort to innovate and change in education. Next year, for example, they are going to open up registration zones. This means that kids going to elementary school and their parents can choose the school that most fits the childs interests and won’t be forced to send their kids automatically to the closest school. To make the choice of schools interesting most elementaru schools in the city defined a “specialization”: arts, sciences, games, nature and environment, design, technology, leadership and more.

The other thing that makes me proud of this city’s education is the kids. They are actually good kids. Schools are safe and provide a friendly environment, at least in the social context. If you could see the 1420 students perform spontaneous group hugs on the stadium’s field at the end of the ceremony, you’ll know what I mean. This, which happened when most of the audience – families of the young graduates – was on the way out, was actually the height of the event in my view.

Ramat-Gan, by the way, is the city right next to Tel-Aviv, on the east. About 150,000 live here. The city is marking its 90th anniversary this year. That’s about a decade younger than Tel-Aviv and about 30 years older than our country. The population here is very mixed, socially, financially and anthropologically. It’s an interesting city to live in, with a mentality of a small town, really. Everybody knows everybody.

A little more about my town: http://www.ramat-gan.info/ramatgan/sister-cities/home-page.htm

Launch: The Entrepreneurship Challenge

“Entrepreneurship is like a religion for you, or a cult”, I was recently told. And since it is really a bit of my religion I wasn’t sure if this was meant as a complement or an insult. I decided it’s a complement and I am all for missionary activities.

One of my favorite missionary activities is The Global Entrepreneurship Week, referred to as GEW and titled “Unleashing Ideas”. The next one is happening in just less than 6 months, November 12, 2012.

I intend to be ready for it with my contribution titled “The Entrepreneurship Challenge for High Schools”.

The GEW was started in 2007, by 37 countries, of which only 18 were hosts to entrepreneurship activities. A year later about 3 million people took part in the GEW events at 77 countries. It’s been growing ever since. Activities are directed at promoting entrepreneurship and bringing it to all populations, including rural, remote and to those sectors which do not excel in daring like, embarrassed to say, women.

At about the same time the GEW has started, I began working on an idea to establish an elementary school for entrepreneurship. I started with thinking of our neighborhood school. The idea was not to replace the curriculum, which is not really possible, but rather to access the curriculum through the entrepreneurship way of life, this mode of thinking. Unfortunately the idea could not take off here, despite real enthusiasm by the city’s education department, due to frequent management changes at the school. In the years that have passed my youngest left this school in favor of our city’s Waldorf Education School. My older son is now graduating this elementary school, and will be going to the Thelma Yellin National Arts High School next year. And as my first born is now graduating high school I began looking at high schools as another good target for my missionary activities. And so the High Schools Entrepreneurship Challenge is born.

During the coming Global Entrepreneurship Week I will present diversified challenges that can only be solved using entrepreneurial thinking and doing to high school students. Those students will have to build teams to take on the challenge of their choice. Each challenge will have a mentor or advisor to guide the young entrepreneurial team through. They will have 3 months to work out their solution and by February 2013 will present their suggested solution, demo, and prototype or business plan.

Don’t you think it’s a better method to appreciate learning than PISA???

To make it happen, I need your help. I need people who are willing to join me and start by collecting problems, wishes, hopes, dreams and, well – challenges, from all sectors – private and public, government (local\national\global), health, arts, sports, hi tech, low tech, agriculture, environment and social, transportation, security, education, games and entertainment – in short – all sectors that can contribute ideas or challenges. Better collect those challenges with mentors, but I will need volunteer mentors as well. So if you are a developer, business men, investor, lecturer, researcher, activist – a person who is a doer – you can become a mentor.

I intend to introduce the challenges to participating high schools in November 2012. If you are connected to any high school, anywhere in the world, that wants to demonstrate its students’ abilities and achievements – make sure they are listed as a participating high school and that the school representative contacts me.

Students will be able to browse the challenges online and teams can apply to take on a challenge independent of their high schools too. But I much rather have schools and lots of students participating. The bigger the networking around it is – the better.

By February 2013 all suggested solutions will be presented (even if they’re half baked). Any team with a feasible solution is a winner. Well, as a religious fanatic I can say, every participant really is a winner.

I am still unsure about what to do after that. Some solutions might be interesting enough for the industry to choose to continue working on, in collaboration with the students. Some would be pursued by the student teams themselves. I am pretty sure I don’t want to announce “winners”. Though “outstanding” would probably be evident. The real world would know which solutions are winning. I would like, however, to announce winning schools – those will be chosen based on number of participants in the challenge and demonstrating original thought and application abilities.

What do you think? I’m open to suggestions.

What’s Next?

This must have been the most confusing time of my life. A decision to move on is not an easy one. Friends, colleagues and relatives kept advising me to take a vacation. But for me, a vacation is something you go to from a workplace, and get back from, to a workplace. If it’s from nothing to nothing, then it’s probably not a vacation. And for me especially: I need to be constantly busy.

So I started by listing all possible future plans. All those ideas I’ve been shoving under the bed, hiding in the drawer. Every urge that was swept aside. I let my passions carry me to better places, called my imagination free and came up with at least one or two really good ideas every day, and probably some weird and not so great ideas too.

In the meantime my ever so clean and organized study became messy. Really messy. Tons of papers, notes, post its, receipts, notebooks, business cards from all over the world, pens and pencils, reading glasses, a broken netbook that needs backing up before sending it to be fixed. A long long list of things to do that keeps getting longer. On my desktop tens of incomplete blog posts, started just like this one, but never ripened to be presented in public. Another list that is not really getting shorter of people to call, schedule meetings, bring up to date.

I respond to event invitations, but rarely gather enough energy to go. What will I say? What shouldn’t I say?

I need time to heal, apparently.

Saying goodbye after almost 2 years isn’t simple.

It’s as complicated as finding the next focus at least.