OUR COMMUNITY
The
Connector Julie Yaker embodies the real power of Jlive.
COURTESY OF FEDERATION
DAVID ZENLEA SPECIAL TO THE JEWISH NEWS
Julie Yaker
S
tart-up culture has a buzzword for everything. Why be a smart person with a good idea when you can instead be a “thought leader” with a “disruptive innovation”? Why look for customers when you can have “early adopters” who latch on to your “freemium” content? There does not, however, seem to be a translation in start-up vernacular for hamish. So, Yiddish will have to suffice to describe the appeal of Jlive, a start-up being piloted here in Metro Detroit that aims to reinvent how Jewish organizations put on events. (Think: OpenTable for the Jewish community and you’re not far off.) Its down-home vibe is largely a credit to Julie Yaker, who heads up sales for Jlive but seems to take seriously the title in her email signature — “Person in Charge of Happiness.” “I knew nothing about start-ups. I knew events and I knew our Jewish
community. I knew the people in the rooms at the different buildings; I have the relationships,” Yaker said. Indeed, chances are good that if you’re reading this you already know Yaker or, at the very least, have interacted with her work, whether you’ve attended a JBaby class (which she started) or gone to a fundraiser or bar mitzvah she’s put on through her company, EyeCatcher Events. Jlive may be less familiar to you. An initiative of Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Detroit and Federation CJA of Montreal, it launched in August 2020 and is still, per Yaker, in its “beta” phase. The JCC of Metro Detroit is also a key stakeholder and leader in the project, and the organization sees Jlive as a core aspect of its programming strategy. Today, some 25,000 people have already used Jlive to register for more than 500 events hosted by more than 125 organizations, from JFamily and Aish to Temple Shir Shalom and
Motor City USY. A more concerted rollout to users and expansion to other cities is already in the offing. The goal, in the coming months and years, is to become the one-stop shop for people looking to know what’s happening in the Jewish community and — through aggregated and anonymized data — to help organizations better understand what sort of programming those people desire. “The real power of Jlive is in our ability to empower organizations to improve their programming and create more successful and enriching opportunities for Jewish people and their friends of all ages to enjoy,” explained Zach Weisman, head of product for Jlive. Yaker, affable and disinclined to speak in tech jargon, professes to dwell little on the Big Data possibilities of Jlive and more on the day-to-day ways it can make the community she’s lived in all her life continued on page 12 JANUARY 6 • 2022
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