Ent. 404: The Valley’s Shining Beacon of Altruism

It’s that time of year again – time to look back at 2009, figure out what the heck happened, and then look forward to 2010. Trend posts, 2010 predictions and 2009 wrap-up reports are starting to come out. More importantly, the congratulatory back-patting has already commenced in Silicon Valley. TechCrunch ran a nice guest post in late October describing just how the Valley beat out Boston’s 128 loop to become the preeminent technology hub. The author, Vivek Wadhwa, does a nice job of summing up the Valley’s awesomeness. (Spoiler: it’s not only awesome, but it keeps getting awesomer!)

The article reminds us that even in the days of HD-video conferencing, Al Gore’s internets, and cellular telephones, we are at a major disadvantage if we’re not physically located in the Valley. As Wadhwa said: “It is the Valley’s dynamism and networks which have given it an unassailable advantage.” That might explain why so precious little has ever come out of Austin’s startup community – there’s no dynamism, there are no networks here.

Fortunately, the Valley does offer some help to us simple folks stuck in the rest of the world. The ninth-annual Tech Awards honoring technology innovations with a humanitarian twist took place last week and as SFGate duly noted: “While the monetary award was nothing to sniff at, the bigger prize was the ability to absorb the winning ways of Silicon Valley and its culture of innovation, said organizers.”

This might be the real source of the Valley’s power. The altruism that is at the core of everything they do. Yes, they are successful, but they’re also willing to let entrepreneurs from other parts of the globe enter their world for a night and soak up their winning ways. After all, even if you’re inventing a substance aimed at improving health and quality of life in underprivileged parts of the world, your core focus should still be to win big and make the big bucks. Like YouTube.

So, let’s be grateful this Thanksgiving. Not for our jobs, or our family – but thankful for the Valley’s continued altruism – imparting their winning ways upon us so that we might, some day, turn Austin into a meaningful technology hub, and remember to pat ourselves on the back in the process.

Posted by Kevin LaHaise http://kevinlahaise.com/ Kevin LaHaise pens the Enterprise 404 column for Austin Startup. He thinks the business software world desperately needs a sense of humor. In his day job, Kevin does PR for technology companies and focuses on bringing new technologies to market. To read more posts click here.