NoCamels.com is giving away 5000 shekels to the creator of the most watched video (Rules In Hebrew)

NoCamels.com, a division of The Asper institute at Communications School, IDC is proud to present the 2009 ‘Israeli innovation video competition’.

Directors, writers, creators! We know that you have so much to show and tell the world about Israel and we welcome you to participate in a unique competition where you get to show the world “Israel behind the headlines”.

Dr. Noam Lemelshtrich-Latar, Dean of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications at IDC, Herzliya said: “The Asper institute for new media diplomacy not only teaches the most advanced methods for content production, management and promotion but gives the students opportunities to practice positive activities, giving them tangible experience in the field of interactive content and digital new media.”

Dr. Oren Zuckerman, Interactive Specialty Head of the Sammy Ofer School of Communications at IDC, Herzliya said “Leading schools around the world, including ourselves, are focusing on active research performed by the students, by initiating real content activities – not in theory but amidst real audiences.  The Israeli innovation project NoCamels is a good example of content activity that involves all aspects in the activities of leading world media corporations – content creation, marketing and using advance media for promoting exposure.”

The rules:
1.Anyone is invited to submit a video and be entered into the competition.

2.Shoot and edit a short video (2 to 5 minutes).

3.The video content has to deal with Israeli innovation: Anything new, positive, different and interesting which relates to Israel in some way or another. It can be about company, music group, factory, exhibition or anything else – there are no boundaries.

4.The video must be in English. If not in English directly, then the use of subtitles is possible.

5.The video must be submitted by June 30st, 2009 but it is recommended that you submit yours as soon as possible in order to have enough time to build up views.

6.Digital file submission only (Mpeg4, avi, mov etc. but not flash) using one of the following:
a.Email, as an attachment. Please note size restrictions on different mail servers. Email to NoCamels.com@gmail.com
b.File transfer service such as yousendit or an FTP server.
c.CD sent via mail (snail-mail) to:

Dean’s Office,
Sammy Ofer School of Communications
Interdisciplinary Center (IDC) Herzliya
P.O.Box 167
Herzliya, 46150, Israel

7.Along with each video please provide your name, email address, phone number, video’s title and a short, informative 1-2 paragraph description of your choice of topic for the video. All information must be sent in English.

8.We (the NoCamels team) will add the closing and opening credits, and upload the video to different sites (youtube, veoh, etc ) ; promote via social networks (such as facebook and twitter) and social book marking sites (dig, stumbleupom and the likes) and even send you the links to the videos so you can promote yours to your own contacts.

9.The winning of the competition is based on the combined number of views each video gets on all the platforms until June 30th, 2009. It’s simple, the video with most views wins!

10.The competition will end with a concluding event where a panel of judges, including high ranking researchers of media and innovation, media company managers, bloggers and hedge funds executives, will view and comment on the videos.

11.At the event, each judge will be able to give a bonus of 5000 views (or 10% of the original views, the biggest between the two) to a favorite video.

12.The creators of the 10 most viewed videos will receive a diploma from the IDC Communications School.

13.IDC Herzliya, The Asper Institute and No Camels reserves the right to not publish or refuse publication of any video for any reason, including low quality and derogatory content.

14.IDC Herzliya, The Asper Institute and No Camels reserves the right to use any of the videos or any selected part of them, along with the cited names of the creators. This does not include the use of these videos for commercial purposes.

Don’t:
1.Upload the video to your own site choices and then send us the link. Only videos that we upload to the sites will be counted among the entries. Don’t worry though, we’ll send you the links so you can send them to your friends.

2.Important! Don’t include materials (music, video, pictures) which you don’t have copyrights for.

3.No harmful messages such as sex or violence. No swearing please.

4.No slandering of Israel will be permitted. Although, as an academic institution we believe that everyone has the right to free speech and criticism, this project is for positive public diplomacy of Israel online. We are giving you the chance to show the world why Israel is the place to be and we ask that all entrants kindly act accordingly.

Guest Post By Yarin Hochman

In the last couple of weeks there were many tech conferences events here in Israel, after attending most of them, I must say that more then ever I’m convinced that early stage startups should focus most of their attention in the products themselves and not so much in their business model and revenue generation, even as the economic atmosphere pressures.

Ev Williams Twitter CEO & co-founder was asked last week at web 2.0 expo, what advice would he give today to someone trying to build their own startup? His answer:

The core thing would be just do something awesome. Try not to get caught up in the echo chamber.
That is probably the toughest thing when you are trying to break out and do something original.

I think that Yossi Vardi’s famous saying that revenues are distraction is still very much relevant even at this economic climate, I believe young companies should always aim for the best user experience possible by building products that people will fall in love in, and want to use.
In my opinion that is 10 times harder to build than some sophisticated business model, additionally, I believe once you actually get the eye balls, the loyal users who use your product on a daily basis it is getting much simpler to start thinking business and how monetize-generate revenue off these users.

Now I’m not a VC, or anything, but I’d like to share with you the way I evaluate startup’s products (including those I work on) :

-Beneath all the fancy technology, core ideas, and even vision  What’s the benefit for the end user?
(what do they get out of it?)

-Would I want to use the service?

-Would my parents (i.e older people) use it, could understand it?

Now obviously there’s much more to evaluating a company’s product, but for me these are the high order of bytes, the benefit to the end user and the “WOW” factor of the product are the things that are often the difference between a business’ failure and a runaway success stories.

Until recently it was common for startups not to think about the business side of their projects, and their plan was basically aiming to make an exit, sell the company for millions of dollars, and that was fine for then but today unless you somehow reinvent the wheel which let’s be honest most of us probably will not, it just wont happen in the near future.
Now don’t get all pessimistic, good news is that the costs of both starting and running a web based startup has dropped dramatically over the past couple of years, and if history is any evident the best companies are built during down times, and those who will survive it will most likely make a killing in the long run and will kick ass.

Two weeks ago I attended a wonderful tech event called: Techonomy, it was an excellent event organized by well known Israeli blogger Orli Yakuel of GO2WEB20, the event was a real treat, well organized and the startups which presented had been carefully chosen, and did great.

Image credit: ilan peer

The presentations were really good and the panel of experts tried to push the discussion around their business model, and about their ability to become profitable.(It was called Techonomy)  But I want to focus on something else here, with equal if not greater importance.

In the last couple of events here in Israel we started this new thing of placing a screen on stage next to the presenters with realtime tweets that simply carry the #Hashtag of the event, In Techonomy’s case (#Techonomy) more then 600 tweets were sent in over 4 hours, and it quickly even became a trending topic on Twitter.com

My point here is that we are witnessing a major shift here in terms of the end benefit to the users, and users satisfaction; after each appearance, the lights were up and the panelists gave their thoughts on the startup, but most of the audience didn’t really paid much attention. Why? Because they were all Twittering away giving their thoughts on the product, hashtagging everything neatly, and even replying directly to the founders on stage to check out the feedback.

I personally enjoyed the panelists’ thoughts and input, but I think what were seeing here is something quite extraordinary, where basically anyone can participate, share and receive info in realtime-live events.
Now for the startups presenting, I’m 1­­00% sure that the exposure and the twitter feedback they received was much more valuable than the panelists thoughts, and for that matter even more valuable than most typical feedback companies receive, these guys couldn’t have gotten any other way.

Let’s play with the numbers, say an average tech savvy attendee has about 150 followers on twitter, and there were about 300 sits in the audience, that’s 45,000 twitter users, who will check the product and if they find it awesome and love it, pass it on and so forth. (and we never even mentioned Facebook here )

I think we’re getting to a stage when people are becoming much more demanding, expecting higher standards than ever, and the companies that will not have an awesome solution that will make us all go WOW, and play smart with social media just aren’t going to make it.
Now before I get many backlashes here, of course a founders should know their numbers well and have a revenue model down the road, I just think that focusing on the products themselves is much more important and valuable in building something long term, and more rewording even in this day and age.

Yarin Hochman is self-described “social media junky, tech entrepreneur, and knowledge seeker”.
We met him at the game un-Conference, and talked to him about some of his ideas.
http://yarinhochman.com/

Guy Tomer, An entrepreneur, father, husband, son, brother, friend, technologist, Israeli, PlayStation hobbyist, squash hobbyist (That’s what he wrote on his blog) wants to use your videos and enrich them with cool widgets. While other companies are already in this business, Guy’s new start-up, attracTV will try to make it different.

We sent Danielle to interview the people behind “Garage Geeks“.  She interviewed Gil Hirsch one of the founders  of this amazing project. Instead of asking questions about Garage Geeks she asked about his personal life but a little on their strange projects.

Some more info on Garage Geeks from their website:
“GarargeGeeks is an Israeli based not-profit physical and virtual space for innovative and creative people to introduce, network, expose, create, brainstorm, innovate and build. People that take part in the activities come from different disciplines such as electronics, software, mechanical, art, design, music, hacking and gaming. The spirit of GarageGeeks promotes building non-commercial projects that would otherwise may not have come to life”.

Filmed By: Danielle Yaron and Illan Gold

Vera Sachs is a paralegal in a patent register office but she doen’t look or act like you would expect from one. With fresh attitude and sharp mind, she came to the Game UnConference to find the next best Idea.
Nothing, not even the world financial crisis, will prevent her from finding the newest game addiction.

Dror Gil, a proud geek, inventor, and a rising rock star with his Beta-Band tells us about geekcon. A drummerbot and to hand controlled fountain: in a time when every invention tries to be first and foremost profittable, it’s nice ti see some people who come together and build stuff, for the sheer pleasure of having fun.

Jeff Pulver explains the pulver act, how it came to be, and the effect it has on our lives up until now. He gives a leeson in public activism and expresses concern over recenr developmnets that threaten the future of voIP communication.

Uri Shinar, founder and the living spirit behind Aniboom shares some insights about the new world of media emerging in sight.

During Rosh Pina Media festival the investor & entrepreneur Jeff Pulver talked to nocamels about why he keeps coming back to Israel. What startups should be invested in, and whom he considers a friend.