Ahuvah Burcat

Eitan and I have a really really cheap landlord. You know the kind – they give you a whole song and dance why they can’t pay to fix something or how it is someone else’s fault and therefore THEY wont pay.

Yeah. We have that kind of landlord.

We have been having issues with our kitchen faucet for a while but I tried to just ignore it. This past Thursday afternoon I could no longer ignore the issue when the issue sprayed me in the face with water. It also happened to be the night my in-laws were coming to see our flat for the first time and enjoy my home cooking.

Impeccable timing one might say.

So the water was shooting out of the faucet when it was turned on and it was also leaking under the sink. And that my dear readers is when it is time to call the landlord.

Well first I called Eitan in a panic and got call waiting. UGH. He called me back and I rambled and told him “the-faucet-is-spraying-me-with-water-and-it-is-leaking-under-the-sink-onto-the-kitchen-floor-CALL-OUR-LANDLORD-NOW.”

We both hate calling our landlord – he loves to ramble on the phone and waste time and not take of his responsibilities. Luckily for me, I was in the midst of cooking  and had a perfectly good excuse why Eitan had to call.

And he did. And our landlord’s reaction? Okay, I’ll come over now to have a look. Thankfully Eitan quickly interjected and said no and explained why.

Well guess how long it took to get a plumber into our flat? 24 hours. Friday night. Our landlord finally reached a plumbing company that sent one of their plumbers to our house at 9pm on a Friday night. He fumbled with the faucet, pulled it out and said – yup. Broken and cannot be fixed.

So he called his boss to give the estimate. Eitan called our landlord and told him and he then proceeded to hang up and call the plumber’s boss. It went back and forth like this for a few minutes until it was apparent that our landlord didn’t want to pay for the plumbers’ visit and wanted to pay for all of it on Sunday when the replacement faucet would be installed.

“No” said the plumber. “My visit costs NIS 120 and you need to pay me right now.”

Now we were not paying for *anything* without our landlord’s knowledge because he would be reimbursing us. Without notifying him, he would say “I never agreed  and I am not reimbursing you”. This is very typical of our landlord.

So what did Eitan do? He used technology to trip up our landlord.

He called the plumbers’ boss and then he added our landlord to the call via 3-way-calling on the iPhone.

VOILA!

No more “He said/She said” – all parties were on the call and on speakerphone.

I think we shocked our landlord a bit – and caught him in his lies. And yes, he will be returning tomorrow with a new faucet and a plumber to install it or so help me.

Because washing dishes in the bathroom sink is a pain in the you know where.

Or at least, the places I have checked in to via @foursquare

My own personal infographic (click on it and it enlarges. The best view is on the iPad)

This video is quite telling about us women and how we perceive our own beauty. We don’t.

Every time I hear that phrase “Never Again” I think- but wait, the never again is taking place Right Now somewhere else in the world.

And I feel like we should say – “Never Again, but we mean never again to just us Jews”.

This phrase makes me feel so…. hollow.

When was the last time you got together to protest a genocide offline? Genocides are happening ALL THE TIME. But where are our voices?

Silent.

So yeah, “Never Again” makes me shudder.

A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about this robot vacum cleaner that he got and how it was awesome. Awesome and vacum cleaning in the same sentence? I brushed him off and thought – well thats a nice toy and quickly forgot about it.

Then my friend Yael got one and went on and on and on about how wonderful the Roomba was with her two cats, toddler and white floors. How much it made her cleaning just that much easier.

And this time I thought – I should save up for one. At NIS 2900 (about $800) – this was not cheap. And I forgot to save for it and well…. out of sight out of mind.

Then a few weeks after Eitan and I got married, we visited his friends house and they have two dogs and a Roomba.

And then they showed us how it worked. I was hooked.

I wanted one.

Our apartment has fake parket floors – which means that you can see almost every dust particle, hair or lint on the floor. Now as a new housewife- I wanted to keep the house clean. But I didn’t want to sweep every day. I also didn’t want to look down at the floor and think ugh, the floor is dirty.

Fast forward till January. We got invited to our friend’s house for a Friday night Shabbat meal with mostly a new group of people. And of course, at some point, the topic of the Roomba came up and I shared with the table how this is the one (and thus far only) household item I’d love to receive as a present from my husband.

I thought about all the cartoons and articles written about how a man should never buy his wife a household cleaning item as a gift and thought “nuh uh. thats not true when it comes to the Roomba”.

Back to the dinner table. One of other couples said they have one but they are giving it to friends. They didnt find it helpful enough – since in order for it to work, you need to clean the floor of stuff and they had two cats + lots of little cat toys.

And I shouted” But I would have bought it from you”

And the husband said “really?!”

Me: “YES really.”

And then the husband looks at his wife, looks at me and says “NIS 300?”

Me: “DONE!”

The husband then asks his wife it was okay to sell it and she shrugged her shoulders and said – why not ?

We had a deal and went back to discussing other topics.

Later that week, I came home to Eitan and our new (used) Roomba and has made a drastic change in our life.

Eitan programmed the iRoomba to work 4x a week and our floors always look and feel clean. I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to know that all I have to do is clean out the filters and voila! The chore is completed.

Clean floors = happy me.

This past week Eitan and I went to a reunion for his army unit. This reunion was not just for the folks that served with Eitan but for all members of that unit.

This meant you had much older men (and women) mingling with the younger generation. There were a few familiar faces from the start up world in attendance. I was there because spouses were invited to join.

Just to give you some background – I know almost nothing about Eitan’s army service because, well, those are the rules. So I couldn’t really “chit chat” with the folks at the reunion. I had so many questions but I knew the rules. Do not ask. So I just made up stories in my head as I watched the folks connect with old army buddies.

As we were about to leave the event – an older gentleman I have now nicknamed Sabra Saba asked us the time. We started to chat and he quickly added that if we were walking to the bus, he was going to join us.

So here we were walking around a neighborhood I was not at all familiar with and chitchatting with this lovely older man. He’s the kind of man you want as your Saba. So we started sharing a bit about our life stories. Mine as an olah. His as a 4th generation Israeli.

My jaw dropped to the ground. I have a fascination with the older generation. They were the pioneers of this country. When there was no industry, no farmable land, no agriculture, they came here and build. And I get to walk around this modern country and meet the very individuals who’s blood, sweat and tears built this country I call my home.

So when he said he was a 4th generation Israeli I immediately asked – so how does it feel to look around you and see how far Israel has come. He laughed and said we are not done just yet. I laughed and said that is true- that is why I came. To continue to build upon what his generation started. Because he is right, we are a long way from being done.

Then he shared the ultimate kicker – he was not only 4th generation Israeli, but 4th generation from Rechovot. His great-grandfather came here from Russia and is one of the three founders of Rechovot.

wow.

And I just wanted to keep asking him questions and hear his stories. I bet that Sabra Sabba has a lot of amazing stories that this zionist is dying to hear.

I hope we get to spend more time with Sabra Sabba. I am sure we have much to learn from him.

When we do not understand the value others bring to the table, we feel we get to decide how much their value is to us and how now they view their own value.

Watch this video and you will understand how taking this approach is ridiculous.  Hat tip to Noah

A wise person once said to me that nothing is new and everything is an evolution of something that already exists.

There is nothing truer than this sentiment when it comes to the web. Look at the more popular sites and lets use YouTube as an example. How many of the viral/popular videos are parodies or response videos to another popular video? Old Spice Parodies, Sh*t ____ Says and more.  I just watched Kevin Alloca’s Ted talk about Why Videos go Viral and found it fascinating how many viral videos are parodies on parodies of an original viral video and how popular *those* videos are.

The web is filled with individuals who have the ability and the need to take existing content and make  it their own.

But what about the originators of the content? Shouldn’t we credit and acknowledge those that created the original content? Or at least the individual or group that spent time and effort taking existing content that inspired us to put our own spin on it be it a comment,  a tweet, a shared link, a blog post, a pin or a video?

I am a passionate proponent of attributing where you found the content that was shared. If it was important enough for you to share it, comment on it, make a parody of it, then it should also be important to allow your friends/family/visitors to see the originating source. As Maria Popova says in the NY Times article  mentioned below “Discovery of information is a form of intellectual labor. When we don’t honor discovery, we are robbing somebody’s time and labor. “

Today the NY Times wrote an article titled A Code of Conduct for Content Aggregators. The articles highlights examples of content sites that hijack  popular content and re-publish it as their own. What this article fails to mention is that this is the way of the web from the monster content aggregators to the little itty bitty bloggers. Everyone on the web is guilty of taking content  and republishing it as if they were the ones to create it. Part of this issue is not just the actual content but the discovery process.

And here is where The Curator’s Code comes in.  They have created a web browser bookmark that allows you to participate in giving attribution every time you share a link. There are two different icons that you can chose from when sharing a link – one that is considered a “via” link and the other is a “hat tip” or better known as “HT” link.

As per the definition on their site, “via”  indicates a link of direct discovery and “HT” indicates a link of indirect discovery, story lead, or inspiration.

Hopefully this will help stop the endemic issue of taking someone else’s content or shared information and republishing it as  your own.

I have been reading Ravit’s blog for years – I Will Teach You To Be Rich

I am a firm believer that in order to sell something (anything), you need to tell a story. By telling a compelling story, you are drawing the audience in.

Here is a video by Beth Comstock, Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of GE: You Have To Tell A Story, Before You Can Sell A Story

By the Author Simon Sinek who wrote “ Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action”

Sheryl Turkle, a MIT technology and society specialist and author of Alone Together, presents the impact of technology and how now we are all connected via our devices.. but yet we are still alone. Being online is “easier” than being physically present.

It is an interesting video. Watch.

This morning I was discussing my frustrations with Facebook and Google+ with a friend. Most of my frustrations with Facebook (and who yet knows about Google+) is that it is the same articles, statuses, and posts are regurgitated over and over again. There is a “herd” mentality on FB.

His next question was – doesnt Twitter have the same issues as Facebook (same content appearing over and over) and my answer was – not in my feed.

My Twitter feed is made up of so many different people from all over the world who are interested in a huge variety of topics. I purposefully chose not to just follow people in the high-tech scene. I wanted variety .. I wanted to learn new things and this was the forum do just that.

And the most astonishing conclusion I came to this morning was: I do not have the email addresses for the people who I consider most interesting on the web.

And this is why Facebook and Google+ will never satisfy my needs. I want to connect to strangers, not people I know.

Today my friend sent me an article from Wharton titled: One Woman’s Advice to Another -  It’s Always Time to Speak Your Mind

The essence of the article is that women typically do get what they want because they do not ask for what they want.

I can relate to this article as I am sure many of my female contemporaries can as well.

Here is snippet from the article that rang true to me “The book concluded that girls are taught to be others-focused, that women settle for the salary they need rather than fighting for the amount that they are worth, and that women often struggle between being too assertive and not being assertive enough. The book also said that women don’t ask for what they want or feel they deserve because they are fearful they won’t be liked, whereas men perceive asking as a fun and exciting game of strategy with little downside.”

I recommend you read the article in its entirety.

Yesterday I spoke at MEGAComm 2011 and shared with the audience the presentation below.  The most important point I need to stress is that using twitter to generate leads is not for every organization in every industry.