The BirdBrain Un-conference

by Mel Rosenberg - מל רוזנברג

After fruitful careers as a scientist and inventor I've gone back to what I love most - writing children's books Read More

Joined Oct 2013
Published Books 1559

What is the BirdBrain?

BirdBrain has its own five-year tradition as a one day un-conference held in Israel since 2010. The general subject is ‘creative spirit’.

Speakers and presenters can give talks or mini-workshops on creative nonsense, flying Rube Goldberg machines, virtual mosquitoes that donate your blood to magen david adom, fly-in movie theatre for migrating birds, anything except serious, boring or flagrantly self-promoting material.

During the past two years, the BirdBrain has been held at the Holon Institute of Technology Faculty of Design.

Presentations are meant to inspire, bewilder, and engender love for serious nonsense and ingenuity. You might learn about:

Designing fonts of extinct languages

What really happened to Atlantis

A Coursera course that teaches parrots how to debate

Air B&Bt in parked cars

Birdbrain is an un-conference. In an un-conference the organizers do not select speakers. Participants send in their topics, or they can come to the white board in the morning, and add their presentation.

Outside, creative things are going on. People are flying helicopters andcooking up a storm with nuclear reactors.

We even had a jam session with jam.

The BirdBrain is co-organized with Yossi Vardi and many members of the ‘garage geek’ community of internet gurus, inventor, thinkers, and tinkerers fly in for the event.

Dr. Yossi Vardi believes that our fear of appearing silly is the single most important factor in curtailing creativity. Prof. Albert Einstein once said that if an idea doesn’t initially appear absurd, there is no hope for it.

We tend to agree.