Chris O’Brien: Let’s talk about Silicon Valley

Sudha Jamthe resisted the lure of Silicon Valley for 14 years.

After getting her MBA from Boston University, Jamthe, 39, stayed in the Boston region, where she remained active in the smaller, close-knit start-up community. Even when she started her own mobile software company in 1999, and found herself constantly on a plane to Silicon Valley to raise money, she was determined to remain back east. Yet after each trip to the valley, there was a persistent feeling she couldn’t shake.

“Whenever I’d leave, I’d feel I was missing something,” Jamthe said.

Jamthe finally gave in last year and moved to Santa Clara, where she immersed herself in the Web 2.0 community. She’s now a social media consultant and blogs, organizes Facebook developer meet-ups, and networks non-stop. And now she wonders what took her so long to get here.

“I realize now that I’m a valley person,” Jamthe said.

What Jamthe discovered, and what many others continue to discover, is that being in Silicon Valley still matters. That’s true even though all the critical elements here – the venture capital, the engineers, the entrepreneurs, the research institutions – can be found to some degree in dozens of other regions.

While those other places might have the pieces, they can’t match the opportunities to connect with the vast community of innovators we have here. That depth, that density, creates the opportunity for more interactions, more conversations, more networking and, most important, more innovation.

All the online collaboration tools in the world are still no substitute for sitting in a room and having a conversation, reading another person’s body language, and feeling the spark of creativity. It’s why venture capitalists still want to be in close proximity to their companies. It’s why Mark Zuckerburg moved here to expand Facebook, just as Marc Andreessen did in the previous decade to build Netscape. It’s why there are dozens of networking events, conferences and parties on any given day.

People still have a fundamental need to connect in person. And when it comes to tech, there’s still no better place to do that than Silicon Valley.

And that’s why I’m both honored and excited to be the newest business columnist for the daily newspaper of Silicon Valley. Unlike so many online organizations that cover tech, a metro newspaper like the Mercury News is about covering a real, geographic community. And there is no more remarkable place than Silicon Valley.

I came here from North Carolina in 1999 during the gold rush, when the Mercury News was hiring like mad. I got to cover the dot-com boom and bust. I traveled to New Zealand to cover the great Y2K non-event on the eve of the millennium. I wrote about the California energy crisis. And more tragically, I reported on the demise of our former parent company, Knight Ridder, and the ensuing crisis in newspapers.

By the way, I believe passionately in the future of newspapers. While it’s one of the bleakest moments for newspapers, it’s also the most exciting time in the history of journalism. The tools we have to gather information, tell stories and connect with our community are remarkable.

I’ve spent a good deal of time over the past year thinking about the future of our industry and searching for solutions to our problems. The future of journalism is something I’m always eager to discuss, and a topic you’ll read about here from time to time. And really, I can’t thing of a better place to be trying to figure this out than in a place like Silicon Valley that’s constantly inventing the future.

And I don’t have to search hard for examples of reinvention. All I have to do is look at the recent re-emergence of the Silicon Valley economy.

It’s an astonishing story. A region that appeared sunk after the dot-com bust has once again reinvented itself, this time as the central hub of the Web 2.0 economy. At the same time, the valley is leading the green technology revolution. And it’s home to some of the most critical innovations in the medical device market.

But it’s not a region without its flaws. And I often wish that the energy and resources and entrepreneurship being poured into creating the 25th copycat version of a social-networking service was instead being channeled into finding more creative solutions to some of the social problems.

Still, I have never lost my sense of wonder about this place. The valley is great. But that doesn’t mean it can’t do better.

My hope is that this column, and the blog that will go with it, will become a place to celebrate what is best about Silicon Valley, to criticize it when it fails to live up to its ideals, and to explore the ways it can move forward.

I invite you to join me in that conversation.