Can Israel Be the Tech Capital for the Next Five Billion?

In partnership with Campus Tel Aviv (powered by Google Entrepreneurs), Techonomy will facilitate a series of conversations on June 5th in Tel Aviv about Israel’s emerging role as a tech superpower. The two-hour event will begin with a talk by Techonomy’s David Kirkpatrick, followed by a panel discussion entitled “Can Israel Be the Tech Capital for the Next Five Billion?” The panel will include Israeli innovation experts Yosi Abramowitz of Energiya Global Capital, TheMarker’s Guy Rolnik, GetTaxi’s Shahar Waiser, and Modi Rosen of Magma Venture Partners. Kirkpatrick will moderate the discussion.
 

Named by CNN as one of the top six Green Pioneers worldwide, Yosef Abramowitz serves as President of the Arava Power Company, Israel’s leading solar developer. Arava Power built the first grid-connected solar field in Israel and over the last year has closed on $300 million of projects, with a further $1.5 billion of projects in the pipeline. An entrepreneur, environmentalist, and human rights activist, Yosef has established Energiya Global to bring solar power on a commercial basis to developing nations. Yosef was named to the Jerusalem Post’s list of 50 most influential Jews worldwide in 2011 and 2012, and has been co-nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. Yosef was also awarded “Person of the Year” by the 2012 Israel Energy and Business Convention.
 

Guy Rolnik is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of TheMarker—Israeli’s leading daily business newspaper and online financial news service—and Deputy Publisher of Haaretz group. Since its inception in 1994, Mr. Rolnik’s daily column in Haaretz concerning financial markets, economic policy, technology, and matters of corporate strategy has been closely followed and highly regarded by top economic decision makers. In 2007, TheMarker won the Effie Awards’ “Platinum Award” for the best achievement in business marketing over the past five years. In March 2012 Guy was awarded the Medal of Appreciation at the annual Kinneret Communications, Society, and Environment conference for his battle against economic concentration and his consistent support for the social protest movement in the summer of 2011, and for demonstrating the quality standard of the press serving as a compass for its readers.
 

Modi Rosen co-founded and has been a managing partner of Magma Venture Partners for the last eleven years. In this capacity he invests and helps grow startup companies in the ICT world. Before establishing Magma, Modi spent 12 years doing strategy consulting work with Monitor Company and Shaldor Ltd. In this capacity he specialized in the communication industry and worked with leading global and Israeli corporates such as Siemens, ECI, and Tadiran, defining their business strategy and executing on it. Modi has over 20 years of experience in strategic management of technology companies. He serves on the Boards of Provigent Inc., Crescendo Networks Ltd., Hola Inc. and Nipendo Ltd.