My so called professional life over the years has revolved around technology and design projects. This is currently the situation although now it is in San Francisco, one of the hubs if not the hub for American geekness. I mean that in a good way. The geek innovations have also created late last and early 21st century gold rushes out here with fortunes made and lost and a city changed. The innovation has been continuous but people got carried away with the tech bubble of the late 90s. The tech industry out here started in earnest with Stanford University and a professor trying to get graduates to stop heading east for work after graduation and start companies in and around Palo Alto. Two of the first were William Hewlett and David Packard who started a little company called Hewlett Packard. The bubble of the late 90s apparently changed the city quite a bit a pushed housing costs to the stratosphere. I doubt it was ever cheap to live here but everything went amok then. I would suggest that we are in the midst of another round of the craziness although its tempered with the memories of 2000. It is also much cheaper now to get a start up going but Web 2.0 is everywhere. Now I happen to work for a web company that is a part of the Web 2.0 movement (how successful we are is a different story) but I have no chance at a big cash and stock bonanza. You see its a non-profit. The best that can happen is we are successful in what we’re trying to do and I get to drink beer and talk shop with some Web 2.0 million/billionaires. We are definitely crossing paths and are connecting with some of the big players out here as well as the up and comers. Its funny to go into certain coffee shops because at any given time there are numerous business meeting going on and plots to change the world. The thing that is interesting is that there are some really cool ideas and web applications out there; if they become household names or not, they’ll be useful. Me, I’m pluggin away at work and trying out all the new and not so new web toys and working on side projects. One of those little projects will be the old idea of taking a photo a day for a year and then see what you got. Today its a delicious Chimay. This is shaping up to be an interesting year and I am nostalgic even for the future.

This reminds me…sometimes I feel lost and bummed out by the world as my last post showed. Thankfully Jaime popped in when I needed a friend. One thing I do think about…I almost look forward to the day when we are forced to conserve energy to survive as a species. This way we won’t feel the need or have the capability to be on the computer or phone for 16 hours a day and can just chill.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 24th, 2007 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Life in the States, Web + Community. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.