Isra-Pal IT

It's summer and things are heating up. It can get pretty depressing if you look to closely at life in the Holy Land. Our PM is being reinvestigated, there seems to be a new Hezbollah buildup in South Lebanon, the Iranians just tested more long range missiles, there may not be enough water in the country to see us through the summer and there are jelly-fish (medusas locally) on the beach. So I was my usual cynical self yesterday when I set out for the Isra-Pal IT 2008 conference. Believe it or not, I came away rather impressed.

The conference was sponsored by USAID (they give out all US aid: everyone loves them) to get Israeli and Palestinian high tech people together and to let them talk. I was there representing smaller Israeli engineering services companies and was asked to present the "why and how" of outsourcing. I got to meet some of our neighbors from Ramallah, we chatted and brainstormed on ways we could work together and compared notes on hiring squints. Even the lunch was not bad at all. The Israeli VCs (Chemi Peres, Yadin Kaufman and Michael Eisenberg) stole the show. They were optimistic and eloquent. Eisenberg's firm (Benchmark) invested in g.ho.st, the first joint Israel/Palestinian venture. The technical team is in Ramallah with the business guys in Modeiin. g.ho.st is a virtual web OS: your own desktop anywhere. Its pretty cool, I played with it last night. Dave Harden, a USAID Deputy DIrector, fellow school board member, and the force behind the conference, believes stock options lead to a better future than suicide bombing. You can't disagree.

But, of course this is Israel. And 80% rules. My session was cut a little short because of lack of time (I was overjoyed as I hate talking in public). So we each had about five or so minutes to explain what we were about. Just before my turn, some Israeli dude, not even on the program, gets up, plugs in his disk-on-key and starts a 15 minute rant and rave about how he had this idea for a joint Isra/Pal venture before anyone else and how everyone was too chicken to invest ($10million) and no one wanted to partner with him. Oh, and all he needs are customers. Everyone, Palestinians and Israelis sat cringing, trying not to feel too embarrassed for him . So you see we have a lot in common, neither side tolerates idiots well.