Don’t be fooled by this seemingly innocent graduation class photo. Or by this well put Guardian introduction to the people creating our future. Singularity University at the serene NASA Research Park in CA is a dangerous place.

I just returned from a week of SU EPA12 – codename for The 7-day Singularity University Executive Program, April 2012. ‘Just’ is more than a week ago actually, but while I landed safely in my New York homebase, it gradually dawned on me that the pre-SU me never really made it back. And as the feeling of unexplained down refused to shake off, I grew suspicious that ‘they’ did something to me there.

Then we (the class of EPA12) get this email from Rob Nail, Singularity University CEO, with some aftermath thoughts and a by-the-way-ish note about an apparently known phenomenon called ‘The Post Singularity University Stress Disorder’. To quote Rob: “PSUSD takes many forms including, but not limited to: close friends calling you crazy, sense of optimism in a room of pessimists, feelings of isolation, a deep longing to be working on something really big, etc.”

My PSUSD is of the last.

To my defense I’ll say that in my condition I was more susceptible than other participants to a brutal case  of the PSUSD. By ‘my condition’ I mean that SU caught me precisely as my first son turned one, and also a year into my decision to stay home with him. A decision which I am now ready to admit, before all of you, was a mistake.
Don’t get me wrong, 2-3 hours a day of concentrated banana-feeding and quality play time is bliss for me, but altogether ditching my business for the stay-home ‘family business’ drove me to feeling domesticated and captive. I just really miss long stretches of uninterrupted in-the-zone doing what I do best. Add to this realization the natural drugs provided free and abundant by Agam’s half baked sister, and you get a recipe for PSUSD.

The reasons this decision was wrong for me have a lot to do sexual polarity and gender archetypal – topics that I have become very interested in as part of my journey to better understand myself. If you are into this kind of exploration too, David Deida writes beautifully about it and his work was the first to inspire me to adopt a dynamic approach. Mating In Captivity is a highly recommended book to any sex loving married woman. It was a gift I will forever owe Cindy Gallop for. Prof. Daphna Joel of the Laboratory of Behavioral Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University  publishes fascinating findings about this too. Just recently she shared her latest research, showing that brains are not all male or all female, but a tapestry of the two archetypal brains, and excitingly, that this tapestry is dynamic. And taking this idea beyond gender and into a broader discussion of culture and economics, I also just stumbled upon ‘Occupy Male Street‘ –  a great TEDx talk by Salim Ismail, calling on all of us to support female archetypal structures.

Happy New Year!

I don’t want to be connected to perfection. I find perfection rather boring actually. But it IS about those moments for me. Especially the action, reaction and elation.

The final episode of Battlestar Galactica, left me with a choice I’ve been avoiding making for a while: I’m going for the option that takes the bigger leap of faith.

As for the context of the above quote, anything I add would be a poiler. Let me just say, if you’re into exploration of ‘the big questions’, this Sci-Fi masterpiece is for you. You can stream it from Netfilx.

And on a Freudian note, right before hitting publish, I noticed I slipped ‘fate’ for ‘faith’…

The main website of The San Francisco Behavioral Economics Summit for Startups has more about behavioral economics and how understanding it increases site conversion rates, creates effective pricing strategy, improves customer and employee retention and overall help users change the ‘hard-to-change’ behavior.

And here’s all the information about the live streaming event in Israel.

This is the 3 minute, click-to-advance, version of a talk I gave last week at The Israeli Forum of High-Tech Executives in NY hosted by Shibolet.

Featuring: Cindy Gallop, Amanda Hocking, Diaspora, Kickstarter, Asaf Avidan and the Mojos, Emotiv Epoc EEG, Seth Godin’s first Domino Project title Poke The Box and more.

* Best viewed in full screen mode.

And the auto play YouTube version:

We’ll also play, You’re It! with my copy of Poke The Box.

The event is hosted by Oren Heiman, the ultimate mover and shaker for Israeli business people in NY, as part of Fish – The Forum of Israeli High-Tech Executives in NY. Some really great people gather at Fish and I can bring a couple of guests. Drop me a line if you’re in town and wish to join.

The utter bliss of products that do exactly what you want

You know the feeling of engaging with someone or something that’s in complete alignment with your values and beliefs? That speaks your dialect? That vibrates on the same frequency with you? Times of utter bliss! My life is spent looking for them in companies, technologies, people, ideas, movies, books, whatever. And when I find one, I suck it’s sweet nectar and I evangelize. I spread the word, flower to flower, so ‘my favorite‘ lives on to become a sustainable source of bliss.

Evangelism is driven by pure selfishness

Dr. Hauschka is a rare cosmetics company that’s powered by compassion, rather than driven by greed. It’s also the only cruelty free, chemical free, all-natural product my husband likes the smell of. It’s pricy though, which makes me fear for it’s survival in a competitive cosmetics market. So I tell everyone I know about it, hoping they too find the bliss worth the money.

Products that thrill me are harder to make and impossible to fake. They take true passion, offer exquisite user experience and practice what they preach in every feature. They shake the status quo, take a stand, earn enemies. Without a hive of busy fans keeping them alive, they can’t make it.

I like going to TED. That’s why I share TED Talks and organize TEDx events.

I also like books that offer exceptionally high quality ideas, created with total disregard for what bookstores and middlemen want. I like ideas packaged with urgency in mind and delivered tightly, not a word wasted, no filler. And I want to be able to read them on my Kindle, iPad or iMac, listen to them on my iTunes or my iPhone, and be able to afford getting one as a gift for all my close friends.

Seth Godin‘s, powered-by-Amazon, disruptive Domino Project, pledges to publish just these kind of books. That’s why I recently joined The Domino Project Street Team.

Poke The Box, the first title of the project, is not even out yet, and its pre-orders drive such a powerful domino effect, it’s already in Amazon’s 100 top bestsellers.

In the coming months, I’ll share with you more from the behind the scenes of the project and insider news of what’s coming. I hope you like the books too, because I really want to see more published.

p.s.

I took advantage of the snowy weather for a much needed facelift. Welcome to my new website. You can now get my blog updates to your email, on facebook, via twitter or RSS.

Paul Ekman, father of micro-expressions reading – the science behind the hit TV series Lie to Me, writes extensively about why this happens. Basically it’s a defense mechanism. And his explanation sits well with the brain’s #1 goal (The Brain For Entrepreneurs presentation, slide #3).

It’s this same mechanism, which keeps us from seeing we’re being lied to, that also keeps us from realizing our venture is going no-where. For the latter, there’s a cure. It’s called The Dip.