SXSW 2011: Vote!

CLICK AND VOTE FOR MY PANEL!

Okay folks, I called upon you last year to help vote-in my friend's panel for SXSW Interactive -- a gigantic tech and social media festival held over five days in March in Austin, Texas, leading up to the actual and original SXSW Music festival. This year, I've submitted a panel because I saw how successful and powerful our being at SXSW Interactive was, and I want to develop our ideas more succinctly this year. Thus, I submitted the following and I really really really need you guys to log in to the site and vote for the panel:

Jewish Synergy: Social Media and the New Community

In the 21st century, religion has found its way to the internet via social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, making the ability to discover new avenues of belief, observance, and involvement in entirely new ways. The question is: Why are some more successful than others in embracing and executing this form of digitizing an ages-old religion full of individuals, organizations, associations, events, synagogues, schools and more? How does one convince reluctant groups and individuals to embrace Social Media? And, perhaps most importantly, how can those who hail Social Media develop and grow this new global Jewish community that exists almost exclusively online? This panel will extend efforts made on the Judaism 2.0 panel from 2010, and it will focus on the benefit of Social Media in synergizing the broad Jewish and Israeli communities through the wires and waves of the internet!

So please, please, please vote for this panel. I'm excited to have the opportunity to attend SXSW Interactive again, and I think that this very-focused approach can really help move some mountains for organizations and individuals in the Jewish community. If the panel gets picked, hopefully I can convince some daring souls to head up the panel and really make the conversation lively and awesome. 

If you didn't notice it up top there ... 

CLICK AND VOTE FOR MY PANEL!

A Pro-Convert, Pre-Shabbos Anecdote

Shabbat cometh, so I thought I'd share a cute little "yay convert!" anecdote with everyone. ready?

While in Austin, standing in line at the kosher grill at H-E-B, a little old man, who also is a professor at the university there, turned to me, looked at my SXSW Interactive nametag, and said, "Chaviva? Are you Israeli?"

I responded that I was not, and left it at that.

He replied, "Are your parents Israeli? Such a weird name to give an American girl!" I responded, hesitatingly, "Nope, I chose this name myself, actually." The little old man grinned broadly, saying, "Ahh! A convert! I love converts!"

At first I wasn't entirely sure how to react. It was funny to me how typically I anticipate people experiencing my "I'm a convert" moment through asking me where I'm from (Nebraska, there are Jews there?!) or where I was bat mitzvahed (no where). Never before, although perhaps it will become a more regular occurrence, has my name become the topic for my "coming out." Although, now that I think about it, Chaviva is a very Israeli name. In the U.S. the names Ahava and Aviva are much more popular to express the same idea.

So the little old man went on to tell me stories about the converts he knows, how he "adopted" their children, how authentic and genuine the converts he knows are. He was giddy with love for gerim! So I stood, smiled, nodded, and was pleased to experience the happier side of convert acceptance.

Later, as I sat eating with a friend and two Israelis we'd bumped into, the little old man came over and said something along the lines of, "It was good to meet you all. But it was especially good to meet her (pointing at me); SHE is something very special."

This left me glowing, feeling special, and the Israeli guests puzzled as to what was going on (they didn't know, of course, what the little old man was so excited about). Surrounded by Israelis and kosher food and friends, I felt utterly loved and, as the little old man said, special.

Shabbat shalom, friends!

Welcome to Austin, TX ... and Smoking Food!

Check out my delicious La Briute meal a'cookin! It's smokin!

UPDATE: Okay, so it tasted just like the Sizzlin Cuisines version. Listen, beggars can't be choosers, so I'm cool with this. It tasted pretty good after having eaten bagged chips all day. And the cookies that come with it? MAGNIFICENT! And now? I'm off!

If Jews Ruled the World ...

It occurred to me, just a few days ago, long after I booked my flight to SXSW Interactive, that big Music, Interactive, and Film festival in Austin, Texas every year around this time, that Daylight Savings is going to rain on my parade. My flight, at 6:45 a.m. on Sunday, will really be more like 5:45 a.m. on Sunday. This means that I'll have to be at the airport around 5 a.m., which is really more like 4 a.m. This means I'll probably, if I'm lucky, get something along the lines of four hours of sleep, before flying off to three days of interactive, social media awesomeness and geekatude in one of the nation's greatest (and most humid) cities.

Sigh. So much for planning well.

In a perfect world, with the time change, there would be more late motzei Shabbos flights. Then again, "if only Jews ruled the world!" Yeah, if we ruled the world there'd be late flights everywhere! Especially time zones behind the East Coast, because, well, they're behind us in time. Wait, don't Jews run the world? Isn't that the rumor/stereotype?

All I'm going to say is, if that rumor were true, I'd be flying to SXSW on Saturday night, not Sunday morning at the tush-crack of dawn.

For those of you planning to be at SXSWi, check out the Judaism 2.0 panel at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday. Come and partake in the goodness hosted by myself and Mordechai, and meet the awesomest of attendees, including Leah Jones and others. Also, if you're in the Austin area but NOT attending SXSW, let me know and maybe we can do a meetup.