Why TechAviv and technology in general lacks women (Part 1)
Filed under: Industry pulse, Information Technology, Israeli Websites, Uncategorized, Web2.0, technology
TechAviv, a global group for hi-tech Israeli entrepreneurs, had its first meeting of 2009 at the Inter-Disciplinary College (IDC) in Herzilyya last night. During the event, which was only open to Israeli entrepreneurs, representatives from Outbrain, 2Pad and Boxee spoke about their companies. The event was streamed live over the Internet on the TechAviv website. Watching part of the event online, the most interesting thing for me was noticing that out of all who attended the event, there was not one woman in the audience.
Sadly, this isn’t very surprising. Of the hundreds of Israeli companies that I have become familiar with in the past year and a half, the only company that I can think of that was started by a woman is eSnips (founded by Yael Elish and her then-husband). This isn’t just in Israel though and it’s not limited to just women starting companies in technology.
I started planning this entry back in November after Charlene Li, the former Forrester Senior Analyst, posted on her blog about the shortage of women speakers at technology industry events. (In it she mentioned that though there are few women in tech to begin with, there are fewer women who can make the time commitments required for conferences due to familial responsibility.)
My intention at the time was to answer the questions, “Where are the women?” “Why aren’t women in hi-tech?” and “Are women less innovative than men?” Questions that were also brought up today on Twitter in an interesting discussion between @TechAviv (Yaron Samid), @OurielOhayon, @israluv (Ahuvah Berger) and others about the lack of female entrepreneurs in Israel in relation to last night’s event.
The following are a few ideas based on what I found when I did preliminary research a few months ago on these topics.
Regarding the last question first, statistically it would certainly appear that men are more innovative than women. Go to any conference (in the United States) on technology and there will be few women speakers and only a few more in the audience. The biggest female entrepreneur in tech that comes to my mind is Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, while when I think of men, several come to mind (Steve Jobs for example). In Israel, though Yael Elish is the only female tech entrepreneur I can think of, two of the biggest bloggers/consultants I can think of in the Web 2.0 space, are female: Ayelet Noff of Blonde 2.0 and Orli Yakuel of Go2Web2.
Steve Jobs
In an online search I conducted on major scientific breakthroughs of the past 200 years that were made by women, About.com seemed to have the best list that was solely of female inventors. It includes:
- Randice-Lisa Altschul (invented the world’s first disposable cell phone)
- Mary Anderson (invented the windshield wiper)
- Marie Curie (discovered radium and furthered x-ray technology)
- Ada Lovelace (wrote a scientific paper in 1843 that anticipated the development of computer software artificial intelligence and computer music)
- Krisztina Holly (Co-invented the telephony software called Visual Voice)
- and Bette Nesmith Graham (invented liquid paper, also known as White-Out™).
In addition, the CS (computer science) department at Yale University has a list of women who contributed to CS that includes:
- Alexandra Illmer Forsythe (During the 1960’s and 1970’s, she co-authored a series of textbooks on computer science, published by Wiley & Sons and Academic Press, including the first textbook written in CS.)
- Erna Schneider Hoover (She invented a computerized switching system for telephone traffic, to replace existing hard-wired, mechanical switching equipment. For this ground-breaking achievement — the principles of which are still used today — she was awarded one of the first software patents ever issued in 1971 ).
From these lists, it is clear that women too have invented things throughout the past 200 years, but not in significant numbers and none at the level of fame or being as prolific as men such as Thomas Edison, Eli Whitney or Henry Ford.
Ford Model T
Since the 1990s, psychologists have conducted several research studies on what the reasons are for why there are fewer female innovators than male ones.
One reason psychologists have found is that women perform lower in math when conscious of gender stereotypes and get turned off that way. Another study explains that young women tend to avoid careers in math, science and engineering “because they view science as a solitary rather than a social occupation” and uninteresting. Instead many are in public relations, education and psychology. The main theory that has been presented in recent years is based on the amount of confidence given by parents and teachers in these areas- “the self-confidence instilled by parents and teachers is more important for young girls learning math and science than their initial interest.”
Now that there is proof that males and females have equal cognitive abilities for math, incentives and programs are more actively being put in place to change female perceptions and stimulate more interest among them in math and science. Through these there should be changes seen in the near future of a new generation of new generation female inventors/entrepreneurs.
Regarding what can be done in Israel, going back to the TechAviv and the Twitter discussion, Yaron Samid suggested that Israeli entrepreneurs start an Israeli female entrepreneur group. I think going beyond that group, a national program or wider organization should be created that nurtures women’s interest in science from at least high school age and provides resources to them and older women.
What do you think should be done in Israel?
Update: January 11, 2009 – Joel Katz has notified me that in a video taken by Oren Todoros of SeoVice at TechAviv last week, there are at least two women. You can view the video on seovice.com.
Israel’s role in the future “depth” of the Web
In recounting Yahoo! President, Susan Decker’s remarks in my last post, a few things made me think about the role that Israel will have in the future of the Internet. As mentioned in that post, the topic of the panel that Decker, Sergey Brin, Rupert Murdoch, among others participated on, was, “What is the future of the new Internet media?”
Included in Decker’s response to this was a reflection that while Yahoo! currently covers the “breadth” of the
Internet, the future is in its “depth,” such as processing speed, low
costs storage, mass media distribution – three areas in which companies in Israel are constantly innovating.
For processing speed, one only has to think of the Intel chips that have been released in recent years and their original development here in Israel. Since Intel first opened an R&D lab in Haifa in the 1990s, Israeli researchers have developed the Dual-Core Intel Xeon Processor 5100 series, the first PC
processor with a 8-bit 8088 bus, Intel Pentium MMX and Intel Centrino. Although the Haifa lab didn’t develop the latest Penryn chip, it did play a part in determining how the “new chip micro-architecture could be manufactured on a commercial scale.”
The commercial success of Intel’s chips have enabled not just more digital activity and productivity, but have also increased demand for low cost storage – several innovations of which, have also come from Israel. In the portable storage realm, Walletex has added a new dimension to USB drive storage devices with its credit card-styled and -sized 4GB and 8GB storage devices. Its devices also have the technology to receive automatic updates from the Internet when plugged in and connected to the Internet. G.ho.st, a web-based operating system that acts as a virtual desktop, provides users with 5 GB of free storage that can be uploaded to the virtual desktop.
Storage on a virtual desktop isn’t the only free online storage idea coming from Israel though – eSnips, the multimedia and storage social network, allows its users to not just upload up to 5 GB of data for free, but to also utilize its mass media distribution features, such as document and media file storing and handling, for other users to access and share. While this is a hybrid of low cost storage and mass media distribution, pure mass media distribution websites in Israel include MetaCafe and AniBoom. Both sites rely on user-generated and -submitted short film content, regular and animated, respectively and active participation in their communities.
It is the active participants of these communities that make it likely that these three mass media sites leaders in the present Internet media will continue to play a crucial part in shaping the future of the Internet and Internet media. The social networking aspects of these sites help inspire innovation here in Israel in ways that almost guarantee that these sites will reach and maintain the “depth” of the new Internet that Decker was talking about and which Yahoo! is still seeking.
About the author: Lisa Damast is the Membership
Manager of ebizQ.net and currently resides in Israel. Any questions or
inquiries regarding this blog or ebizQ membership services can be
directed to her via email at ldamast (at) ebizq (dot) net. She can also be followed on Twitter, where she covers additional Israeli technology companies and Israel-related headlines and topics.
Blogging platforms, Israeli professionals and the lack of Israeli company blogs
Blogging is a phenomenon that isn’t just perceived as important in the United States, but in Israel, too. Back in October, I wrote a few posts about blogging in Israel and the different networks and platform technologies that I noticed being used. A lot of the attention I gave to blogging in Israel was in anticipation of attending the first annual WordPress Israel conference.
Recently, there was some discussion on the Digital-Eve Israel listserv (an email list for hi-tech professionals in Israel) about how to start a professional blog and which blog platform to use for it. In one of the posts, Miriam Schwab, CEO of Illuminea Marketing and Media and an organizer of the WordPress Israel conference, directed everyone to an entry on her blog about how a “really professional blog” is hosted on WordPress.
As there are several blog platforms aside from WordPress that are used by some highly-regarded professionals, including Blogger and MovableType, I decided to leave a comment disagreeing with the idea that “really professional blogs” are only on WordPress. I also included my belief that professionals just starting to blog should consider different platforms and that if the blog isn’t directly for their company, then it would probably be fine to start off on Blogger while learning the ins and outs of blogging.
Miriam’s response to my comment and Jacob Share’s short list of Digital Eve Israel members who blog (only 11!), piqued my curiosity as to how many Israeli companies (including VCs) that I have covered in my posts, have blogs. Surprisingly, and not so surprisingly, most of the companies I checked (especially the biggest companies, such as Teva Pharmaceuticals and Alvarion), don’t have corporate blogs. Many Israel-based venture capitalists on the other hand, do.
Here’s a list of a few of the Israeli companies that I have mentioned that do have blogs:
RedBend
eSnips
Metacafe
Gemini
Tvinci
Jajah
ooVoo
Aladdin
Commtouch
Here’s a list of some companies, including ones that I haven’t covered, that are noticeably missing:
Comverse
Commtouch
BluePhoenix
Magic Software
InfoGin
Alvarion
Vringo
Ness Technologies
Teva Pharmaceuticals
Voltaire
Update: August 8, 2008.
People information and networking… shouldn’t the next big thing be from Israel?
Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, recently mentioned in his blog that social networking on the Web is providing people with the opportunity to share data about themselves and things related to them for the interest of others (i.e., for connecting to others). He explains though that the popularity of these social networks hide the reality of people using these closed sites not for the sites themselves but for the opportunities and connections that they provide them.
For those who aren’t familiar with Israeli society, it tends to pride itself on giving advice and having connections (protexia). The connection of people and information are strong values that are practically innate in Israelis and has probably contributed to Israel’s high-tech sector being very active in the Web 2.0 phenomena — so active, that I have been thinking ever since Daniel Cohen’s Israei Nokia article that if all these Israeli companies were pooled, Israel could have countered Google or created its own Facebook.
Unfortunately, it’s a lot easier said than done or even fully imagined. However, with Berners-Lee talking about the Giant Global Graph and the need to transcend the limits of the current social networking graph, maybe there is still the chance that Israel will build the next big networking phenomena. Israeli companies just have to think outside the box of the Web and the set up of social networks as we know it.
For anyone who wants to get started on this, here’s a list of some of the top Israeli Web 2.0 companies that offer interactive services that if were combined in a new way, I think could create the next big thing:
Fun:
Aniboom- Users can create animated clips, post clips, view clips here, and based on the popularity of content that you post, you have the chance to make some money as well.
Metacafe- A user-driven video-sharing site that shows only entertaining short clips that is first reviewed by users before it gets posted on the site. Program creators of the most popular content get paid.
BlogTV- For anyone who has something to share via video. This gives you the chance to create your own live channel on anything you want.
Search and Information:
Walla!- An Internet portal with free email for anyone, this is the first stop for local information and direction on the Web.
Answers.com- Formerly with the tag line, the encyclodictionalmanacapedia, Answers.com is a one stop information engine. It’s popular wikiAnswers allows users to post and answer questions on anything they might be wondering.
Collaboration and work environment:
eSnips- While it is great for its music features, eSnips’ 5GB storage gives users a way to easily store and share documents on the Web.
ooVoo- 6-way video conferences, video messaging and video chatrooms make this ideal for live video communication for business or for fun.
Verix- Offers solutions for Business Intelligence when it comes to sales.
Advertising:
Kontera- “Kontera is a leading provider of In-Text Advertising and Information Services based on patent- pending text and content analysis technology that maximizes relevancy and yield for online users, publishers, and advertisers.”
TVinci - “The TVinci media management platform helps video content owners, broadcasting channels and publishers enrich, socialize and personalize video content, while maximizing monetization.”
Hiro Media- Hiro’s ad-supported video downloading technology allows any video distributor to allow the unlimited sharing of its product over the Internet with the ability to monetize it. monetized.
Company in Focus: eSnips
For those of you who haven’t heard of eSnips, it is part-MySpace, part-YouTube, part-Gmail storage. According to the website, eSnips is a “social content-sharing site, where you can publish and share any media type with practically unlimited flexibility in choosing what you want to share, and with whom, in 5GB of free space.” It also happens to be an Israeli startup that is based in Ein Sarid.
When I was first researching online web companies in Israel a few weeks ago, I came across eSnips several times. I decided to check out the website and have since been using the website the same way I have used MySpace in the past — to listen to audio clips from different bands.
The website was founded by Israeli startup veteran, Yael Elish, in 2005 using what the website calls, “award-winning technology that it developed for its Net Snippets products, which are used by tens of thousands of professional business and academic researchers.” It originally competed against storage websites, such as Omnidrive and 4shared but in addition to expanding its storage amount to 5GB, eSnips has become more music- and marketplace- focused, putting it in competition with 25GB media storage power-house, MediaMax and MySpace.
While one blogger, is hailing eSnips as an educational tool that students can use for research and collaboration purposes, it seems to me, a new user for the music, that eSnips’ business plan will probably continue to include music as a central component in the future.
For more information on eSnips and where it is going, here are some links to a few interviews and articles:
TechCrunch checks out eSnips
eSnips Blog
Interview with eSnips CEO and founder, Yael Elish
Mashable: eSnips music widgets for MySpace
Video Interview with CEO and founder, Yael Elish
Other storage websites
eSnips microportals mean business
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