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I keep hearing that it's a San Francisco echo chamber, but when I recently visited London everyone was talking about Facebook (even people I met in the subway) and in Paris 80% of the LeWeb3 conference (which came from 40 countries) were on Twitter.
There is an echo chamber, but it's one of tech passionate people around the world.
You should watch http://www.twittervision.com for a while to see just how world-wide this echo chamber is.
Hi Andy, I am thinking about this a lot as well. I do have some plans. While another project has gotten in the way at the moment, I would like to make this one of my main community todo's this year.
Tech blogger's are a kind of evangelist. But instead of 'preaching' to the converted (our readers) I want to take to the streets and organize a few sessions to show people how blogging, flickr, del.icio.us is. I have been testing this. Showing how easy it is to upload photos to flickr and then hit in the blog this button. We don't even think about it when we do it, but everyone I show is left gob smacked at the possibilities and how easy it is.
Also moving your stuff online via Google Docs and del.icio.us is a weird and possibly scary concept for many people. And then there is video... We have alot to do. I certainly want to do it and I hope that more like me do as well.
Your other point about salary differences is symbolic for the so many differences we have with 'John Doe'. Visit the in-laws :)
One more thing I'd add to your excellent list -- and apropos of this holiday season -- is to listen better to your non-technical family members and friends when they talk about the Internet and what they're doing with it. They're your own built-in focus group; you can take advantage of that fact if you choose to.
Brilliant post -- I think the most undervalued quality in interactive is empathy. Understanding what people with a different perspective then your own (tech-savy, early adopter) is vital. Every GREAT tech idea has to scale to the average citizen. I wish I had books to recommend, but we also have to think beyond the U.S. -- its a global market now...
What a great post; I'm so glad that I came over when Scoble recommended you (his point about geeks worldwide echoing themselves is also well-taken.)
Thanks for your insight, I'm now returning to my own icon-cluttered desktop.
as noted above:
#6: go home & visit the family in West Virginia for the holidays.
(we went to Tokyo this year, so we got a *different* dose of reality, but it always provides a wakeup call to go to either location)
- dave
ps - andrew: i really, really, really do believe that MySpace is good enough, smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like them ;)
You nailed what I learned most by moving out of the Bay for the Dotcom Bust. It's not why I left, but it was one of the major professional benefits. It's also why I travel so much.
My own priority order for your gorgeous list is 5, 3, 2, 4, and 1.
Get out of here for a week at a time and be elsewhere. Craigslist and VRBO can make it cheap. Dave Cancel and me will be in a mildly less nerdy place (Austin) the third week in Jan for this reason.
Nice post. I especially think "Talk to a lot of people different than you" as well as just generally keeping in touch with friends outside of the Bay Area, outside of technology and outside the U.S. helps give some great perspective as well.
great post andrew! I'd like to add one more: Watch TV. In particular, reality TV, or local, rural newscasts. And pay attention to the commercials.
I'm in the suburbs of Chicago right now. Have you ever heard of Meijer's? scary.
i think every metro area has an echo chamber effect. here in milwaukee, we are often time challenged to pull together great events or information with people outside of our metro area; and when you finally do the legwork, local is a lot easier to pull together.
we have now thrown 2 barcamps here, the first once was 120 people in size and the second one was 250 people in size. oddly enough, most of the people from the first one did not know the people from the second. the largest difference was how many people we were able to pull from neighboring cities and people from different states. in our second barcamp we spent a lot of time to try to break the echo chamber effect of most barcamps, and we invited plenty of people from out of state. we ended up with about 5-10% of the people attending, coming from more than 50 miles away. this really brought a lot of interesting perspectives to our event; and even though barcampUSA never happened, trying it really grew our connections to people outside of the city, it was a great experience and i would love to try again sometime soon, but right now we have a startup to start.
With other tech organizations in milwuakee, southeast wisconsin, we have also tried to bring people in from out of state, but as those organizations try to bring in higher profile talent to talk at business luncheons or cocktail parties, we find it harder to connect outside of the city with someone that is willing to travel in to our midwest tech community.
in a feat of half luck, and half perseverance we were able to bring in Guy K. for a great event that really started to change the conversations that we had out here in our own echo chamber. I only wish it was easier to get people from out of state talking here in milwaukee, we would love to have you. Andrew, you would be a blast to have out here, if you ever want to visit a great city just north of one of the worlds greatest cities, Chicago.
Milwaukee is in many ways a lot like san jose is, we are 90 miles north of chicago, which is one of the worlds larges urban economies. chicago's economy is so large that it eclipses many countries. milwaukee being a bit out of the way has developed an insane tech niche in biotech, that eclipses launch events like the iPhone with stem cells and new bio imaging scanners.
Hey Andrew, if you want to break out from the Valley echo chamber you should give us a call. Our team is from London, Portland, Boston and Cardiff. We're coming to the valley next week.
London based Badoo is growing like a weed right now: http://badoo.com. Like fotolog it has a pretty international audience and a very simple, well oiled proposition with a lot of familiar viral elements you spoke about.