Silicon Valley - inspiring.
Posted on August 2, 2007 by Tim
Filed Under Project Ninja |
I’m fortunate enough to be attending the Always On conference in Palo Alto, a two day conference attended by some of the leading innovators and engineers of our time.
Some twelve years since launching my first internet business, I’ve finally arrived in Silicon Valley; albeit every one of the 500+ delegates I might speak to will need to ask me who I am, what I do and why I’m here.
A desire to be inspired is why I’m here. Every technologist needs it, ideally plenty of it. For those working in and around San Fransisco it’s probably easy to come by, all the giants of technology are here and the sense that people are wanting to create something special, the next big thing, is clear everywhere I look.
It’s the simple experiences that just can’t be found in the City of London. Perhaps bankers and accountants get the buzz from being in a global financial centre that developers do here; it’s difficult to tell. Simple things like:-
- Walking past the Facebook head office on the corner of University Street and seeing teams of people working late in to the evening creating the web2.0 ’stuff’ that has built a community of several million users in just a few months.
- Meeting Philip Rosedale, CEO of Linden Labs, who for much of the last 8 years has struggled to make investors understand the virtual world opportunities. Today, some 2,000 servers (currently scaling up to 10,000) compute the Second Life for around 40,000 simultaneous users at any one time. Buy an island in the virtual world and Linden Labs dedicate a server to you in the real world…there’s no escaping your carbon footprint it seems.
- Chatting to a development manager from Google about whether Google Finance was getting much user traction and development support internally. Our ‘big scary competitor’, suddenly face to face with me drinking a Blue Hawaiian. No, my Tivo doesn’t think I’m gay; it was a sponsored evening dinner with an Hawaiian theme.
Not that drinking Blue Hawaiian’s suggests any kind of sexual orientation*, I just had to throw in the Tivo story as it sums up the challenges of personalisation and being customer focussed at all times - a strong theme at the conference.
I could go on, and I must admit to being kind of star struck.
Senator John McCain, the future president if IP routing has anything to do with it (he went on that evening to a private fundraiser at the home of John Chambers, the CEO of Cisco Systems), spoke in the afternoon about the challenges facing America. His views on the economy, terrorism, immigration, China, education and green issues were all put across very well I thought. Generally though, even at a conference where a high percentage of the delegates owned private jets, it struck me that most Americans are living in a high state of uncertainty about their country’s future, a country they are clearly very protective of.
It was also good to see ninja’s being mentioned on the real-time chat screen behind the speaker, a forum where delegates and remote web cast viewers can post their views. The Senator declined to comment (he wasn’t briefed prior); but several posters agreed that ninja’s indeed had many good qualities.
And there I sat, my head telling me it was 3am in the morning UK time, but inspired some more. The whole valley is on to this Ninja thing.
* Just to clarify, drinking any kind of cocktail in an English pub, particularly ones that require an umbrella as a final touch, will result in a chorus of laughter. Don’t try it.
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