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This is my second visit to California. About eight years ago I got a chance to attend an American style technology conference in the heart of that techno-paradise Silicon Valley.

San Francisco

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 16:31:26

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This is my second visit to California. About eight years ago I got a chance to attend an American style technology conference in the heart of that techno-paradise Silicon Valley. I spent a week amongst 4000 of the most fanatical of all geeks, the Mac Geeks, at the Apple World Wide Developer's Conference in San Jose and I had a ball. This was definitely the an age of prosperity for the computer industry because no expense was spared.

The conference was held in a massive convention centre and the keynote speeches featured on forty foot high screens so that all the delegates could get a glimpse of the latest revelation from Apple's Advance Technology Group. Every evening a different software or hardware company hosted a late night drinking session in one of the local sports bars,. complete with video games. I did particularly well at upholding the honour of the Antipodean contingent when it came to beating all comers on the formula one style, Virtua Racer.

But things are not looking quite so rosy for technical companies these days. On the back of the "dot com bubble" lots of companies are shedding jobs in expectation of a leaner couple of years. This all for the best because the way we were going it wouldn't be long before Silicon Valley startups were worth more than American giants like AT&T or Microsoft.

California itself is still booming though and shows no signs of slowing. A documentary I watched last night predicted that California's population would hit 60 million within the next 20 years - about three times that of the entire Australian population in an area twenty times smaller.

Some people say California is a different country in any case. Some Californian's talk about seceding from the United States and you get the feeling that it is said only half in jest. The easy going lifestyle and individuality you seen in California make it an easy place to ...