Once a year I visit MoTIE ,otherwise known as

MBA in Management of Technology, Innovation & Entrepreneurship (MoTIE)

It is run by my friends Dr. Iris Ginzburg and Olya Minskya. This is Iris.

And this is Olya, looking relaxed. (This picture was taken towards the end. She didn’t look relaxed in the morning, trust me).

Iris and Olya had their yearly un-conference today. The event is co-organized by Ami, a great, unconventional guy who knows a lot about un-conferences. I guess that is why they hired him.

At any un-conference, there is a huge white board where people write subjects to discuss. In other words, the agenda is created by the attendees, rather than the organizers. The theme this year was “Brave New World”. Nobody under 50 knew what the book was about or who Aldous Huxley is. I am over 50, so I did.

There was an empty white slot on the board, so I filled it. My topic was “thinking between boxes”. There was a nice crowd. Most of them looked at me with a mixture of surprise, suspicion and wonder. I guess they don’t think between boxes.

On the other hand, there was one guy there named Or who understood my talk. So I voted him the ‘best student’. He taught me something about thinking between boxes that I can use in the future. That makes it all worthwhile!!

At un-conferences people do strange things in the corridors. Keren played the electric piano while standing. She is an accomplished classic pianist. She only does weird things like this at un-conferences. So enjoy!

There were kids there. They did unconventional things, like sitting on a self-propelling skateboard. Shows you how clever kids can be, doesn’t it?

Lunch was extraordinary, prepared by two clinical dieticians who decided to go into the catering business. Now that is thinking between boxes, ain’t it?

And the workshop award goes to Gail, who talked about rational and irrational decisions in buying a cup of coffee at Arcaffe. Or Starbucks. Or anywhere. She has a Ph.D. in mathematics from the Technion. She is way too cool to be from Tel Aviv University.

The hunk award goes to Menny who was there spreading wisdom and smiles. Keren fell for him. Don’t we all?

I guess the most amazing thing about it is that it happened on the otherwise mundane and old-fashioned campus of Tel Aviv University. Yes, they did force us to have it on a Friday (with no staff or students around to be contaminated by multidisciplinary thinking). Yes, they did turn off the air conditioning. Yes, no one from the university bigwigs showed up. And we persevered nonetheless. Hail to the un-conference and its cool organizers! See you next year!