Schmoozing for success

CreativeMornings Jerusalem offers breakfast and breakthroughs.

By ARIEL DOMINIQUE HENDELMAN
Creative Mornings Jerusalem community leader Marcelle Kaspi (photo credit: YAEL ILAN)
Creative Mornings Jerusalem community leader Marcelle Kaspi
(photo credit: YAEL ILAN)
What if I told you there was a place where you could sip complimentary espresso and cava, snack on pastries and fruit while networking with other innovative people in Jerusalem and end by listening to an inspiring talk from someone who was successful in his/her field? Well, there is such a place, once a month at least – CreativeMornings Jerusalem.
CreativeMornings is a global breakfast lecture series with hundreds of chapters in cities across the world. The aim is to create a space where thinkers and doers can come together to share ideas through monthly meetings with featured speakers discussing a specific topic. In April, the Jerusalem chapter opened.
“Miriam Sella and Oded Barel knew about CreativeMornings global, and they approached me to ask if I could help make it happen,” says Marcelle Kaspi, CreativeMornings Jerusalem’s community leader. “To actually open a chapter, you have to go through a whole process. You have to fill out tons of forms and do a video application. After several months we received a request for an interview, which was good. Then they interviewed me, and we got the thumbs up. They were very excited that we joined. We then signed a legal agreement to uphold the brand and the model of CreativeMornings global.”
The CreativeMornings Jerusalem team has now expanded to eight dedicated volunteers, who are in charge of everything from choosing and vetting the speakers to promoting each event, maintaining the blog and using the grant money the Jerusalem chapter receives from sponsors such as Ruach Hadasha, ROI Community, Siftech and Pico to purchase food and refreshments for attendees. Beit Hansen provides the space and equipment.
The theme of the October event was Transparency. The idea of transparency in a business sense is to see and be seen; having your work and creativity appreciated on its own merits and understood.
“When we look for speakers, we look for someone who is charismatic,” says Kaspi. “There is a show aspect to it, so we want it to be both entertaining and informative. It’s not just the message, it’s how you deliver the message. We like people who are multidisciplinary. We brainstorm names, and then it’s a matter of timing. Usually, before the event I have one or two sessions with the speaker to go over the content of the talk. You can go in so many different directions with these talks. You can go more professional or more personal. I’m really looking for something in the middle.
We don’t want it to be a fully professional talk because then it becomes very industry-specific; but at the same time, we don’t want someone sharing their whole life story. There is a lot that can be derived from someone’s personal story, as well as from their professional journey and what their creative process is in their work. You need a bit of both. Every event really takes on the personality of the speaker in a way.”
The featured speaker at the October 28 event was Yaniv Tross, founder of Tross creative house for the tech industry, which does branding for start-ups by creating crowdfunding campaigns and product videos. Tross shared his previous failed ventures, including a foray into comedy. He was succinct, charming and informative.
“When we started doing these crowdfunding campaigns, the first two were huge successes, which was bad for us,” Tross recounts. “Our assumption after two videos was that it was easy: We just create good videos, and people will buy whatever we’re selling. But then we learned our lesson. We failed horribly with the next two videos; we didn’t even reach $10,000. But that was how our process started to change, so we grew from that experience. I realized that ideas don’t matter as much as their implementation. I tried to be a comedian, and I just wasn’t very good at it. My ideas were amazing but my implementation wasn’t. It’s the same with anything. An idea is just an idea until you implement it.”
The structure for a typical Creative- Mornings event is one hour of schmoozing, snacking and networking, followed by a half-hour talk, and then another half hour at the end for providing feedback to the speaker and event organizers or grabbing that last pastry.
“After the events, people will line up to give me feedback. Sometimes I ask if somebody paid them because they will literally tell me the exact same thing that I said I wanted people to experience when we first launched CreativeMornings Jerusalem,” Kaspi says. “It’s so special.
People have told me that they’ve found projects and really networked at these events. People say all the time that they didn’t know these kinds of events took place in Jerusalem. Someone said to me recently that he didn’t know there were so many cool people in Jerusalem.”
Jerusalem is not known as a hi-tech or start-up hub in the way that Tel Aviv is, but that’s slowly changing, and CreativeMornings is a big part of that.
“Jerusalem is definitely up and coming in terms of start-ups and innovative ideas; that’s why we’re doing this,” Kaspi explains.
“Without a doubt, tech is growing here. In order for it to grow properly, you need to encourage the creativity. The design population needs to grow alongside the technology-focused group. Technology is not enough today, in my opinion. It’s about new ways of using things that we’ve already used. Design and creativity need to very much be a part of the growth of tech. I’m hoping that CreativeMornings can be the place where design and technology can meld together and find their common thread, which is creativity.”
At CreativeMornings Jerusalem’s first event in April, Michal Eitan, a specialist on sustainable design, spoke on the theme of risk and sustainability. Eitan’s talk centered around the risk of not designing for sustainability, thus it was a very environmentally oriented event.
“There were a lot of ‘wow’ moments there,” Kaspi recounts. “In terms of content, she scared us and brought us hope. It’s not just scientists who can solve this problem; it’s designers, by being thoughtful and putting sustainability into your creative process, from your materials to your space. I think that was one of the talks that really had people deep in thought all weekend.”
Other featured speakers have included Avi Sabag, the founder of the Musrara school of art. Sabag talked about how art is a facilitator to bring out social messages.
“I find that at the end of every event there is this small little thing that people walk away with,” Kaspi says. “It’s a small piece of inspiration to help me see what I do on a daily basis slightly differently.
I think that every single speaker has given that to us in one way or another.”
This universality enables CreativeMornings to have an impact on everyone who attends and to reach a wider audience than just those in tech, business or any kind of innovative field. Creative- Mornings is a testament to the fact that creativity permeates everything; it is the great equalizer.
“It’s hard to say what a creative job is today,” Kaspi states. “With everything we do, creativity is a part of it. So with Yaniv [Tross], part of what he said was to stay within the rules but stretch the boundaries. That’s very interesting and is something that is definitely applicable to all of us.”
The CreativeMornings Jerusalem team has many plans for future events. They want to bring an international speaker to give both a broader view and a different perspective. They also want to have an event that’s more interactive, where attendees would create something together.
“We want to give people a chance to not only network and mingle but also to create something together,” Kaspi explains. “The way you meet people through creation is different. It would be interesting to try that out and see if it works.”
The inspiration for the collaborative event came from a different chapter of CreativeMornings, where they had everyone bring in a piece of electronic garbage, such as old cell phones and cameras, and then an artist mounted all of it on a big board to create a 3D model, which he painted. They sold it and donated the money to charity.
Kaspi concludes, “You know how sometimes you cook something and it tastes good, and then you think, ‘Man, I wish I had kept track of what I put in here’? It kind of feels like that with CreativeMornings.
When we initially applied for the Jerusalem chapter, the team decided what we wanted it to be. We didn’t have tactics on how it was going to happen exactly, but we knew what we wanted as an end result, and it has happened.”
For more information: www.facebook.com/CreativeMorningsJLM/ and creativemornings.com