My First Start-Up

Us kids at the house, 1963

My First Start-Up: Still going strong at fifty!

I have been back to my home in Ottawa only a few times over the past forty years. So when I met Nicole, a scientist from Ottawa at the recent American Society for Microbiology (ASM) meeting in Philadelphia, I implored her to take a few photos of my old home.

So here is the picture of the place we grew up in fifty years ago. The house is much the same as it was them, except that the lawn is fairer, the trees are much larger, and the window frames have been replaced. When I looked at the picture, my eyes clouded. 616 Chadburn. I wonder who lives there today.

I also asked Nicole to take a picture of the apartment building across the street. I wanted to see whether "Scully's mark" was still there after almost fifty years. As a child, I had a friend named Scully who was the first entrepreneur that I ever met. Scully always had new ideas, many about making money. Once he suggested that we go down to Industrial Avenue and cut some bulrushes, and then sell them as decoration from door to door. We went and slew a bunch of bulrushes, but alas, neighbours (I am using the Canadian spelling here) were hesitant to purchase them in their natural brown condition.

"No problem", said Scully. We'll paint them gold and black, that way we can charge more money and they'll be irresistible". We bought some paint and dipped our first bulrush into the black can. It came out black indeed, but the bulrush had sopped up quite a bit of paint and refused to dry, even after an hour on the pavement. "No problem", said Scully. "What we need is to whip the bulrush around our head, the paint will fly off from the centrifugal (centripetal?) force. He proceeded to take the moist, black bulrush and whip it around his head, much the same way that David prepared his slingshot for Goliath. And indeed, when Scully loosened his grip, the bulrush flew into the air.

Unlike David, however, his shot did not hit Goliath's forehead, but rather flew into the brick apartment building across the road, leaving a noticeable, ugly black mark. Scully's mark. For years, we hid the fact that our start-up was responsible for this scar on the neighboring building. But with time, it became one of my favorite tales.

So here, you see it still. Fifty years on. My first start-up left its indelible mark. Thanks for the memories, Nicole!! And yes, we did sell a few painted bulrushes.

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!