Speed tech talk at the New Shul
About 60 people show up each week. They take over the back room for about an hour and a half. The night starts off with 2 prayers. One for the challah and one for the wine and off we go. The prayers take about 5 minutes.
There were four tables Friday night. It depends on how many speakers they have but I believe that is what they always try to get. Each speaker takes over a table and the audience moves from table to table after 15 minutes. It is sort of like speed dating but in this instance, it is speed conversation.
It is actually an interesting forum. Provides for some interesting conversation. Fred was asked to be involved as the theme was "How Technology is Reshaping Our Experience of Religion". Two of the speakers were our rabbis. One rabbi is on twitter so he really gets it. The other, who is moving on, has written numerous books and is pretty up to speed on the world today. One rabbi spoke to us about how you can't get the same community on line, the other rabbi was interesting if any of us through that there life after death which was a very interesting interactive conversation for the 15 minutes we were there, the other was led by the head tech guy from ESPN who was curious to what people would pay for on the web ( my answer was that you need to figure out other ways to create revenues and make the revenue end part of the user experience because everything out there is free ), and then Fred's was similar to the first rabbi which is can you have a minyan online.
A very interesting evening. The temple is going to see which themes really sparked the most interesting conversation and continue thoughts on that at City Winery where they do a brunch. All great ways to engage yourself in the community of the New Shul without having to go to services.
Personally, that is a big win for me.