Firefox OS

Había prometido hacer un post sobre el proyecto que me ha traido a Silicon Valley y aquí está. Lo único es que va a ser más corto de lo previsto. No me ha dado tiempo aquí y en Madrid me temo que va a ser imposible. Además, todavía no se ha lanzado y mucha de la información es confidencial.

Firefox OS es un nuevo sistema operativo para dispositivos móviles basado en HTML5, que nace de una idea en la que Mozilla y Telefónica.estaban trabajando en paralelo hasta que decidieron unir fuerzas hace ya varios meses.

 

Si pincháis en los links del párrafo anterior, podréis ver vídeos y mucha información sobre la iniciativa. El año que viene se comercializarán los primeros terminales aunque ya hay teléfonos para que los desarrolladores puedan ir probando sus aplicaciones.

El hecho de que sea código abierto y de que la web sea la plataforma me parece que aporta unas posibilidades inmensas. En cualquier caso, es un proyecto muy complicado porque se trata de crear un nuevo ecosistema y para ello es crítico alinear proveedores de aplicaciones y contenidos, fabricantes de terminales y operadores de telecomunicaciones.

El CEO de Mozilla dice en uno de los vídeos que "is going to be a pretty amazing ride". Me lo creo. De hecho ya lo está siendo.

Silicon Valley way of working

Time flies when we are doing what you like. I arrived here four weeks ago and now I´m about to return to Madrid in a few days. My idea was to dive as deep as I was able in the Silicon Valley waters and I believe I´ve done it. It´s been a pretty intense experience. I worked hard but had time to travel around San Francisco and the Bay area as well.

I did also have the opportunity to attend some meetings and events and hence visit the HQ of Google, Facebook, Linkedin, Pinterest, Hewlett Packard, Mozilla and Twitter. Not bad for a month stay!.

Leaving HP aside, as it may be considered a different animal, the offices of the rest companies mentioned have a similar look&feel and share many features. All employers try to keep workers as happy as they can and make their lifes easier. Having fun in the office is a must. I guess a picture is worth a thousand words.

Snapshot was taken at Linkedin premises (many more pics. and comments on my Twitter account). Actually employees have to walk across the machines to get to their desks. Goes without saying that all these amenities are free of charge.

Facebook and Google serve three meals a day. At a different level, many companies have a kitchen where you can grab a soft drinks, coffee, snacks, etc. at any time. Gym, laundry and maid services are common benefits. Googleplex has even an outdoor swimming pool. It is easier to figure out after watching this video. Flexibility plays a key role. They believe innovation arises in relaxed atmospheres, with makes total sense in my opinion. Everybody dress casual and many use bikes (combined with Caltrain) to commute.

Leading companies dedicate huge amount of money to develop appealing environments in order to attract and hold talented people as employee turnover is very high here -18 months in average. By the way, this years it´s Facebook and not Google who was ranked #1 best place to work according to Glassdoor report.

What surprised me is the external look of these offices. I was expecting astonishing design building like Oracle HQ everywhere but they are quite ordinary. Actually Pinterest, Mozilla or Zynga offices in SF look like factories from outside. The magic is inside!

I said before HP is different. They were on top years ago but now Silicon Valley is driven by challenging companies. One photo is enough to illustrate how different is the workspace there.

Mis impresiones sobre San Francisco

En un comentario anterior del blog hacía una primera valoración positiva de San Francisco. Ahora creo que la conozco un poco mejor, después de haberla recorrido a pie, en bici, en moto, en autobús y en tranvía durante los fines de semana del mes que prácticamente llevo aquí. Me reafirmo en mi impresión inicial: es una ciudad especial.

El objetivo original de este post era bastante ambicioso. Entre otras cosas, mi idea era contar la historia de San Francisco, con especial atención a la herencia española, y profundizar en el origen y los motivos de su espíritu liberal y alternativo. Me he dado cuenta de que es una utopía. Necesitaría pasar mucho más tiempo aquí para entenderlo bien y además ya esta contado en Wikipedia y muchos otros sitios.

En consecuencia, cambio de objetivo y lo reduzco a contar mis impresiones de la ciudad. Tiene dos puntos muy importantes a favor: un clima maravilloso y que se ve el mar desde casi cualquier lado. 

Por poner un ejemplo del tema del tiempo, hoy 10 de diciembre todo el mundo iba en manga corta porque hacía un día de sol estupendo. Es bastante inusual que llueva. Lo curioso es que es en verano cuando hace peor tiempo. La frase típica es "el invierno más frío que he pasado en mi vida fue un verano en San Francisco".

El mar está omnipresente porque la ciudad está asentada sobre una península que da paso a la bahía y tiene muchas cuestas y pendientes, otras de sus señas de identidad. 

El Golden Gate es el icono de la ciudad. Lo ves en fotos y te parece bonito pero en vivo tiene un magnetismo especial. La idea inicial es de 1872 aunque tardó bastantes años en ejecutarse. Este año se cumplen 75 años desde su construcción, que fue complicada por la niebla constante, las fuertes corrientes, la longuitud de una orilla a otra (más de dos kms.) y el elevado coste de la obra.

Otra cosa que me ha llamado mucho la atención es la cantidad de parques y zonas verdes que hay, teniendo en cuenta que es una cuidad relativamente pequeña en tamaño y población (menos de un millón de habitantes). Presidio te da la impresión de que no se acaba nunca y Golden Gate Park es el parque urbano más grande de EEUU. Son más de 400 hectáreas que ocupan 5 kms de largo por 1km de ancho, con 43kms de senderos ¡Tiene incluso una zona con bisontes!

Verdaderamente San Francisco es un paraíso para los amantes del deporte porque puedes correr, montar en bici, jugar al golf, navegar e incluso hacer surf en Ocean Beach, que es una playa urbana de varios kilómetros que constituye el límite oeste de la ciudad (Sunset District).

Chinatown es un espectáculo en si mismo, aunque ya hablé de ese barrio en un post anterior. Fisherman´s Wharf está lleno de turistas pero sigue mereciendo la pena. El pier 39 es una buena opción para comer y hacer compras. El Financial District no tiene nada de especial ni tampoco los museos me han llamado la atención. South of Market (SoMa) era una zona industrial sin gran atractivo pero ahora está de moda y es donde muchas empresas emergentes tienen sus oficinas (Zynga, Adobe, Pinterest, Twitter, etc). Por cierto, he utilizado mucho el servicio de Twitter (@asdelcampo) para subir fotos y contar anécdotas de mi estancia aquí.

Adjunto foto de la zona de Castro street. No puedo comentar mucho porque pasé rápido (iba sólo y con una Harley y no quería que pareciera lo que no era...).

De los alrededores sólo he visitado Sausalito, que está justo enfrente y es preciosa. Me he quedado con ganas de conocer la zona de los vinos (Napa y Sonoma), Carmel, Santa Cruz y cualquiera de los muchos parques naturales que abundan por allí, en especial el del Lago Tahoe, del que todo el mundo habla maravillas. Dejo aquí el link a la página con las visitas recomendadas para cuando pueda volver a California de turismo.

En cierto modo, parece que San Francisco son muchas ciudades en una. Para los que no hayáis estado, adjunto un vídeo corto que sirve de resumen de lo que he comentado.

Silicon Valley origin and rise.

One of the ideas I had in mind when I came to Silicon Valley was to understand why San Francisco Bay area is the technology powerhouse of the world and reasons behind its huge success.

I have been reading articles, news and browsing many web pages but my visit yesterday to the Computer History Museum  has been super helpful to figure out the situation. Obviously I won´t try to tell the complete history of the Valley but just focus on the most appealing issues for me. 

There is unanimous agreement about the essential role that Stanford University has played in the rise of Silicon Valley. It was founded in 1891 in Palo Alto and from the beginning there were a mutual benefit interaction between Stanford and the industry.

One example of this spirit of cooperation and assistance was 60 years ago. The University had abundant land -8,100 acres- much of it pasture. Money was needed to finance the University's rapid post-war growth. The original bequest by founder Leland Stanford prohibited the sale of the land. However, the University could lease the land to industry. Thus, Stanford created the Industrial Park. The goal was to develop a center of high technology close to a cooperative university. Eastman Kodak, General Electric, Lockheed and many other companies moved quickly into the first building of the Park.

Professor Fred Terman of Stanford University's Department of Electrical Engineering is considered the father of Silicon Valley. He was concerned with the great lack of opportunities for Stanford Engineering graduates to find jobs in the area. He began to encourage some of his students to start companies near the university. In 1939, William Hewlett and David Packard, two very bright young men among his students, founded Hewlett-Packard in a garage in Palo Alto.

Lee De Forest played also a major role in this history. He moved to Palo Alto in 1910. He was an American inventor with over 180 patents to his credit. De Forest invented the triode, a vacuum tube that amplifies electrical signals and was the trigger for the later widespread use of electronic devices.

De Forest works were improved by William Shockley, also credited with being the father of Silicon Valley. He awarded Noble Prize in Physics in 1956 for his research on semiconductors and the discovery of the transistor effect.

Schockley´s professional life is curious. He left Bell Labs to create Shockley Semiconductors and started scouring universities for the brightest graduates to build the company from scratch, one that would be run "his way". "His way" could generally be summed up as domineering and increasingly paranoid. Definitively, he was not an easygoing person.

In late 1957, eight of Shockley's researchers resigned and started Fairchild Semiconductor. The "traitorous eight", as they called themselves, included Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who would later leave Fairchild and form Intel Corporation. Actually, over the course of 20 years, eight of Shockley’s former employees started 65 new enterprises, which then went on to do the same. These spin-offs (called Fairchildren) formed the nucleus of what became Silicon Valley. The following video explains quite well the evolution from the triode to chips.

It is important to note that it was in California (and only in California) that a particular law emerged in 1872 that defended the employee’s freedom of movement, the right to leave his or her employer at any moment, even to immediately go to work in direct competition with their former employer or to create a competing firm on their own.  You can read the interesting history of this Gold Rush derived regulation here.

Another key element for the development of Silicon Valley was Government´s support to many Stanford projects and their investments in the surroundings (e.g. NASA Research Center in Mountain View). In the following video you can see the influence of World War II in the growth of the area. It is almost an hour length but approaches the history from a different point of view.

Finally I believe that the creation of PARC in 1970 should also be considered as another relevant milestone. Hanging out on bean bag chair and enjoying a relaxed job atmosphere, Xerox PARC researchers invented Alto, a groundbreaking computer that brought the mouse, the graphical user interface (that inspires and influences Apple´s Macintosh) and other innovations like Ethernet or laser printing.

This is my personal view regarding the main reasons behind the boom of the San Francisco Bay area from the 40´s. Current situation is well-known. 40 miles around Palo Alto are located the headquarters of world leading companies such as Apple, Google, Oracle, HP, Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Yahoo Netflix or ebay. I think I will have the chance to visit some of them but this history will be told in a different post...

As a conclusion, we may say that Silicon Valley is a state of mind and not a physical place.