Shift Your Image of Tel Aviv (Part 3): Technology Business, Seminars

Invitation to the IT-SMF yearly meeting. About 300 IT service professionals meeting and learning new ideas in ITIL and other IT service and quality techniques.

Israel has a great technology reputation. Intel Israel and the Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) give us a reputation of solid and innovative technologists. There are about 20 internationally known Israeli companies, some connected with bigger American companies. Less known is the rest of the Israeli technology world from top ranked education in the Technion to government driven start-up funds. Meetings among Israeli technologists is an interesting local phenomena. Most people who come from other countries wonder how we can have productive meetings that satisfy everyone. In 2008 the hi-tech sector in Israel went through a very low period, many meetings were canceled or required an entrance fee. As the market recovers, there is somewhat of a recovery and the meetings are back "on". Meetings and conferences are usually free to attendees, they are paid for by exhibitors (suppliers to the specific field.) I went to the IT-SMF yearly show where this year they awarded a prize to the company most successful in implementing ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) - a set of procedures and practices to improve IT quality. This is the first time the group honored a company with a prize. There were three contenders: Pelphone, the city of Petach Tikva and the international support group at Comverse. Pelephone won the award this year with the other two getting second place (I guess they scored close.)

This meeting-conference was typical of tens of meetings every month all over Israel. Most of the meetings tend to be in the Tel Aviv area. They attract anywhere from 100 to 1,000 attendees. The meetings are either sponsored by an organization or a company. There are a few interesting attributes that make Israeli technical meetings unique and useful for sponsors and the community:

• Geographic proximity: Israel is small and it is easy to get to a central location. At most the commute is 3 hours by car.
• Diverse specialties: there are more than 50 specialty fields with a few hundred professionals in each field. This makes the meetings focused enough to be interesting and not too big
• Constant innovation: even in the most obscure fields there is a drive to innovate constantly. Quality in the IT field, even in groups like small cities, is indicative of the Israeli spirit to innovate and improve.
• Open communication: Israelis love to talk and listen, learn and teach, compare, size-up... all the elements which make conferences successful. Only in security (i.e. military technology) meetings did I see people avoiding conversation or being secretive.

The conference I attended is a good example of why Israeli technologists and the local sector can benefit from conferences. The IT-SMF conference is a good example to illustrate other technical specialties. The technology sector changes quickly and in significant ways. Both in technical advances and in business use. It is also composed of many sub-specialties with different concerns related to different issues. In the IT world there is a strong pressure to increase quality and improve services. Outsiders may not appreciate this world. Business and non-technical people ask: "If google can organize so much information and deliver it anywhere in the world, why can't I find information inside my company?" or "If Amazon.Com can sell you so many things why can't I have an inventory of my warehouse updated daily?". Simple questions? Not so simple answers for IT managers and workers. There is also a push to enable business managers to determine what IT services are needed. IT managers are no longer the deciding factors in what services are deployed. While companies like HP and IBM (sponsors of this meeting) offer tools, each IT department has to implement the tools according to their own needs. These issues are completely different from the cell phone industry or the semiconductor sector. If a meeting was held to inform all these sub-specialties, it would have to be general without much depth. Thankfully we have enough people interested in many topics and desire to meet, talk, listen and learn.

Technology meetings and conferences are held in hotel and convention centers. The IT-SMF yearly meeting is sponsored and also paid for the the IT-SMF Israel chapter. There is an International group which sets policy and organizes standards and certifications. Sponsorship from some suppliers like this show is usually needed to pay for the event. There are a few technology conference organizations like People and Computers, and Electronica which organize bigger shows and are active in helping companies organize private shows. Many international technology companies hold yearly meetings for customers and decision makers in government, the military and business. The Microsoft meeting (in Eilat,) the Oracle meeting and the IBM meetings are well organized and attract many who are not just technologists from government to business. The unique qualities of the Israeli technology sector is great for face-to-face meetings and conferences, so come and talk, listen and learn.