VMWORLD 2009 – Cannes and Paris

Some pictures form IT Structures booth at the show and views of Paris, preparing for next conference.

Starting with a cheap trick to get the audience attention.

Nice Car of the Future in Paris, not like my Peugeot 206

girl picture in paris winter

Moving to the important keynote we attended

Paul Mauritz and Zvi guterman on vmworld 2009 vcloud keynote

IT Structures Vmworld vCloud Keynote The Big Screen

it structures vmworld vmware 2009 vcloud pavilion

it structures vmworld vmware 2009 vcloud pavilion booth ophir and zvi

Models Site Hacked – Reported Here First :)

As reported in this blog by our reader A.J the top model agency site had an SQL Injection.

Turns out that it was actually used by slow hackers and made the front headlines  http://www.globes.co.il/news/article.aspx?did=1000347082&fid=594.

 

Top Models Do Not Need “Talent”

On the new year, our young start-up has moved to a new location in downtown Tel Aviv. On our old location we shared a  building with eclectic combination of neighbors. The list included :

1.       The election campaign  for Israel’s  biggest workers union (They Won)

2.       A Divorce lawyer

3.       Women shoes store (with the funny name of “She’s Shoes”)

4.       Secretive diamond cutting company (Parking full of BMW X5)

5.       Promising security  start-up

6.       A leading modeling agency 

Being  neighborly, it gave me an opportunity to learn about various business models of non hi-tech companies.When the modeling agency first opened their offices next to us, our team was reasonably happy.Monday and Thursday were audition days, which really helped to keep morale high.Then, on one scary morning, as I came to the office, I saw a new sign on the agency door –   “Talent Agency”.Naturally this was pretty scary, as I feared they are changing their business model (pun intended). When I inquired about the change I got the following insightful, unofficial  explanation.

 The Israeli modeling scene is very competitive. The high revenues flow to the “Top Models”, which make most of their money abroad.The “Non Top Models” have hard time. Not only they earn less than in Paris and New York, they also lose the big Israeli contracts to the “Top Models”, who come back for a quick visit.

The solution found by the agency is to re-brand the “Non top Models” as “Talents”. A “Talent”   is a famous person, whose main activity is being famous. “Talents” can work on soap operas, children TV Shows, reality TV, or even start a singing & acting career. A true “Talent” usually does all the above simultaneously and needs to be very handsome.

A good talent makes a good living out of TV contracts, which are more frequent than modeling. Moreover, as the talent builds a brand for himself ( “Bad Guy”, ”Good Guy”, ”Smart”) he can get big advertisement contracts.  

As a result the, agency decided to focus on very few  potential top candidates, and build a modeling career for them. For most  of the other, very  pretty candidates, they plan a career as “Talents”. In summary, while the candidates are the same, they changed their branding, positioning and business model to align with the market.

So, top models do not need “Talent”, But “Talents” do need to be models…