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A while ago Sara Lacy of TechCrunch posted a flaming article about her visit to Israel, saying – basically – that Israeli innovation is dying and that “Now that China is the new Israel, what’s Israel?“.

This post was a big upset for many people, myself included (and I especially liked the “open letter” posted by Yaron Samid on TechAviv as answer). As someone who is quite “connected” in the Israeli high-tech scene, I admit that I am amazed time after time from the level of never-ending innovation that Israeli entrepreneurs and companies are showing every day.

And the best place to meet these innovators is, for me, tech conferences and seminars that are held in Israel. While similar conferences held in the US and Europe are bigger and fancier, the “let’s conquer the world” feel that you get in Israeli tech events is something else (and I’m not saying that just because Tsahi went to a conference in the US, and I didn’t… J).

Last Wednesday I attended an annual seminar held by Texas Instruments and its Israeli distributor Telsys, dealing with video and video applications. While TI events are usually around various fields and applications, the large R&D community in Israel that deals with video processing and video applications allows TI (or should I say force TI…) to hold an event dedicated for Video (at least) once a year.

And this year was not different. As the hype around video goes bigger, and as platforms grow stronger, it seems that everyone knows video is happening, including TI, which is the leading semiconductor manufacturer for video processing and video appliances.

RADVISION Innovative Video Offering

Jean-Claude Baumer, who manages the Embedded Processing Business of TI in EMEA, was saying just that in his opening speech. And he chose to discuss “what’s going on with video these days” with none other than our own Adi Paz, VP Products and Business Development for RADVISION’s Technology BU, and a long-time believer in video.

Jean-Claude and Adi talk about video conferencing.

Adi told Jean-Claude, and the large crowd attending the presentation, that video is already all around us. Be it through consumer applications such as Skype or via high-end enterprise systems like Cisco’s Telepresence; Using it for entertainment, communication or infotainment – you can’t go through your day today without using video, and this trend is here to stay.

As an example of how video and video communication is slowly-but-surely becomes commodity, Adi gave the wonderful example of a new and exciting video conferencing product, built by a large consumer electronics manufacturer (the name still can’t be disclosed. Sorry!), TI and RADVISION.

Tsahi and I have discussed RADVISION’s BEEHD product in previous posts. As we explained it dramatically reduces the time-to-market when developing video conferencing products, as it contains a complete feature set and runs on an optimal platform, The TI DaVinci SoC.

What the consumer electronics manufacturer will showcase, and what Adi presented (and it was also demoed in the demo hall during the conference), is a 24″ LCD PC screen, with an embedded video conferencing endpoint inside, powered by RADVISION, using the TI DaVinci SoC.  I simply call it personal video conferencing.

This basically means that soon you will be able to replace your “old” PC screen with a similar LCD screen, with the same size and same look and feel, that will allow you to enjoy video conferencing without any need for additional equipment (other than an Ethernet cable).

As Adi told the crowd, this can prove to be a significant step in making video conferencing more appealing, more affordable, much easier to deploy. And now a world leader in screens manufacturing, for consumer and enterprise use, is utilizing the great know-how of TI (hardware) and RADVISION (software) to make this dream come true.

The BEEHD demo in the RADVISION booth.

Adi also presented our new and exciting SVC technology in action, providing great video quality over a “noisy” network (5% packet loss). I’ve seen this demo more than a few times, and yet it never fails to amaze me. As the crowd quickly realized, this technology can offer great quality of service for anyone everywhere, even those “less fortunate” who are not using MPLS lines.

I was very pleased to see the crowd’s reaction to Adi’s words. They were thrilled by the level of innovation, but also about the general idea. Video, and visual communication, is no longer an “executive toy” or a “cure for Swine Flu“. It is a means of communication that we should all be using, and there’s no better time than right now.

So there you have it – there is a great deal of innovation coming from Israel right now, just as it did before, and as it will be in the future. And that’s before I even mention the amazing scenery just outside of the conference hall, that not too many tech conference venues can offer…  and a picture is worth a thousand words.

How can anyone concentrate with a view like that?