Shana Tova!

It is the new year's eve here in Israel. For those of you taking a look at your calendar, don't be alarmed - it's just September now, but according to the Jewish calendar, today is "Rosh Hashanah" which is the Jewish new year.

By the way, I took a look at Wikipedia, and saw that in fact you can celebrate the new year just about anytime you want, since there are so many different new year holdays celebrated by various religions and nations.

Anyway, I just wanted to say "Shana Tova" (the equivalent of happy new year) to all of NextGenMoCo's readers, may we all be successful both in our personal and professional lives.

P.S. - Last Sunday I have been at the "Jerusalem Rocks" festival here in Israel, and saw an amazing concert by the Black Eyed Peas and Arrested Development. I think it's the best show I've seen in years, they gave all they got. Thanks to Jeff Pulver and his friends for organizing this show. If you want to catch some pictures from the concert, check these.

Jerusalem Rocks!

Today a lighter subject for a change... In about a month (On September 9th) an international music event will be held at Teddy Stadium in Jerusalem. For those of you who don't know yet - the Black Eyed Peas are coming to Israel and will be the main performer in the Jerusalem Rocks music festival.

They will be accompanied by Arrested Development (The rapper, not the great TV show...) and The Commitments (Yes, the band from the movie). This is certainly one of the biggest music events seen here recently, and it is definitely a great finale to this summer that featured a lot of international artists on their first appearances in Israel.

But unlike the other events, I think this is the only major event taking place in Jerusalem (and not in the Tel-Aviv area), and that's no coincidence... The organizers of the event want to make a statement to the world (and maybe even more importantly to Israelis...) that Jerusalem is a vibrant city and a great place to culture, business and most of all - peace (You can read the whole mission/vision here).

And speaking of the organizers, some of them are not from the music industry but rather from the hitech industry... These include among the rest Jeff Pulver, founder of pulver.com and a VoIP expert and Jacob Ner-David who runs a VC in Jerusalem right next to GamearraY's offices (and close to Teddy Stadium, so I guess we'll both be walking to the event by foot...). The producer of the event is Carmi Wurtman, who produced The One Shekel Festival (hebrew), and (what a small world) - his brother Elie (now with Benchmark) invested in GamearraY when he was with JVP...

So, if you didn't have a good reason to come to Jerusalem so far, here's your chance... See you there.