From the article: "Mountain View is one of the best cities for high tech in the whole world"

Go, Mountain View! Makes me proud to be a resident.

Side quip about a peculiar phrasing in this good story:

"Raynaud, who moved from Paris to Palo Alto in the 1990s to get a piece of the first technology bubble, ..."

Nick, when I see characterizations like that, it tells me something about the writer's memory span or local tenure.

Such phrasing is especially common among people whose awareness of silicon-valley industry began in the dot-com days. Unconscious of the earlier booms (and busts) that left us with 3600 electronics firms (in Santa Clara County alone) by 1990, and the infrastructure and culture within which a dot-coom boom could later flourish.

The perception overlooks: Original "silicon valley" boom, late 1950s to late 60s, and the US-wide technology downturn that followed (led somewhat by the aerospace industry and the national "SST" aircraft program cancellation); mid-late 1970s SV re-boom that brought massive HP expansion (seldom characterized as a "computer" firm -- that would come much later), Apple Computer, "Vallco Fashion Park," massive construction, and all those 1970s Firebird and Trans-Am cars with flames painted on them (same period I spotted the first national mention of Hoeffler's catch phrase "silicon valley," in Time magazine -- which misidentified it as being in southern CA -- but after all, NYC is so far away, geographically and otherwise); off-and-on downturn early-middle 80s (documented by Hoeffler in his hot local tech newsletter, I still have the issues); late 80s boomlet, then collapse at the time of First Gulf War; then gradually at first, in the 1990s, and with rapidly growing momentum as the Internet went fashionable, "dot-com," which halted the local recession of the early 1990s, becoming Distinct SV Boom Number Four. We are currently in #5.

Thank you Max for the history lesson - I didn't know we are in wave 5! This posting is included in the crowdsourced recap of the event created using storify.com, tweets, links and capturing all posted communications about the event! Tweets & Links curated by @CindyFSolomon chronological view: bit.ly/Kaq5aB Slideview: bit.ly/JTQzMc