During our month in San Francisco last year we were lucky to catch Ignite San Francisco 8. We had a great time that night. IgniteSF just put up the videos this month, so I thought I would share some of my faves from that evening. Each talk is just 5 mins long. There were about 15 talks that night in total.

Julia Grace – Money, Cryptography and Scandal: A modern tale of mathematics.

Serena Wales – How to Win at Bar Trivia

Emily Wright – The Journey of the Urban Flush

Jennifer Kuczenski – Engineering Lessons from Folding

Rick Prelinger – Lost Landscapes of San Francisco D

This final talk from Rick Prelinger made me pick up tickets to go see a full “performance” of the Lost Landscapes of San Francisco show at The Internet Archive, which I detailed in this post.

Our one month trip to San Francisco to work on our new startup has been very busy and fruitful. Besides hanging out at the German Startup Haus and going to work every day at Runway, we occasionally did get to do some things around the city like visit the Golden Gate Bridge and Chinatown, froze our butts off at Alcatraz, spent an evening with hipsters at IgniteSF, watched The Desolation of Smaug at the IMAX, toured the EFF and the Internet Archive, and generally walked around SF. A highlight for me was meeting up with some of the cast of The Incomparable, one of my favourite podcasts.

The last time I was in SF I was struck by how old everything was. This time I was struck by how conflicted the city is. The chasm between those in tech and those not in tech is nearly at class-warfare levels. Almost daily there are articles about the chasm widening (eg. the recent Google Bus demonstration). To get better sense of the civic strife, read the following link-filled article: Silicon Valley Is Living Inside A Bubble Of Tone-Deaf Arrogance.

Luckily I have some friends here that are outside of the tech community so I was able to get a bit more of a balanced view. As I commented on Twitter:

One thing I’ve learned while in SF: just like tech can leave behind whole industries, tech can leave behind whole cities.

Those in tech/startups understand the mechanics of disruption in a competitive market: if a new technology makes it to the mass market, tough for the buggy-whip makers and whale-fat farmers. Their time is over and they will have to find new jobs. The market is never static — it is the circle of life.

However, cities are not markets. At least, many people do not expect cities to act like markets. We often hear of large companies folding or shutting down factories, leaving a shell of a city behind in the wake of unemployment. But SF is an inverted case where there is much wealth being attracted (and generated) here, raising the cost of living so high that longtime residents are turned out of their homes.

So what happens when a city leaves behind its residents? In other words, what responsibility does a city have to its residents? The opposing viewpoints of whether a city is a competitive market or not underlies the tension in SF. I cannot offer any solutions, but I would be interested in hearing any historical comparisons if you know of any.

Despite this, our trip was fruitful. I write this post on the plane northward and look forward to reconnecting with the rest of our team in Kelowna to work on the next leg of our project. Exciting times!

This week I had the privilege of visiting the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an organization I am a member of. I reached out to them and asked for a tour. While they were a bit surprised, they gracious showed me around their new three story building on Eddy Street. The EFF used to rent a small office in the Mission for about the last 20 years. Then this year, they actually purchased a building from Planned Parenthood. It is really nice, filled with wood and glass office spaces and conference rooms where their 50 staff, lawyers, activists and analysts do their work.

The internet is global but so much of our communication and technology passes through or comes from the US, it is important that non-Americans like myself support the EFF too. Around 10% of the EFF’s 25,000 members are from outside the US. I asked how I could help when I go back to Canada. Besides raising awareness of the EFF itself amongst Canadian citizens and developers, I promised to connect them to similar organizations in Canada that I know such as the BC Civil Liberties Association and OpenMedia.ca. If you have any other organizations in mind, please let me know, or encourage them to reach out to the EFF for partnership.

And if you aren’t already, please become a member.

My visit to Silicon Valley last week was great fun. I able to make a pilgrimage to the mothership and visit with some old friends. Best of all I was able to spend time in America, with Americans from all over, which is always an eye-opening experience. As a Canadian, America can be a surprising place to visit simply because of all the subtle differences. America is like a parallel universe, slightly out of phase with our “Canadian” reality, where the money is monochrome and the service is terrible.

In my week I was able to visit Cupertino, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, Campbell, San Jose and San Francisco. Silicon Valley: the heart of the tech economy, the herald of the future. It seems like The Valley is always a little bit further along in the timeline — or maybe multiple timelines — waiting for the rest of the world to catch up and determine which timeline is the one to actually pursue. Did I expect jetpacks? No. But I did expect a lot of steel and glass, clinical precision and cleanliness. Maybe it was my experience in Apple Stores that biased me. Boy was I wrong.

Driving through San Francisco I felt like I was in a crowded South American city. Palm trees and tiled roofs everywhere and the hills are swathed in low, wooden buildings, like a thick pastel-colored blanket. Sprinkled here and there were (abandoned?) brick factories and warehouses. Like many of the structures, the grime was also 19th century. There is no apparent grid-system for the streets. The city is pre-automobile. I can imagine horse tracks and footpaths lying below the paved streets, peeking through the cracks. It was pointed out to me that the many hills might not facilitate a Tang-style urban plan. Excellent point, I thought. For the Japanophiles, San Francisco is more like a Tokyo than Kyoto.

I spent only a handful of hours in San Fran and only saw the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges, the Mission and the Castro. The Castro was flamboyant and the Mission was… well… I think this video can sum it up:

Have you ever made the mistake of thinking a fat lady was pregnant? Sometimes in San Francisco it is difficult to tell who is homeless. Better to keep your mouth shut and your change in your pockets.

One thing I should say is the eats are great. The restaurants I visited were:

• Luna Park
• Chan Chan Cafe Cubano
• Caffe Macs
• Falafel’s Drive In
• Kyoto Palace
• Arcadia Restaurant
• Yiassoo Greek Restaurant
• plus In-N-Out Burger, Chipotle and Carl’s Jr.

I know the rents are high, maybe even worse than Vancouver, but I would have to give serious thought to relocating there if the opportunity ever presented itself. It is definitely a place with a vibe. The only negative experience I had in California (besides occasional lack of service) was the massive clusterfuck on the part of United causing me and a number of people to miss our flight. Next time I will be more careful to avoid UA. Next time.

See all of my California pics on Flickr.