Silicon Valley Diary #1
Posted on | March 25, 2009 |
To say that I was excited about the prospect of meeting with some of the world’s most celebrated digital companies would be a massive understatement. As an attendee of the Cross Creative programme, I’m given the chance to meet lots of exciting companies and individuals. And this penultimate session was the jewel in the crown – a tour of Silicon Valley and some of its finest companies.
Now that I’ve completed all of the meetings I’m hoping to share the experience – so, here goes…
After a hectic day of preparation and a pretty rubbish night’s sleep, it was always going to be a wretched day’s travelling just to get to San Francisco. The Virgin Atlantic flight was long (10+ hours), but was as pleasant as you could hope for. The flight was nowhere near full, so I got to stretch out over 3 seats for most of the journey. On a relatively long haul flight, it’s always good to know that you can shuffle, scratch, and stretch to your heart’s continent without imposing on your fellow passengers.
Gary and Damien, two of my party for the next couple of days, were on the same flight so we shared a car into the heart of town. We were all in need of a refuel, so quickly checked in and headed out to a local diner for a bite. As we arrived back at the hotel, we stumbled across Kenny, another one of our group that had already been in San Francisco for a couple of days. When he mentioned that he was going to go on a tram ride with Carole, the group leader, all thoughts of a power nap disappeared.
In the end it was just the three of us who made the very tourist-y, but completely essential tram ride from Union Square over to Fishermans’ Wharf. It’s a great way to see the city, if a little more perilous then we’re used to in the UK. As you’ve no doubt seen in films, the trams are open sided, and you simply stand on the platform around the edge and hold on for dear life - and leaning too far out is likely to lead to decapitation from a fellow passenger heading the opposite direction.
When we got to the Wharf, and with this being St Patrick’s Day, we felt compelled to jump inside one of the many Irish bars and drink a toast to the patron saint of Guinness.
I’d already arranged to join a ‘meet up’ of Bay Area developers, so while the other guys headed out for food I made my way across town to Jillian’s bar. It was pretty busy, and the baseball game being pumped out through the giant screen elicited the odd whoop and scream from the clientele.
It took a couple of laps of the room and half a beer before I finally spotted the right group of guys. They were a friendly bunch comprised mainly of students, wannabes, and just a couple of professionals – but it’s always good to meet new people, especially those with a passion for games. By this stage I’d been on the go for around 24 hours, and after meeting and greeting around 20 of my fellow game developers, I made my excuses and headed back towards the hotel.
My sense of direction was uncharacteristically good and the 15 minute walk back was entertained by throngs of locals enjoying the St Patrick’s Day celebrations.
The plan was to stay awake until local ‘bed time’, but a chance meeting with the rest of the group resulted in us ducking into another bar ‘The Chelsea Place’ where we heartily joined in the tradition (?) of playing dice for beer. All plans for an early night had been gambled away - just time for a few hours shut eye before getting down to the real business at hand - meeting with some of the Bay area’s most exciting digital companies.
Comments
Leave a Reply
