By ALAN WEINKRANTZ
Special Contributor to Silicon Hills News
Photo and videos by Alan Weinkrantz
I have been traveling back and forth to Israel for just about twenty years. Most of what I worked on with my Israeli clients has been focused on platform technologies such as the commercialization of VoIP, the rise of computer security, the birth of rapid prototyping and Wi-Fi, the deployment of IPTV, the tablet PC, and many other transformational technologies, which today are mainstream.
Israel is going through a transformation in its startup and innovation economy. The technologies of what became the core infrastructure of the Internet we live on today, are now being replicated in areas such as agriculture, security, medical devices, energy, and water.
People come to Israel from all over the world to create and do new things. While you can say it’s technology in the literal sense, I think what’s going on there is something that borders on being spiritual and even possibly religious, depending on what you believe in.
It’s code.
You know, the code from the various religions, beliefs sets and the rising consciousness of our planet that are now being written into the Internet of things.
I believe that a new type of scripture is being written – one that is part of a gigantic interconnected network and massive data sets. And much of that scripture is being written, or rather, coded in Israel.
If you take into account that Israel is the home of major R&D centers like Apple, Intel, GE, Cisco, Google, HP, TI, IBM, Microsoft , eBay and recently, Facebook, much of what drives the future of the global innovation comes from this very blessed region of the world.
Last month, Texas Governor Rick Perry visited Israel to open the new Texas A&M “Peace” campus in Nazareth. He gave a keynote at the WATEC Water Conference and met with various business and political leaders, such as President Shimon Peres and Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu
A long time friend, Jon Medved, who runs the world’s largest equity-based crowdfunding platform, OurCrowd, invited me to join Governor Perry for breakfast in Jerusalem.
We met with the Governor and six others with him on the trip, and discussed the startup economy of Israel and addressed the opportunities for Texas to be greater aligned with Israel.
In addition to our discussion about Texas and Israel, Governor Perry was kind enough to provide this impromptu video inviting Israeli startups to come to Austin for SXSW 2014. (Disclosure: SXSW was a partial travel sponsor of my trip).
Medved is a long time VC, investor, and entrepreneur whose fund has some very interesting deal flow of companies to look at. In doing so, he is very much an economic and innovation indicator of what’s coming out of Israel.
Medved will be in Texas next month to hold meetings in Dallas and Houston to connect with the community who has expressed an interest in being part of his approach to investing in Israel’s startup economy.
When it comes to areas of energy, agriculture, security, medical devices and water, I believe that there is no other state in the U.S. that can even come close to where both Texas and Israel are heading. We have the smarts, the money, the land and the natural resources to build what’s next and what’s possible if Texas and Israel will more closely align.
While doing the traditional things that politicians do when they travel abroad, my sense was that Governor Perry went to Israel to sew the seeds of bringing the State of Israel and The Lone Star State closer together what could be a new wave of economic and social entrepreneurial development over the next 20 years.
It will be interesting to see what transpires from Governor Perry’s mission to Israel, some of which I genuinely believe involved some degree of divine intervention from both sides, regardless of what religious beliefs one may have.
To whoever becomes our next Governor, I hope you will continue to follow in his vision.
After all, it’s just code.
Based at Geekdom in San Antonio, Alan Weinkrantz is a Public Relations Advisor and Communications Strategist focused on technology, platforms, and industry standards.
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