Living in the Silicon Valley is tough, even if you have a lot of money

I just spent 4 days in the bay area and ready to head home to Seattle, specifically in Redmond.  22 Years ago I left my home is Los Gatos, working in Cupertino for Apple to move to Redmond to work for Microsoft.  I didn’t know anyone in Seattle or Microsoft in 1992, and figured I would give it a try worse case I move.  There are three reasons why I moved - real estate prices, traffic and state income tax.  None of that has really changed.

I do come down to the bay area often though as there many companies I chat with, conferences to attend, and to see family and friends.

Chatting with one of my friends who makes the commute from Seattle to the bay area for work last night got me thinking to write this post.  One observation is the number of people who commute in to their job an hour or more reminded us of the commutes for NYC.  Yet, working in silicon valley doesn’t carry the cachet that NYC does, and being in downtown NYC has many more benefits than being in downtown Mountain View.

I have friends who have lived in the bay area and just rent due to the crazy house prices and their long term plans are to move somewhere else.

Many of the people who commute to silicon valley have chosen to live somewhere else they want to be longer term.  Many people who were lucky enough to buy real estate long ago can live closer to work, but the recent hires have a much more difficult time when buyers are paying cash for homes costing over $2 mil.

All of this has an affect on the talent Silicon Valley can attract.  At some point there will be a transition to ????

The ARM Server momentum continues

Calxeda’s end is not the end of the ARM Server.  Yesterday at OCP there was a bunch of ARM news and ZDNet’s Larry Dignan posts.

ARM server army revs up at Open Compute Project powwow

Summary: ARM-based servers haven't taken over the data center yet, but the runway is getting crowded. Can ARM-based servers really get 25 percent of the data center market by 2019 as AMD hopes?

AMD announced their ARM processor.

Mark Zuckerberg video with Tim O'Reilly at Open Compute V

Here is the video on Youtube with Mark Zuckerberg and Tim O’Reilly.

The talk starts out with the first summit in Palo Alto.  Frank and I were chatting and we laughed about how Mark pointed out the challenge to host the first event.

The web traffic so far is only 329.  I am interested in how many others watch this video.  It is nice to see a Founder care about the environment and data centers.

5 good reasons why I don't have clients in DC

I am a West Coast guy, and try to keep my client base on the west coast.  I don’t think I have ever visited a DC agency for business other than the President’s Photography department to research the use of RAW images and other features for photography in Windows 15 years ago.

I know the Federal Government is a different world, and when I read Stacey Higginbotham’s post on visiting a DC conference it clarified the differences.

• policy
• washington d.c.

5 ways Washington DC is very different than Silicon Valley

by Stacey Higginbotham

14 HOURS AGO

2 Comments

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photo: Stacey Higginbotham/Gigaom

SUMMARY:

Silicon Valley and Washington D.C. are on opposite coasts and often seem like opposite worlds, but learning how they differ might help bridge some very real gaps in how tech policy is talked about and implemented.

Paper is the note taking medium, not a computer.

The tool of choice is paper, not a computer. I can scan the rows of people at our Structure conference and see the lids of many a MacBook or the glow of tablets, but here, while there were some folks typing in their notes, more were jotting things down on paper. And in conversations with people, only one ever pulled out a phone; and that was because someone was calling her. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler even told me after an onstage interview that people are more productive wearing a watch than using their phones to check the time because the phones then distract them. People clearly have smart phones, but they aren’t using them like they are a tether to a more interesting world.

The one thing I don’t think I could get used to is the fact that people sit in the presentations as a higher priority than networking.

When you attend a conference in DC, you actually attend the conference. The sessions were packed and the screening room was overflowing with people watching the proceedings. There are few people wandering the halls doing deals or networking outside of the breaks.

The rest of the post remind of the other 3 things that explain how different it is to do business in DC.

Changing how you get Books to Learn more

There are some people who will not change the habit of reading printed books.  Many times these same people have to print something to read it.  They will make statements that they love the feel of the book and enjoy to hear the sound of the pages turn.  These same people probably miss the retail bookstores that used to be in all the malls.

I’ve watched the eBooks effort at Microsoft stumble, and when Amazon launched the Kindle some enthusiastic friends convinced me to buy one.  And, I now rarely buy a printed book, and for years accumulated a collection of Kindle eBooks.

There are some books that just don’t work on the Kindle.  Like Photography ones.  I would then turn to the Library and check out books.

I also went through the phase of putting the Kindle books on the smartphone and tablet.  Recently, I decided to get a Kindle Paperwhite, thinking that if I only read 10% faster it is worth it.  The best thing about the Paperwhite is when I read a book, I am less tempted to switch and read mail or surf the web.  I read and focus.

The other change I made is to stop buying Kindle eBooks.  I now buy a Kindle eBook maybe once every 3-4 months, sometimes less.  Amazon.com’s algorithms know what I am doing.  I choose to rent the Kindle eBooks from the Library, and rent 3-4 times the amount of books I used to buy just to try out different books.

I worked on all kinds of print technology - fonts, graphics, printers, high end RIPS, scanners so I know the technology.  Sometimes it is best to move on, and leave the technology behind.  The technology of printing and buying books.