GarageGeeks Blog

In our series “meet the Industry leaders”, the GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi invite you to a special garage event, to meet:

* Salim Ismail - Singularity University Global Ambassador and Founding Executive Director.
* Brad Templeton - Singularity University Networks & Computing Chair, Chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Singularity University is an academic institution whose stated aim is to “assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.”
http://singularityu.org/

The event will take place on:
Tuesday, March 13, 20:30
GarageGeeks HQ,
HaPeled 40, Holon

Salim Ismail - Singularity University Global Ambassador and Founding Executive Director.
Salim spent the last three years building Singularity University as its founding Executive Director and current Global Ambassador. SU is based at NASA Ames and is training a new generation of leaders to manage exponentially growing technologies. Before that he built and ran Brickhouse, Yahoo’s internal incubator. His last company, Angstro, was sold to Google in August 2010. He has founded or operated seven early-stage companies including PubSub Concepts, which laid some of the foundation for the real-time web. Salim also serves on the board of Breakthrough, a global human rights organization.
http://singularityu.org/community/staff/#salim

Brad Templeton - Singularity University Networks & Computing Chair, Chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Brad Templeton founded and ran ClariNet Communications Corp., the first internet-based content company, then sold it to Newsedge Corporation in 1997. ClariNet publishes an online electronic newspaper delivered for live reading on subscribers machines. He has been active in the computer network community since 1979, participated in the building and growth of USENET from its earliest days and in 1987 he founded and edited rec.humor.funny, the world’s most widely read computerized conference on that network, and today the world’s longest running blog. He has been a software company founder, and is the author of a dozen packaged microcomputer software products. He is chairman of the board of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the leading civil rights advocacy group for cyberspace. He also sits on the advisory boards for a few internet startups. Currently he is building a new startup to reinvent the phone call. He is also on the board of the Foresight Institute (A Nanotech think-tank) and BitTorrent, Inc.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Templeton

* This is a User Generated Dinner, so, bring some snacks and drinks to share with others.
* GarageGeeks is sponsored by Microsoft and Initial Capital.

In our series “meet the Industry leaders”, the GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi invite you to a special garage event, to meet:

* Jonathan Matus - Mobile Platform Product Marketing, Facebook
* Amina Belghiti - Platform Partnerships EMEA, Facebook
* Aryeh Selekman - Developer R…elations - Mobile Platform, Facebook

In October 2011, Facebook announced the Facebook Mobile Platform, bringing social channels and distribution to mobile apps.
Since then, momentum has been building, and today, more than 60 million visitors interact with apps and games on the platform every month.

A night before the Facebook Hackathon, you are invited to join the Facebook Platform team for a meet and mingle party at the GarageGeeks.
The session include an overview of facebook mobile platform, talk about the announcements made in MWC and what they mean for developers, and a Q&A .

The event will take place on:
Monday, March 12, 20:00
GarageGeeks HQ,
HaPeled 40, Holon

* This is a User Generated Dinner, so, bring some snacks and drinks to share with others.
* GarageGeeks is sponsored by Microsoft and Initial Capital.

In our series “meet the Industry leaders”,

the GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi invite you to a special garage event, to meet:

Mike Morhaime, CEO and Co-Founder, Blizzard Entertainment.

The event will take place on Wednesday, December 21st, Garage HQ, HaPeled 40, Holon at 19:00

This is a User Generated Dinner, so, bring some snacks and drinks to share with other.

* In case it rains the event will move to “The Library” (Ha’Sifria) at Migdal Shalom and a separate announcement will be sent to all participants who RSVP.

please RSVP at http://bit.ly/s4HkYo

* GarageGeeks is sponsored by Carmel Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds

Come join the GeekCon family and celebrate GeekCon 2011 with us. See videos from this year, talk projects and (for participants!) get the promised t-shirt!
Good opportunity to beer up and start thinking GeekCon 2012, biggest best one yet.
If you’re interested in GeekCon and plan to attend next year’s event, this is the perfect opportunity to see what we’ve got planned next.

The event will take place on
Thursday, December 22th, 20:00
at Garage HQ, HaPeled 40, Holon

* GeekCon website http://geekcon.org/

* This is a User Generated Dinner, so bring some snacks and drinks to share.
* GarageGeeks is sponsored by Carmel Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds

The GarageGeeks and SpaceIL invite you to an out of this world garage event, to meet:

Amir Give’on, As an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), Amir develops and implements algorithms primarily for NASA’s Terrestrial Planet Finder project. This project is designing space-based telescopes to search for Earth-like planets. Prior to his position at JPL, Amir spent 2006 at California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a post-doc after earning a PhD in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.

While at Princeton, both as a doctoral candidate and undergraduate student, Amir developed algorithms for high contrast space-based imaging systems and an early autonomous vehicles image-processing based control systems.

In his “non-existent spare time”, Amir is the chair of BINA LA, a pro-Israel young professional organization aims to connect Israelis and American Jews through intellectual events (see www.binala.org), and serves on the board of Act For Israel, a pro-Israel organization, aiming to advocate for Israel in social networks.

The event will take place on

Thursday, Deceber 8th, 20:30

at Garage HQ, HaPeled 40, Holon

* This is a User Generated Dinner, so bring some snacks and drinks to share.

* GarageGeeks is sponsored by Carmel Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds

You are invited to participate in a Natural Interaction ® Hackathon.
At the workshop, PrimeSense will lend the sensors for group members to proceed developing the projects for the following week.
The hackathon starts at 17,18 November at GarageGeeks, and a week later you need to submit your project.

if you are into it, read more below.

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About Natural Interaction ® Hackathon
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Game developers, traditional developers, graphic designers, creative’s are invited to create and submit cool “Natural Interaction ® application”.
PrimeSense will lend sensors for each group during up to 1 week.
Jury will be composed by 3 experts who will designate a winning project.

Designing or porting games to become motion controlled is not reserved to an elite few.
Using the OpenNI Framework with OpenNI compatible Middleware and depth sensors, developers can easily integrate full-body control and interactive augmented reality into their games.
Designers are just starting to explore possible game mechanics and gameplays enabled by gesture-based technologies.
This Hackathon will demonstrate how easy this process is, using tools and environments that are familiar to many game developers such as Unity3D.
It’s as simple as developing a keyboard-based application!

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Contest Condition:
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* All OpenNI compliant projects will be eligible to the competition (As per the OpenNI Guidelines PDF doc)
* Participants will have 1 week to submit their project.
* Upload your project to OpenNI Arena before deadline (With Source Code to share with the community)
* Project shouldn’t require any additional purchase (software/hardware)

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References
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Everything is available and downloadable for free from http://www.openni.org
* NI Apps guidelines
* Documentations
* OpenNI: SDK Binaries, Samples & Source code
* NiTE: Middleware Binaries and Samples
* Unity3D Wrapper (Latest version of the wrapper was released in the latest “Unstable Version” package)
* Many developers published their own NI Apps on the Arena: http://arena.openni.org – often with source code

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Top 5 prizes:
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* 1st: 1 Rare handcrafted PrimeSense prototype Sensor (OpenNI compliant) with original and exclusive “For test use only” stickers on it.
* 2nd to 5th: 1 OpenNI compliant Sensors each.

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Schedule
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Thursday 17th:
opening at 19:00
talks 19:30-21:00
lending sensors and beer 21:00 and on
Friday 18th:
opening 9:00
working till 18:00
18:00-19:00 show and tell
Saturday 26th
final date for project submission.

* bring some snacks and drinks to share with others.

* GarageGeeks is sponsored by Carmel Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds

Bring Your Own Computer Lan Party

Saturday, October 15 at 7:30pm - October 16 at 10:00am

In the DLD festival the GarageGeeks and Yossi Vardi will host “Meet the Industry Leaders” party.

We are inviting the entire entrepreneur community to meet with the leaders of the digital media industry.

This event will create a unique opportunity for leaders of the industry to connect with the next generation of leading entrepreneurs and potential business partners.
Moderated by Dr. Yossi Vardi – Co-Chairmen, DLD Tel Aviv Summit

* Christian Hernandez Gallardo – Director, Platform Partnerships EMEA, Facebook
* David Lawee – VP, Corporate Development, Google
* Dan Powers – Global VP Sales and Business Development, Amazon
* Dr. Hubert Burda – Co-Chairmen, DLD Tel Aviv Summit
* Haran Sold – Chief Strategy Officer, Alcatel-Lucent
* Arkady Volozh – Founder, Yandex
* Bhavneet Singh – Managing Director and Executive VP, MTV International

Don’t miss this opportunity to meet the giants of the industry!

Wednesday, November 2 · 6:30pm - 8:00pm

Hangar 2, Jaffa Port , Tel Aviv

please RSVP at
http://www.dldtelaviv.com/garagegeeks

Note: This is one of the events of DLD Tel Aviv Festival. Registration to this event will not enable you access to DLD Tel Aviv Summit.

Registration to DLD Tel Aviv Summit is separate and can be made only if you received a personal invitation or received approval after submitting an application through the registration page at http://www.dldtelaviv.com

* GarageGeeks is sponsored by Carmel Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds

MuseNet is a music/technology camp in the spirit of Kinnernet: good people, business-free environment and participant-generated agenda.

MuseNet 2011 will take place on Friday, September 2nd, at the Bank Hapoalim Campus in Shfayim. [more about MuseNet]

Special thanks to our hosts and all whose contribution made MuseNet possible.

The core team

Participation is by invitation only (sorry!), but anybody can peek at images, video and web sites of past MuseNet.

IMAGinE (read: Imagine in IMAGE) is a gathering of like-minded people in the fields of animation, computer vision, 3D graphics, image processing, visualizations, augmented reality, video and photography. IMAGinE is one of the unconference events initiated and inspired by Yossi Vardi, which include Kinnernet, GeekCon and MuseNet.

As an unconference, the content is created by the event participants, so we depend on YOU to propose discussions, workshops, project displays and any crazy mash-up that comes to mind and can drive technologists and creative types to create, learn and inspire.

IMAGinE 2011 will be held on Friday, August 19th 2011, 8:30am - 4:00pm

at Beit Hecht in Haifa.

If you’re active in visual technologies or visual arts, and are willing to actively participate in the event (give a presentation, show a project, etc.), you are welcome to register at
http://imagine-2011.eventb​rite.com/

If your company is in one of these fields, we also have some sponsorship opportunities available, please contact drorgill@gmail.com

See you there!
The IMAGinE organizing team: Dror Gill, Liad Nishlis, and Yossi Vardi.

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IMPORTANT: To register for this event, go to http://imagine-2011.eventb​rite.com/ and purchase a ticket. Marking your status as “Attending” in this Facebook event is not enough!
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