BC v. Silicon Valley, Pt. II
Continuing on from last time’s discussion of Silicon Valley and the benefits of population density, the logical next step is to talk about one of the side benefits of having so many geeks in one place.
Hot Geek Action!
That’s right, you heard me – hot geek action. Read it again if necessary.
Silicon Valley is quite good at bringing people together. Sure, everyone’s a transplanted workaholic with no social life, but when there’s a chance of getting together to ogle a successful entrepreneur, glean a few tips for success, or grab a glimpse of the future of the tech industry, you have to beat the geeks off with a stick. It’s an insidiously effective positive feedback loop: the people smart enough to run the gauntlet to a liquidity event mold a new generation to follow in their footsteps.
Having a lot of smart people in a region by itself is no guarantee of success – you need to actually gather them together from time to time. You need the members of the population to actually engage with each other, to publicly lick old war wounds, tout their successes, and generally impart wisdom to the general population. Silicon Valley does this very well – any day of the week there’s any number of public events, speeches, meet-ups, featuring people far more successful than you who are willing to tell you how they got where they are today, the mistakes they made along the way, and how you might go about duplicating their success. Half the time, these events are extremely cheap; the other half, they’re free.
While you’re at these get-togethers, you’ll meet another bunch of people who are either exactly like the speaker or, like you, are hoping to be in the speaker’s place in about five years. Things tend to happen.
Now, compare this with the environment in the Lower Mainland.
During my MBA, I was considering joining the Vancouver Board of Trade – until I found out that it would cost $200 to join. This was the student price. In addition, any event that would be worthwhile attending would cost another $40 or so to attend. Talk about a really effective way to kill interest in participation in the community. Comparing this to paying $10 as a non-member of the CSPA and see Jerry Kaplan speak for an hour and a half, or donating $10 to the Computer History Museum to see Steve Case (and mingle with the likes of Woz and Walt Mossberg), I can’t help but feel that organizations in Vancouver are shooting themselves in the foot.
Part of the goal of these industry organizations should be about breaking down communication barriers, and encouraging connections within the business community. That’s how Silicon Valley businesses grow better, faster, and win. And business isn’t the only one that needs to be doing this on an ongoing basis – universities have to be constantly making connections to smooth the transition of technology from the lab to market.
Stanford has this program I just discovered, the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Program. It’s a free class that’s open to the public with the express purpose of bringing together the academic and business communities. It hosts an impressive list of speakers drawn from the local business community. Talk about breaking down barriers! And yet when I suggested bringing together the Engineers and MBA students at UBC for a combination entrepreneurship/engineering project course, all I heard from members of the administration were excuses over how it couldn’t be done because of the differences in tuition fees between the two programs. Lame. Maybe Stanford had that problem, and routed around it by doing it for free as a public service.
This brings me to my next rule for duplicating Silicon Valley’s success:
- Reduce the barriers to bringing people together: Nobody creates a revolution in isolation – get people from all industries, all ages, talking, mingling, sharing, and learning from each other.
Next time: Thinking Big
Brendon,
I’d have to argue with one point here:
Part of the goal of these industry organizations should be about breaking down communication barriers, and encouraging connections within the business community. That’s how Silicon Valley businesses grow better, faster, and win. And business isn’t the only one that needs to be doing this on an ongoing basis – universities have to be constantly making connections to smooth the transition of technology from the lab to market.
The Vancouver Board of Trade and the Computer History Museum are two different entities, with entirely different goals and members.
I think a more appropriate comparision would be the Vancouver Linux User’s Group, where they have had speakers like Richard Stallman, Tim O’Reilly, and other computer industry celebs.
While I agree that a comparison between Vancouver Board of Trade and the Computer History Museum might be over the top, I still think an organization like the Board of Trade is representative of Vancouver’s attitude in a number of ways. Big, exclusive, old school. These organizations seem to exist to exclude people rather than include, and not to BC’s benefit I might add.
Even look at something like the Vancouver Enterprise Forum: $35 for an event as a non-member? Give me a break!
In response to Roland Tanglao’s comment:
While I certainly agree that BC lack of population density is part of the problem, I don’t think it’s the only problem. The success of Silicon Valley appears to be the product of both population density and interaction of the people within that population. You encourage this cross-pollination by getting lots of people in your industry together regularly.
There are plenty of smart geeks in Vancouver. I know them. Unfortunately, I’ve had to meet them one at a time. Gather big heaping bowlfuls of these people in one place, and then you’ll really see some interesting things happen and the pace of change in BC accelerate.
High barriers to participation – such as overly costly event fees or annual membership fees – are a sure way to kill the enthusiasm of members of the community for getting involved.
dude, i totally thought you were gonna post some hot pics or at least share some geeks gone wild gossip. alas, i am disappointed yet again.
In early 2003 there was a big event in Vancouver. I forget what it was called, something like the “Technology Innovation Forum”. The idea was that tech companies from all over BC would put up a booth showing the innovative stuff they were up to, and then ideas would flow, or something like that. It was huge, there were at least 200 companies in there. Admission was either free or really cheap. And at least 80% of the people walking in were job-seekers spamming resumes to whoever would take them. The frustration level of the people behind the booths was pretty high; a lot of them obviously didn’t think it was going to be a job fair.
I haven’t participated in enough of the “public events, speeches, and meet-ups” down here; how many resumes get slung? I can’t imagine it being like it was at that forum back in Vancouver. A horde like I saw on that day would bring any non-job-seeking productivity to a screeching halt. (I shamefully admit I was part of that horde. And I didn’t get a single call from all that resume-flinging. Most of them were probably going straight into the trash).
The easy solution to keep the job-hunters out is to set a nice big admission fee. You’ve pointed out the downsides to that.
So here’s the question. My assertion is that free events in Vancouver get swamped by job-seekers while free events in the Bay Area do not. Is the explanation to this: (a) in the numbers, in that Vancouver has a higher tech unemployment rate; (b) cultural, in that Bay Area job seekers somehow don’t disrupt free events out of politeness, savoir-faire, or whatever; or (c), my assertion is all wrong and I’m out to lunch?
shameless plug
There are free forums in Vancouver, including those hosed by the IEEE and the LUG. Almost all events hosed by these societies are open and free to the public. It is not that these and like forums attenuate geekiness, quite the opposite. I find these forums, where the topic discussed is more narrow than a random networking event, still provide a great networking medium. The nature of such a forum also adequately snubs resume spammers. Any fee larger than required to recuperate costs is the wrong way to go.
There is something else missing and I believe it has a lot to do with the attitudes and goals of the local community. It may also be that only a small percentage of people view technological innovation as a passion and not a 9-5 job. Silicon valley has so many people in the tech industry that even if only 0.5% are “ultra-orthodox geeks” they can still gather and be productive — the critical mass you mention in part 1 of your treatise.
i didn’t mean the general population
i meant the population of geeks in Vancouver doesn’t have the breadth or depth
but yeah the fact that it’s not cool in Vancouver to be a geek like it (mostly) seems to be in Silicon Valley
and also the fact that Canadians aren’t really into capitalism in the same way Americans hinders
if you start your own business in Vancouver, you get a lot of grief (or indifference which is worse) from Vancouverites; if you do that in the USA (especially in Silicon Valley), people are actually interested!
Finally the scene here is too inbred and too parochial, but it’s changing as more people from outside move here for the beauty and the lifestyle!
Brendon:
I think you’re right to a limited degree re. barriers to participation. To show it’s not just geeks – the Vancouver Symphony would rather play to a 1/4 house than reduce the price of tickets 15 minutes before performance time. I think the attitude that supports that behaviour is common.
Check out TechVibes, it is a Vancouver-based technology community group. They are holding an event called TechVibes Massive 2005 Technology Conference & Expo. Free admission to the tradeshow part at least.