Yossi Vardi Walks into my Life

Yossi Vardi Walks into my Life

Yossi Vardi is an enormously successful entrepreneur who spearheaded the Israeli internet hi-tech revolution of the past fifteen years (and before that he had an amazing career as well). We met several years ago, through the auspices of Prof. Dov Lichtenberg (Yossi's classmate and my Dean at the Medical School). For whatever reasons, we hit it off. Yossi connected me with the HED big band, and I even performed at one of his international internet conferences (without either of us knowing!)

When Yossi began inviting me to his un-conference camp for the weird, "Kinnernet", I didn't attend for several years, as I did not feel competent enough in the internet world (most of the participants are internet mavens and aspiring leaders) to attend. But when Alon Amit joined my team, I asked him to bring me 'up to scratch', and he did his best. So although I still don't twitter much, I do have over four hundred facebook friends, have several active websites (http://www.meltells.com/ ,where children can read and listen to all my children's books for free

and http://www.smellwell.com/, which cotains many research articles and facats about bad breath and body odor and http://www.melrosenberg.com/), where people can read everything about me and many dormant ones (such as http://www.wikishmedia.com/), just waiting for the right moment.

I attended my very first Kinnernet in 2007, and was amazed. There were heads of major corporations there swallowing swords, walking tightropes, playing amazing music, cooking cholent at midnight, etc. etc. I phoned my wife "Honey, if you thought I was 'bad', you have to come see these guys!". My daughter Assif puts it like this: "Once a year an alien spaceship lands at the Kinneret, and Dad hangs with his 'other family' for a couple of days". These people are all over the place – they make robots that make robots and fly toy helicopters and play computer games in real helicopters. And when they're not at kinnernet, they're busy shaping our world.

You can't apply for Kinnernet, you only get invited. And you only get re-invited if you're out there, running workshops, singing and dancing, inventing gizmoes, and making a public spectacle of yourself. I just participated in the first Kinnernet in the US, organized by Yossi Vardi and the indomitable Jeff Pulver. Amazing! Smaller and more intimate than the Israeli one (100 participants instead of 200), cushier (high class rooms and toilet paper), less doodads (some, like the real helicopter, or Didi's clock made out of ten bicycles, are head to bring on the plane), but the same lateral people doing their mishigas. What a wonderful world of the weird!

Kinnernet 2007 memories and musings

A few weeks ago I attended Kinnernet 2007, a unique adult summer camp (but held in the spring) mostly for computer and internet geniuses, and other assorted strangely talented but otherwise harmless people. The camp 'director' Yossi Vardi (to the right of me in photo), kindly invited me, despite my limited understanding of all things internet (I suppose I belong tothe second category of invited). The three-day camp (some call it an 'unconference') was a smashing success (some smashed computers, some got smashed, some did both). At Kinnernet, I was a member of the band (on tenor sax) led by the amazing Michal Levy (on left in photo) and gave a talk on bad breath, body odor and sex, which is something I do on occasion (give talks, that is). During the daytime, I study bad breath and body odors, as a university professor and inventor. At nighttime, I turn into a sax player and singer (mostly nostalgiac jazz and some rock and roll). During the rest of my spare time, I like to write children's books. Which brings me back to Kinnernet 2007. For the past 25 years, I have been considered something of an ugly duckling by my academic 'friends' who think I should be spending more time among test tubes and less time with my otherpursuits. But I think that life is all about doing many things simultaneously. So imagine how very at home I felt among some 200 other Kinnernet campers whowere like me, but much moreso.

In my previous post, I told you a little about little Ottawa (there is much more to tell) where I grew up as a young, chubby, nerd of a kid. Among my first grade colleagues was a girl named Selma Tennenhouse. Her baby brother David, (who was actually a baby the last time I saw him, almost fifty years ago) was a fellow Kinnernet camper, now a computer guru. Quite a coincidence running into him. By the way, I also have a baby brother, also named David, who has turned into a very successful and amazing guy. Hag Pesach Sameach, David! (Which, for all of those readers who aren't Jewish, have no plans to become Jewish, don't know Hebrew, etc., means Happy Passover).

More on Passover, Judaism, Christianity and life in my next post. Regards to all,

Mel