Best of 140: Twitter in Tel Aviv

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The 140 conference in Tel Aviv was great.

Best Lines:

  • Bob Rosenschein: If you have a hot startup idea, let me know. But please don’t send me a business plan. Send me a 140 character pitch.
  • Bob Rosenschein: Israel has such an advantage over the Americans. We wake up 7 hours earlier! [Australians have an even bigger advantage. But they have to live life upside down.]
  • Benji Lovitt (Twitter comedy): Do Jewish mothers in the West Bank tell their daughters not to settle?
  • Shalev Hulio: Got Tweet of guy trapped in store during Haiti earthquake. He was in liquor dept. Didn’t want 2 come out
  • Nimrod Dweck: I learned my English from hip-hop so I can say things like “Yeah bitches” but big words are hard
  • Lior Zoref: Food gets the most ReTweets. It’s emotional. (hat tip: @elyondekoven).
  • Guy Zohar (TV newscaster): I’m going to talk about truth in the news. Don’t worry, it will be short.
  • Guy Zohar: In the news, “truth” is anything that hasn’t been disproven yet. [Ouch]
  • Adam Fisher: You can say so much more in 140 characters in Hebrew than in English.
  • Jeff Pulver on what would have been his father’s 75 bday: Our Tweets are the time capsule we leave behind
  • Jacob Ner David: Is that based on anything, or did you just make that stat up completely?
  • Tal Yaniv: Talk positive and save characters on Tweets (hat tip: @RenaR)
  • Charlie Kalech: For Twestival we’re in MidEast region. So we work with people from Dubai, Bethlehem, Amman … [Cool]
  • Ronen Raz: We used to say “history is written by the winners.” From now on it may be analyzed by the winners. But it’s being written by all of us in real time

Best Exchanges:

  • Tal Yaniv & Mel Rosenberg:
    • Tal: How many of you are parents, have children?
    • Mel: How many of your parents have children?
    • Tal: I’m sorry if I said it wrong. But Mel, you’re the only one who misunderstood.
  • Comedians Benji Lovitt and Charley Warady:
    • Charlie: Try to explain Tweetups 2 non-Tweeters. I’m going to see ppl I’ve never seen b4 but are my good friends
    • Benji: Try 2 explain Tweetups 2 Tweeters. No, we’re meeting for real drinks. In person.

Best Stories:

  • Jeff Pulver: During Haiti earthquake I retweeted USAirForce pls let Doctors w/o Borders land their plane. They replied to me saying “we’re on it.” Next thing I knew the Air Force was following me. What do you do when the Air Force is following you? Pretty soon I was DM’ing with the Pentagon. (hat tip: @eliesheva)
  • Yoni Bloch (a top Israeli musician): I had a video get 200,000 hits on YouTube. My label, the biggest music label in Israel, told them to take it down. They said “We’ll show YouTube.” You know what YouTube said? “OK.” I had to explain to my manager that we wanted this on YouTube.
  • Yosi Taguri: We have a friend who went to a restaurant taking pictures with his iPad. The owner was sure he was a food critic. He got his whole meal for free.
  • Yosi Taguri: When we started we hoped people would send us free food. We found out there’s no such thing as a free lunch. But there are free dinners.
  • Guy Zohar: There was a video of an accident in New York. Our competitors aired it. I first posted to Twitter. Was told it was a movie stunt. So I reported the full story.
  • Guy Zohar: There was an ad in the paper recruiting women for the Women’s Flotilla. Others newscasters treated it as real. I called the number, was answering machine that didn’t return. Called the Secret Service, they said it wasn’t real. Posted to Facebook. A colleague said they placed it for a joke segment. Again, I got the story, just because I used Social Media network.
  • Gali Ross: Recent vacation. We got in the car. Opened iPhone. Started driving. About 2 hours before wanting to stop we started looking up B2Bs or restaurants or whatever. 12 day trip, no planning whatsoever.

Best Lessons / Analyses:

  • Benji Lovitt: Make ppl laugh, esp when they really need the relief, they’ll help promote u when u need
  • Boaz Cohen: 20 years ago many people had illegal cable connections. Now most people have paid subscriptions. Same will happen with music. [Jeff Pulver disagreed: I think once things are free, people get used to it and there’s no turning back.]
  • Efrat Kotler: Diplomacy’s 1st phase: Govt 2 govt. 2nd: Ppl 2 ppl. 3rd: Gov & ppl working 2gether. [It’s the same w/ companies.]
  • Dror Ceder: [Implied lesson from blooper reel] when you’re doing a live broadcast, wear a belt (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrJptTZgRv4)
  • Dror Ceder: We’re moving from the anonymous web to the identity web (hey, I said that: The Age of Anonymity has Ended)
  • Jeff Pulver: If Facebook realized that they’re Facebook & stopped trying to be something else they’d be so much better

Best Sessions & Speakers:

  • IDF New Media Desk head Lt. Aliza Landes and MediAnd co-founder Shalev Hulio were fantastic describing how people contacted the Israel Defense Forces through their Twitter account to help save people trapped during the earthquake in Haiti
  • Yosi Taguri & Lior Zoref were very entertaining on both of their panels
  • Nice magic show by Lior Manor
  • Twitter comedy by Benji Lovitt and Charley Warady
  • Dror Ceder from Wibiya was entertaining
  • Social Media for Social Good: Excellent and touching session with Charlie Kalech, Liane Thompson, Paula Stern, Ronen Raz, and Yotam Troim

Best Interaction:

  • Jacob Ner David: Everybody who agrees raise your hand [A few hands]. Everybody who disagrees raise your hand [A few hands]. Everybody who isn’t paying attention raise your hand.
  • Dror Ceder (trying to wake people up): Everybody who is here, raise your hand. Most of you aren’t here. Let’s try again …
  • Oded Sharon and audience member:
    • Oded: What game mechanics do you want see in life?
    • Answer from the audience: Offer a badge to anyone who will clean my apartment
    • Oded: There’s an app for that! [A chores app]

Best Logistics:

Yeah, the boring stuff that makes all the difference. Nicely done here:

  • Lots of power outlets: Such a sweet sight when I’m trying to blog an all day conference
  • Good wi-fi: A hundred of us Tweeting (and some people watching a live feed of the conference we were attending. I don’t know why). The WiFi held up pretty nicely
  • Twitter names on the list of speakers. That’s usually my first challenge for live conference Tweeting & blogging, finding the speakers’ Twitter names. So nice to have it right there. The conference schedule was just a one pager, double-sided. And yet it had everything I needed.

Best Tweets:

  • @elyondekoven: nice thing about a twitter conf is you are almost *expected* to be playing online during the lectures 😉
  • @mayaub: Girl Power session at #140conf was scheduled at the exact time mothers who have to pick up their kids need to leave: ironic!
  • @eliesheva: hearing a lot about ‘tweeter’ today – twitter, you better watch out. [I spend my life embarrassing my kids with my foreign accent for Hebrew. Jokes about their accents make me feel better. Sorry.]

What have I missed? Tweet with #BestOf #140Conf or comment here.

If you’re mentioned in this post, and want it to be linked to your site, let me know the URL by comment or Tweet to @GilR.

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