newarking

I spent most of the last two weeks on the west coast, touring around San Francisco and attending a conference in San Jose, where I spoke about patents and white papers related to search engine algorithms.

I hadn’t anticipated the cool weather that would welcome me in San Francisco from the hot summer Newark days that I left behind for a few weeks, caused by the cool waters of the San Francisco Bay. It was fun visiting the shops, art galleries, and restaurants of San Francisco, and a trip to the Fisherman’s Wharf was a real treat.

I also spent a day visiting friends in Sonoma Valley, and toured a few wineries along the way.

San Jose is a conference town, and while we were there for a week talking about search engines and marketing, there was another conference in town discussing digital art and interconnectivity. I understand that replacing us in San Jose was an incoming conference attended by dancers.

The pace of life in California is truly much more laidback than on the east coast, and it was a relaxing time. I wouldn’t want their rush hour traffic, however. I took public transportation on my trip rather than renting a car, and getting around San Francisco was pretty easy. The journey down to San Jose was made on the Caltrain, which connects a good number of towns, including the ones where the headquarters of some of the largest search engines are located - Mountain View is home to Google, and Sunnyvale is where Yahoo! is located.

I wish that Delaware had a comparable public transporation system - it would really make getting around a breeze, and would cut down on highway congestion considerably. The train station in San Francisco is a couple of blocks from the stadium where the Giants play, and there was a game that afternoon. While I was waiting for my train, a very large crowd got off at the station, wearing Giants hats and shirts, carrying gloves and baseballs and snacks and cameras, on their way to the game.

While I was in San Jose this past Monday, I was invited to be part of a first visit by a group of webmasters to the headquarters of Google, and had a chance to meet with a number of their engineers, and tour the Googleplex (which is the word they use to describe their main campus). We had the chance to give them feedback on a number of topics, which I would describe in much more detail if I hadn’t had to sign a nondisclosure agreement upon entering their grounds.

Google has a much more public party every year (for the last five years) in August known as the “Google Dance,” and members of the conference I attended have been invited to attend each of those “Dances.” It’s held in the courtyards surrounded by their buildings, and admission to the buildings themselves are very limited. The Google Dance was on Tuesday night, so I had a chance for a second visit to the Googleplex in two days. It was kind of funny that I spent more time talking with someone from Yahoo! on the night of the Googledance than someone from Google.

It’s probably not fair to compare San Francisco or San Jose to Newark, since the first two are fairly large cities. Both were great places to spend a few days, and I’ll definitely return if I can. In many ways, San Jose has a similar vibe to Newark. It is good to be home, though.