Ariel Malka (of chronotext.org) and I managed to organize our first Upgrade meeting which took place on 09.09.2007. Happily, it all came off without a hitch! ‘Minshar’ art school was gracious enough to sponsor/host us again, and we managed to fill their middle-sized lecture room to the brim.
The topic was Second Life, and we were lucky to have both Miri Segal (artist) and Maya Hoffner (SL designer) to come and speak.
One of the things that Ariel and I wanted to try out was to develop a format that would encourage a discussion with the audience that would try to go a little deeper than the usual questions about which programs were used and technical details. In retrospect, this is a difficult and ambitious task. We had two _very_ different points of view on the same subject – and for a while, it looked like it might be too wide a difference to really achieve any kind of coherent discussion. However, the audience was great – and a few incisive questions towards the end brought up some new points – new ways of considering the interaction between SL and RL.
Still, it’s obviously going to be a learning process regarding how to organize and direct these events. A fascinating one as well, to be sure.
I’m attaching here a scan of the Timeout Tel-Aviv article (in Hebrew – 1MB) that did a great job of publicizing the event, but unfortunately got some of the details wrong.
So – for the record, I’d like to note that Mushon Zer-Aviv was the creative and capable push that got Upgrade Israel off the ground and running in Israel. And the incredible sala-manca who organized the Upgrade meetings for two years in both Jerusalem and Tel-Aviv, keeping the standards of quality high. They effectively developed the basis to enable us to now have two branches of Upgrade! – in Jerusalem and in Tel-Aviv. And more to the point, we now have a larger field of possibilities for local and inter-city new media activities and collaborations.
I’ll be sure to update on future Upgrade meetings – can’t wait! :)
