Big shout-out to Yossi Vardi for his timely invitation to the Israeli Presidential Conference in Jerusalem last month.

It was a really interesting event with over 3500 people, and panelists including our own WP.com VIP Dan Ariely, Jimmy Whales, Shakira, and Sara Silverman:

Dan Ariely @ Presidential Conference

The conference was a mix of tech, science, and politics – with a focus on the future.

Sara Silverman was super funny — outwitting the interviewer most of the time.  Her favorite theme was to talk about how good looking everyone was in Israel

Israel is this bizarro world where Jews r gorgeous & kick-assy instead of sneezy & shirt-stainy—
Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) June 22, 2011

My personal favorite panel was around future brain science advances – and they unveiled mockups, for the first time to the public, of what will soon be a massive brain research center being built in Jerusalem — looked amazing, and the work they are doing is breathtaking. (Can’t seem to find any photos of those mockups anywhere, but will try to add to this post later if I do).

I also found myself in a group of people chatting with Raanan Gissin during one of the breaks. Gissin is a former senior advisor to Ariel Sharon.  For a while when I had a google alert for “raanan”, he dominated the alerts – I thought of mentioning that to him, but thought better of it

Standing next to the man responsible for 90% of my google alerts for 'raanan' – raanan gissin —
raanan bar-cohen (@raanan) June 21, 2011

So all in all, an impressive event — if anyone gets a chance to attend next year, I highly recommend it.