Israel Bitcoin Meetup Group

[Meni Rosenfeld]

The Herzliya Bitcoin Meetup October 2012 has been scheduled for October 16, 17:45, in Microsoft ILDC - Think Next Academy, Shenkar 13, Building No.6, Floor L1, Herzeliyya Pituach. See http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/events/85485312/.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

We've had a few talks (in Hebrew) in the last meetup, the videos are available here (3 parts).

[Meni Rosenfeld]

The Tel Aviv Block [halving] Party 2012 has been scheduled for November 28, 19:00, in Resh Lakish, Nahalat Binyamin 49, Tel Aviv. See http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/events/92646192/.

Be there or be a block.

Time and place are subject to change, please check back for updates.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

The Tel Aviv Bitcoin Meetup January 2013 has been scheduled for January 21, 17:30, in eToro, Habarzel 32, Building B, Floor 5, Tel Aviv. See http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/events/97068362/.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Update: The upcoming meetup on Jan 21 2013 has been moved to Google Tel Aviv new offices, Electra Tower, 98 Yigal Alon, Tel Aviv - floor 29.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

I would like to report we've had an amazing meetup. I think there were about 130 people (6 times as many as last time). I was worried there might not be enough room but Google were kind enough to connect the two lecture halls to make a large one. I think things went more or less smoothly (though I'll need to see the video to know exactly how badly I screwed up).

Videos and photos should follow.

[ripper234]

I would like to report we've had an amazing meetup. I think there were about 130 people (6 times as many as last time). I was worried there might not be enough room but Google were kind enough to connect the two lecture halls to make a large one. I think things went more or less smoothly (though I'll need to see the video to know exactly how badly I screwed up).

Videos and photos should follow.

I actually think you did quite well, perhaps better than previous meetups.
Focused and to the point. There were a few stutters (I had a few as well), but that doesn't mean we didn't do a good job.

Waiting for the vids as well.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Photos have been uploaded to the meetup page: http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/photos/12737702/#198059512.

ETA: And here is my presentation "What is mining?": https://bitcoil.co.il/What%20is%20mining.pdf

[jimbobway]

Cool, I love seeing these photos of these events. :-)  Thx for posting.

[World]

You are truly interested in meeting new people and are open to learn.
I can not wait to see what BTC services and ideas come out from IL.

[ripper234]

You are truly interested in meeting new people and are open to learn.
I can not wait to see what BTC services and ideas come out from IL.

We already had someone ask for us to organize a special meetup for startups.
It might be some time before we get to do that, but it's definitely in our plans.

Exciting times!

[Meni Rosenfeld]

I will be giving a talk about Bitcoin in the Haifa Linux club in the Technion, on Monday February 4th, at 18:30.

The first part of the lecture will be a general introduction to Bitcoin. The second part will be a technical explanation of how Bitcoin and the blockchain work.

The lecture will be slightly adapted to the terminology of the free software community.

You can find more information and updates on the Haifa Linux club website.

http://haifux.org/
http://haifux.org/lectures/292/

[World]

Do you have any summary of this past talks presentations?
"Dorit Ron will present her work with Adi Shamir on "Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph" in ceclub in January.
http://ceclub.technion.ac.il/past.html

[Meni Rosenfeld]

Do you have any summary of this past talks presentations?
"Dorit Ron will present her work with Adi Shamir on "Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction Graph" in ceclub in January.
http://ceclub.technion.ac.il/past.html

I guess I could obtain one (I'm in contact with both Dorit and people from the Technion), but AFAIK basically the paper itself could be considered a summary of the talk (http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf).

[ripper234]

Presentations from the last meetup (no vid yet):

• Ron Gross - State of Bitcoin in Israel, Jan 2013 (Hebrew)
• Meni Rosenfeld - What is mining?

[Meni Rosenfeld]

I regret to inform that there will be no videos from the January 2013 meetup in Google.

Google was able to provide us with a video camera for the event. However, this camera was based on mini-dv cassettes medium which are fairly hard to work with. Additionally, no experienced cameraman was available which means we were left with figuring out how to operate the thing. This led to several mishaps.

The first is that one of the cassettes we tried to use was actually a head cleaning cassette. It has a very short tape and once it finished we replaced it with a good one, so only a few minutes from before the event started was missed.

The two good cassettes had to be physically taken to a photo shop that can convert them to a more accessible format. One shop we tried handing over the cassettes to told us one week later that they couldn't read their format, and didn't provide any other info. Afterwards we tried a different shop, that one told us that they were recorded in NTSC (PAL is more popular here), and that it required a different set of equipment - which they had, but it was a long and costly process (100 NIS per cassette).

When they finally delivered the converted data, I checked it out and noticed to my horror there was no audio. The store confirmed that indeed no audio existed in the recorded tapes, probably because the camera had a microphone that needed to be explicitly turned on but wasn't.

So now we have video footage of the event without any sound, and as fun as it is to watch us making all kinds of hand gestures and wondering what we're saying, I don't think it's of much use. If there's demand I'll consider uploading the videos as they are, but I think it would just cause confusion.

It's a real shame because I think the event was quite successful and I wish we had a way to preserve it and make it available to those who missed it.

To better handle the next events we've now purchased a video camera of our own. It won't be of the same quality, but at least we won't have to scramble calling in favors to get a camera each time, and we can figure it out once and be confident that we'll get it right when it counts.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

The Tel Aviv Bitcoin Meetup March 2013 has been scheduled for March 21, 17:30, in the Rozin Community Center, Drezner 2, Tel Aviv. See http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/events/106892452/.

[Meni Rosenfeld]

The Tel Aviv Bitcoin Meetup March 2013 has been scheduled for March 21, 17:30, in the Rozin Community Center, Drezner 2, Tel Aviv. See http://www.meetup.com/bitcoin-il/events/106892452/.

There were about 160 people, which is nice. I didn't really like the venue and there were many glitches with the flow. I hope to do better next time. We will try to upload slides and videos soon.

[ripper234]

Here are the slides (no vids yet, sorry):

- Intro to Bitcoin - Meni Rosenfeld (English)
- Free trade in the Bitcoin Era - Zach Harvey (Hebrew)
- Bitcoin and Regulation - Jonathan Rouach (English)
- Alternative Payment Technologies (English, also on this thread)

[ripper234]

And finally, here are the videos (Hebrew only!)