Pictures of Silicon Valley

I got a present! It's Gabriele Basilico's Silicon Valley 07, which accompanies an exhibition that is currently on display at the SF MOMA.

These photographs were all taken during Basilico's short visit to Silicon Valley last year. They show this region without pretense: In San Francisco, he took pictures of pretty hills with the Golden Gate in the background, but also of sketchier parts, used car dealerships, and deteriorating warehouses. In Silicon Valley, he photographs the sleek headquarters of Oracle and Sun, the villas of Palo Alto, and the cookie-cutter clone houses and McMansions.

For someone who lives here, everything seems very familiar: The images from highway 101, the annoying Verizon billboards, the skyline of San Francisco.

The book starts with a panorama on which you can see my bedroom window, and page 118 pictures the apartment complex where I used to live in Mountain View. That's almost a bit close to home.

The French Invade Xobni

(This happened almost a month ago, but I haven't had time to write about it)

Matt mentioned that there would be "some French bloggers" visiting "later tonight". That sounded pretty innocent, but I had no idea that there would be so many of them.


Xobni still lacks the advanced conference room facilities of larger companies, but we do have a big-ass plasma screen and some leather couches. Thus, we packed our visitors into our "living room" and gave them the Xobni demo, followed by an hour-long Q&A session and some beers at the pub.


It turns out these guys were French entrepreneurs and bloggers on a week-long study trip to Silicon Valley. Jeremy Fain had organized for them to visit places such as Stanford, the San Francisco City Council, Microsoft, Google, eBay, Twitter and Xobni, all packed into a tight schedule.


I only wish this kind of trip had existed when I was back in Zurich - or that I would've had the idea to organize one.