I know the title should be a no-brainer, but as someone who lives and works in San Francisco, I have to admit that I sometimes forget what SF is really like relative to the rest of the world. Here’s my attempt to visualize the disconnect:
You know that feeling when you’ve been on vacation a few days, and then it kicks in that you’re in a vacation state of mind? That’s how I felt during a conversation at dinner in Manhattan when somebody was talking about Google Buzz. I think it went something like this:
Him: “What’s this Buzz stuff? I can’t seem to make it go away…tell me the secret.”
Me: “Um, well it’s sort of like Twitter, but more private. It’s cool…”
Him: “Huh? I don’t want that in my email. Also, why is Google telling me to make phone calls from Gmail? Why the f*ck would I want to make calls from my email?”
In that moment, I remembered that most people don’t care about whether Google is going to kill Skype or how Facebook Places compares to Foursquare. In fact, most people have never heard of either, and they continue on in their daily lives quite happily.
A few days later, at my friend’s wedding, I met a lot of interesting people, none of whom were in technology. I found myself trying to explain software-as-a-service at one point, and then realized that I had no interest in talking about technology at all, and wow did it feel refreshing! Instead, we talked about education and affordable housing and shared personal stories, and some people even talked about how much they didn’t like their jobs. Somehow I feel that doesn’t happen all that much in San Francisco. We either have the best jobs in the world, or we’re never actually not working when we’re excitedly talking about the next feature or product we’re building.
I love technology and I love San Francisco, but it felt really good to be reminded that there’s a whole lot more out there too.
