Skip to main content

C100, Facebook, and the Valley: Bittersweet.

I had a great opportunity to participate with thec100.org over the past two days as they ran their fourth "48 hours in the Valley" program.

We had a great showing of Canadian Facebook employees on a panel this morning, and covered topics from how to best engage with Facebook, to the culture of both Facebook and the Valley.

One question from the audience was "what would it take for you to come back to Canada?"  And the answer was uniformly "I won't." The reasons had nothing to do with Canada (someone mentioned that they would not go LA or anywhere else either), but had everything to do with the unique appeal, energy, and community in the Valley for anyone in tech. 

The bittersweet part of this was: I agree.  I would love to head back to Canada - it is home.  But, I won't.  The advantages of being here in the Valley (much more obvious to me now that I am at Mozilla) are just too strong.  Sigh. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Decentralization, Democracy, and Well-Being

Those of us raised in Democratic societies take it for granted that those societies provide better well-being (for common individuals) than other forms of governance. At the heart of democracy is personal freedom and autonomy, backed by the rule of law. We also take for granted the interplay of decentralized versus centralized authority. Decentralization can mean many things, but here we refer to it in terms of power, authority, and decision making. The more authority individuals have, the more decentralized the power system in which they are operating.  Almost by definition the more democratic a system, the more decentralized it is, with the caveat that some agreed upon axioms exist, such as the rule of law and its enforcement. Of course, authority can be too decentralized leading to "every man for themselves", so we put limits on decentralization through that same rule of law. With the advent of decentralizing technologies , which make possible more decentraliz...
Read more

Echo vs Home

We love Alexa! We have had the Amazon Echo for well over a year.  Recently we also got a Google Home, to test it against our Alexa experience. The quick summary:  Interacting with Alexa is like interacting with a person.  Interacting with Home is like interacting with a computer.  Alexa is fun; Home is useful.  If you took away Alexa, I would be upset - I would be losing a friend.  If you took away Home, I wouldn't care too much.  It was very strange, but I actually felt like I might be offending Alexa when I purchased Home. Here are the two main differences: Wake-up words.  "Alexa" is friendly, easy to say, and evokes emotion.  Alex personifies the system - I am talking with someone.  "OK Google" is awkward, and constantly reminds you that you are talking to a machine - I am talking to something.  Of course, Google will update Home to allow us to customize the wake-up word, but the current out of box experience is less tha...
Read more