The World Inside San Francisco

I just read an interesting post by Richard MacManus, "There's a world outside San Francisco" (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/002753.php) which refers to another post by Matt Webb that can be found here:

http://interconnected.org/home/2005/06/08/i_caught_sight_of

Both posts make some interesting points, but actually inspired some thoughts of my own that are similar in subject. I came to San Francisco in 2002, at the bottom of the crash, so I don't even have the perspective of being involved in the height of the boom. Still even today, as a software engineer in San Francisco who is involved in Web 2.0 stuff, I constantly find myself wondering how important any of this stuff is to the outside world. I mean news and developments and gossip around this area seem to reach a crescendo so quickly that I think it is very easy to lose perspective on the outside world, the larger market.

It's not really as simple as that though. Matt notes that, "The Web is San Francisco circa 2001, writ large.". This means that much of the bleeding edge stuff that was being developed in this area half a decade ago is now main stream and has come to affect the rest of the world and the market at large.

Still, so much of what happened during the boom did not survive. I wonder if one of the main ingredients for success during that time was to maintain perspective on the long run, on the outside world and the larger market that exists there. Maybe those that were able to eventually affect the rest of the world are those that did not get caught up in the entrepreneurial pressure cooker that was Silicon Valley circa 1999. We know now that it was an environment that brough way too many companies to fruition way too quickly.

Well that presssure cooker is slowly starting to build again. I find myself wondering these things when I think I am already out of the game on some things like blogging, RSS, and other Web 2.0 technologies, because other companies have done so much development already. Well it turns out that there is a huge population out there that still does not understand these things. San Francisco/Silicon Valley can make you feel outdated when you are sitting on the very edge of the bleeding edge, and this perspective can be very damaging, because the true, long term, winners of these entrepreneurial races will not be determined for years to come. The best companies in these areas have probably not even been started yet.

Rather than getting closer and closer to falling off the edge in to market obscurity, it might be better for all of us out here to listen to those outside San Francisco and recognize that most of the value is yet to come.

Then again, the bleeding edge is awfully fun place to hang out in, especially for a developer. There's nothing cooler then demoing a product that has already become old news for you to someone who can't even believe the product is possible. For me those experiences really inspire my creativity and passion for development.

I guess the trick is to find the balance, to perform the balancing act along the edge that allows you to lead the rest of the world to the edge and show them that it isn't so scary.