Jeremiah Owyang

Silicon Valley Sightings: Half Moon Bay, the Beach in the Backyard

Above: I spent Saturday on San Gregario beach in Half Moon Bay, just a few minutes from the hustle and bustle of busy Silicon Valley, pics from mobile phone.

While only 30 minutes from companies like Siebel, Oracle, NetSuite, and Visa in San Mateo, Half Moon bay is a world apart. A short 12 mile jaunt westbound on 92 will take you over the reservoir, which coincidently is in the shape of the fault line (an aerial view indicates it is the fault line) and over the San Mateo hills. You’ll immediately notice a temperature drop and increase in the humid, salt, air as you drive through the eucelpyous groves. In the fall, you’ll see the magic of the pumpkin festival, kids on pony rides, and the various smoked salmon shops and mini-wineries.

Half Moon Bay is home to many silicon valley executives, corporate offsites, and rolling beaches. You’ll find the Scobles, Tracy Chapman, Singer/Songwriterand Phil Schiller – Apple Marketing SVP. Head south and you’ll find a handful of public –and private—beaches. In college I took a geology class, and learned all about the very unique sand/rock stratifications and the collision between water and rock to make some of the most dramatic –and beautiful– landscapes. Other notable areas is the famous Mavericks surf, where world class surf competitions take place.

There’s a reason why Silicon Valley is one of the most expensive places in the world to live, aside from the thriving technology industry, the quality of life makes it a desirable place not only to work but also to relax.

Related: See my pics from Hawaii, also using my onboard cell phone camera, Nokia N95

Silicon Valley Sightings: SF Chronicle

Above, SF Chronicle perches pleasantly at Fifth and Mission in SOMA district (Google Map)

One of the real pleasures I’ve had as an analyst (thanks to Tracy in our PR department) is the opportunity to meet many of the journalists and reporters in the tech industry. Yesterday, I had the privilege to meet the tech reporters Verne Kopytoff and Ellen Lee who contributes tothe Tech Chronicles blog of the SF Chronicle that are covering technology and social computing.

This landmark building, near the Metreon, SF Shopping center and Moscone was an impressive building to see. Below, you’ll see the stained glass windows paying homage to the Gutenberg printing press, the letters on the ceiling in the main foyer, and the ever present TV stations.

Today, I’m off to UC Berkeley to speak to the Journalism School on the impacts of social networking on news, I’ll be sharing that the SF Chronicle’s comments often get up to 80 comments per article, a unique way how the audience starts to participate.

Silicon Valley Sightings (Special Edition): New York’s Tech Scene

(Above: The Flat Iron Building [map], in New York’s Silicon Alley)

I usually reserve this tag for the interesting places I see in Silicon Valley, but am traipsing around New York for a few days.

I’m camping at the office of Bricabox, as a guest of CEO Nate Westheimer in a small thin incubator building with quite a few startups. We’re across the street from Madison Square Park, where there’s several social media, interactive firms in the area. Before lunch I had a briefing from James Gross of Federated Media, learning about a recent social network marketing campaign I’ll share with you later.

Now I’m told that the original Silicon Alley was actually in Soho, but there’s quite a few folks popping up in this general area, VCs included. I twittered I was having lunch at Shake Shack in the park, and a total of 7 of us joined up, great discussions yet in the cold (by my Californian standards). I met Ryan Anderson from Fuel Industries (he’s a Forrester client) and Matt Zarzecki from CafeMom a social network for mothers.

Silicon Valley is very insular, we don’t know much of what happens outside of 408 650 415 and it’s really fascinating to see different communities of the tech industry.

Here’s a list of NY Tech events, Allen Stern has a list of events this week, and Bricabox (I unique content system) has this list of NY Tech Organizations.

Silicon Valley Sightings: The Palo Alto Egg

Notable landmark right in front of Pizza My Heart, a few blocks from Facebook, and a brisk walk to Jeff Clavier’s office and Social Text lies the great green silicon valley egg. The Digital DNA project is sponsored by Palo Alto’s Civic Art Gallery. This sculpture, which really is a great symbol of the birthplace of Silicon Valley (The famed HP Garage is just a few blocks away) reminds us of our humble start.

When you get closer to this egg (which is now often surrounded by skaters and Stanford students) you’ll see that the egg is composed of computer boards, chips, and the occasional graffiti.

If you’re visiting the bustling Palo Alto area, here’s a great walking tour, you’ll learn about the many landmarks and rich history.

Also, I heard if you’re a budding entrepreneur, if you walk around the egg 10 times, it’ll bring you good luck. Ok not really, I just made that up, but let’s see if it works, try it and let me know.

Silicon Valley Sightings: San Jose Mercury News

The web industry is part of an ecosystem, and one of the major families are the press, who get high level news out to the masses.

Last week, I had a meeting over at the San Jose Mercury, (map) one of Silicon Valley’s most well known technology newspapers. Every day they focus in on what’s happening in our industry, and do a great job of covering events, gathering viewpoints, and offering editorial insight from their columns in their opinions section. Check out the Good Morning Silicon valley blog for daily news.

There’s still a lot of concern over the print newspaper industry as layoffs continue to occur. In most cases, the online revolution has been a big impact, but we’re starting to see journalists use social media to find stories, and have supplementary blogs that provide greater depth than a printed column. A few journalists, like the opinionated Kara Swisher have figured out how not to just comment on the situation, but to actually lead a conversation –all using her blog.

I was really fascinated by the original linotype they had in the lobby, I was looking at all the contraptions it took to print, including looking at the keyboard that didn’t have a shift key, so there were characters for both lower and upper case. There were bands, pipes, gears, wires, outlets, sliders, and every possible mechanical device on this steampunk looking press, it really was impressive to see. Why this complicated machine? It actually printed out metal with characters on it, which would later be sent to the press.

Silicon Valley Sightings: The Tech Museum of Innovation

A few weeks ago, I revisited The Museum of Technology in downtown San Jose, the ‘blue fruit in an orange box’ (see google street map) building sticks out amid the glass corporate buildings and grand hotels. A great landmark for a city centered in innovation. This museum boasts many interactive exhibits, a showcasing of past and previous technology, shows, and even an imax screen for those seeking an enveloping experience of sight and sound. Don’t take my word for it, find out what others say on Yelp reviews.

I had a fun time exploring the exhibit talking about the internet: reviewing some history, catching up on some trivia, and learning about netiquette and abbreviations you should know. (see below)

A bit of trivia for you, the museum is on the site (or close to it) where San Jose’s old Chinatown used to be, but is no more. Also of interest, I used to work at the Fairmont while in college helping with the audio visual work for large conferences. Playing with audio equipment, large projectors, and running around in the catwalks was a lot of fun (and great food for employees).

Silicon Valley Sightings: The Yahoo! Billboard

Yahoo! has a very prominent billboard on highway 80 in San Francisco, (streetview map) right before you cross over the bay bridge (close to the freeway collapse of the Loma Prieta earthquake). When I go to tech events in the city, I almost always see this sign, it’s been there for quite a few years. Reminiscent of a 60s interstate sign you’d see before getting to Las Vegas, the current special to “Resolve to LOL more” plays well to the geeks like myself.

Interestingly enough, billboard pricing is much like internet advertising, both measure traffic, yes one measures cars and the other server requests.

(Silicon Valley Sightings is an ongoing PhotoBlog that captures the intersection of Tech Culture in the San Francisco Silicon Valley Bay Area, check out the archives (which now showcase some tech areas in Asia). All photos by Jeremiah Owyang)

InnoCentre: HongKong’s Government Sponsored Incubator

Amanda Greets me at Innocentre

The Atrium features products and designs

Communal Cafeteria

Grand Atrium

This is another special Silicon Valley Sightings Asia Edition, view the archives.

I had the absolute pleasure to take a tour of Hong Kong’s InnoCentre (on the Kowloon side) from Amanda Lau, head of Marketing of JiJiJa. This is just days after my tour of Cyberport on Hong Kong Island.

InnoCentre is a government sponsored incubator that promotes emerging companies by providing office space, business amenities like meeting rooms, copier rooms, and even funding –without taking any equity. There’s few VCs in Silicon Valley that can boast that type of model.

For startups, even the little things matter, from impressing clients in a real meeting room (rather than meeting at starbucks) or having a real work space, as you know there are few garages in China, so the garage startup is virtually non-existent.

“He said, “we promote applied R&D through funding schemes, infrastructure support, collaboration with Mainland and overseas research institutes. We also endeavor to grow an innovation culture in the community. Most recently, we launched five new R&D centers, in which the Government will invest over US$256.41 million (HK$2 billion). And we will roll out Science Park Phase 2 starting 2007.” -reports HK Economic Trade Office

There were several floors to this amazing building, which also housed product design companies (University of HK was just a few steps away) and had gallery areas to show off new products. For companies that met their three year goals in the program, they were elligable for funding, to launch their company further. As I understand it, a company has to apply to get this special kind of grant, and a few of the companies I met were happy to be there.

While there are some startup incubators around (I think Francine Hardaway would know) in the United States, I’ve never heard of a government sponsored one with so many benefits.

I met with Amanda, who showed me her product Jijija (Which means chatter in Chinese). They help ecommerce and social networks or even media websites become more efficient by providing behavioral based recommendations. This is a viable model as gestures (unspoken actions) can often be more powerful than what users say they will do. Don’t be fooled by their Chinese website, they plan to head globally, although I have the master list of others in their space.

I also checked out ReSpread an do it yourself email marketing tool that has interesting CRM features, for the email marketer, this is an interesting asset for the small and medium sized company.

I spent times with the founders of another company, who wished to remain stealth, they provided me with amazing insight about the Chinese web culture as it applies to the web, you’re seeing that output in other posts.

Hong Kong’s Cyberport: “Hong Kong’s IT Flagship”

(See Google Map)

This is a special “Asian” edition of Silicon Valley Sightings, a photoblog series I’ve been doing for a few months.

Cyberport, a $3.89 billion futuristic high-tech campus is a mixed use facility that has housing, a shopping mall, and four major towers for tech companies. It’s located on the southern area of Hong Kong Island, right on the water, nestled between green dramatic jade hills. It’s home to companies such as Cisco Systems, CMGI, Hewlett-Packard, Hikari Tsushin, Hua Wei, IBM, Legend (now Lenovo), Microsoft, OutBlaze, Oracle Corporation, Silicon Graphics, Softbank, Sybase and Yahoo!.

“Cyberport is being developed on a 24-hectare site at Telegraph Bay on Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. The project aims to build a community interconnected by state-of-the-art broadband network consisting of four office buildings, a five-star hotel, a retail entertainment complex and about 2,800 deluxe residential homes, leading to an interactive environment that will be home to a strategic cluster of about 100 companies and 10,000 professionals in the IT and creative industries” -WikiPedia

There are shared media resources (in case you need rendering power from dozens of blade servers) a motion capture facility if you’re going to build games, library and resource center, the official website has more details. There’s a mall for entertainment, there’s restaurants, and a state of the art movie theater that’s frequented on the weekends by the family crowd.

It’s not quite a utopia, as critics of Cyberport have debated the role of the development group, and the actual number of tennents and usage of the campus, success hasn’t yet been declared. “Meanwhile, Cyberport – Hong Kong’s “IT flagship” and Hong Kong Disneyland have been disappointing. The former has little in the way of innovation and exists essentially as another property development rent spinner, not a real IT hub.” reports Asia Sentinel.

Best of all, it’s a 15 minute boat ride to Lamma island, a resort like rural get away with restaurants, beaches and hiking, my friends at Outblaze took me there for lunch, see photos.

Below: Pictures from the Cyberport campus