20 notes about Silicon Valley

I spent last week in the Silicon Valley. In a group of 12 people we have visited some companies and organizations. Here’s a random mix of thoughts I had:

1. The hottest topics are Cloud Computing and Green IT.
2. Despite Green IT the average room temperature of a meeting room is never higher than 18°.
3. The bigger the company, the lower the temperature.
4. NASA still works with equipment dating from the fifties
   

   From Silicon Valley Tour 2009

5. “I cannot comment on that”, that was the most heard reply during our visit at Google.
6. Executive Briefing Center are buildings where big corporations try to impress their customers with blinking hardware, PowerPoint presentations and Donuts. These buildings are within safe distance from where the real work is being done..
7. PowerPoint-Slides contain more text than a phone book page.
8. Mozilla Corporation’s pride besides Netscape Memorabilia is their collection of alcoholic beverages.
   

   Silicon Valley Tour 2009

9. Want to meet Google’s Security staff? Then pull your photo camera on their premises (Source: @marcammann).
10. Most corporate buildings have only two stories. This gives the Valley the appeal of a Club Med bungalow village.
11. A real startup owns a room-height white board and a fridge full of free drings.
12. A semester at Standford University costs $20’000 tuition. The main return is a good business network.
    
13. Stanford University has two olympic size swimming pools, a stadium and at 6AM the surrounding hills are full of joggers.
14. Joggers wear cotton shirts. This visualizes the performance in form of sweat stains much better than synthetic fibers of functional clothing.
15. American style partying: Buy a pack of 30 cans of Bud Lite, drink it in the train, on the ferry or in the park. Applies to men and women.
16. One hour of parking in San Francisco goes for $7.50.
    
17. There is public transportation. It’s slow (train goes by 30km/h) and unpunctual
    
18. The variance of customer friendliness is higher than in Switzerland: In some stores you get ignored. In other the clerk treats you as his best friends as soon as he learns that you come from Switzerland.
19. Every other car in the Valley is a Prius.
20. Only the homeless smoke.

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