10Q: Reflect. React. Renew.

On a more introspective note, the PR Newswire electronic billboard in Times Square will be displaying 10 soul-searching questions during the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The 10Q project is the brainchild of British playwright Nicola Behrman and New Yorker writer Ben Greenman, and is an offshoot of REBOOT, an organization that promotes Jewish culture and spirituality. In addition to pondering the questions during their lunch breaks, New Yorkers are invited to submit their answers online, and receive them back via e-mail one year later. Talk about a timely reminder.

The Jewish Daily Forward: Rosh Hashanah, Times Square Style

More great NYT covereage:

The organizers think people should feel free to get as heavy or keep it as light as they like. One of their favorite responses from last year to a question about an importantspiritual experience: “I lost God, and I’ve never been happier.”

More in the New York Times: Ten Significant Questions for the Days of Awe

…participants respond personally to each of the questions at www.DoYou10Q.com, and at the end of the ten-day question period the answers are sent to a secure, confidential online vault for safekeeping. One year later, participants will receive their answers via email and can be reminded of all those resolutions that they completely forgot about. Organize my closet? Really? Oops.

What’s cool about this…is how unusual a use of Times Square billboard space this is — rarely is such valuable advertising real estate commandeered for open-ended questions geared not for profit or consumption but introspection and self-actualization. It’s a far cry from the usual use of that space — and a far cry from the pace of Times Square, which is as frenetic as the average New Yorker’s life…

Mediaite: Do You 10Q? Times Square Does, Too!

Flavorpill: Can you explain the religious roots of the project?

Ben Greenman: I met co-creator Nicola Behrman at one of Reboot’s events; they try to pair people in different disciplines to work on projects. We were talking through some issues: technology; how people don’t really have space to think in the same way they used to; how that might be corrected. The initial version of 10Q evolved out of that.

The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are a time to think about the year that passed, and let go of grudges — broadly speaking it’s the same kind of thing as the New Year. You put aside whatever bad things have happened. A lot of things about the secular New Year have become problematic. Because of parties, and, you know, our friend alcohol, we leave the reflection part out.

Flavorwire: Exclusive Q&A: Ben Greenman Explains Why He’s Taking Over Times Square

NEW YORK, NY September 17, 2009 — On the first day of Rosh Hashanah tomorrow, anyone who looks up at the billboards and marquees of Times Square will be able to participate in a bit of Jewish tradition. The Web service 10-Q, which stands for 10 questions, will project a question a day on a huge electronic screen for each of the 10 days of the Jewish high holidays. Traditionally, they’re a time to reflect on the past year and plan improvements for the year ahead.

WNYC: 10 Questions to Ponder During Jewish Holidays

A Jewish group known as REBOOT, which says its aim is to revitalize “a new generation to explore and redefine Jewish identity, community, and meaning,” will light up the billboard in Times Square with a question a day for ten days. These will be big questions like, “Is there something you wish you had done differently this past year?”
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Inspired viewers can then go to a web site where they can contemplate the question at length, submit their answers and then, in a 2009-combo-New Years Resolution/fortune cookie-sort of way, check back in a year to see how their answers held up over time.

USA Today: What’s More Jewish Than Asking Questions?

10Q in Times Square!