Something very nice is happening in the Software Development Community in Israel: People are organizing meetings to share their knowledge, but not only with their colleagues in the workplace – these are meetings open to the public, including engineers from “competing” companies. I personally think that this strong sense of community and this desire to share knowledge and experience is a wonderful characteristic of the Israeli hi-tech industry, well described in the book “Start-up Nation“.

I am myself one of the co-founders of the International Association of Software Architects in Israel (IASA IL). We are organizing an event next week, focused on TRIZ – the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. The meeting will include an introductory talk about TRIZ, followed by a panel to discuss its applications in the industry. Our speakers are Ido Lapidot and Shadi Saba, from Intel Haifa, and Vladimir Petrov, president of the Israeli TRIZ association. You can register in the event. You can also join our LinkedIn group.

Another very active group is the Software Craftsmanship in Israel (SCISR), leaded by Uri Lavi. They are having their 10th meeting this week, with the special participation of Corey Haines. The meetings organized by SCISR are extremely popular, and if you don’t register fast you will surely find yourself in the waiting list.

The ILTechTalks initiative, organized by Ori Lahav, has as its goal to “facilitate knowledge and experience exchange between Israeli tech professionals”. They have a rich list of very interesting talks, with highly qualified speakers that volunteer to present these subjects in your own company.

The Agile community in Israel also became very active in the last couple of years. They have several groups on LinkedIn, in which you can always find interesting blog posts. They are organizing a great two-day event next week, the Agile Practitioners 2012 Conference, with the participation of Gojko Adzic, David Evans and Corey Haines. There will also be talks by several of the leading members of the Agile movement in Israel.

Besides the opportunity to exchange knowledge and experience, these meetings are the best places to socialize and increase your network. In a recent article at the Fast Company, Kevin Purdy talks about the importance of the Third Place:

“The First Place is your home, and the Second Place is your office. You have assigned roles and tasks at each place, and you know nearly all the people in each. The Third Place is where you meet with people you don’t know that well, or maybe at all, and you exchange ideas, learn about other people, and enrich society and yourself.”

 So don’t miss these events! Hope to see you there!