The subtitle of this post is from the 'Palo Alto' by Radiohead - one of my all-time favourite songs from my favourite band - you can see the lyrics here. (There's more on my musical taste here). There's a great line in that song about how "everyone is made for life" - I've just been at the house of the person who wrote the original code for what became Yahoo! Mail - it certainly was an impressive space.
I always intended to spend some time in Silicon Valley and I had some good meetings set up but it was primarily intended as bit of a staging-post for my trip to Yosemite National Park. So I only planned to be here for two nights. I'm now regretting that a bit as I've really loved the brief time that I've been here and I could make it a longer stay. Oh well, put it on the list for a return visit... I particularly love the sense of confidence and progress that was what made me like Chicago but the amount of green space and community minded activities is also very attractive. Now if they just could get some public transport going...
It's been really interesting to spend some time with my Servas hosts Joyce and Chris and their two children - my last Servas hosts of the trip actually so I'll be sad to lose that part of the experience. Their home is lovely and I was made to feel very welcome including being invited to a local author's book reading (hence the visit to the Yahoo! Mail home).
The meetings I had set up were not until around lunchtime so in the morning I took the opportunity to walk 'The Dish' a local park (named for the large radio telescope at the top of the hill) and joggers' paradise that's actually part of the Stanford University campus (and sits just over the Stanford Linear Accelerator - the predecessor of the Large Hadron Collider). We set off about 9am and it was already very hot - a couple of shots below but they don't really capture the attractiveness of the location very well.
I then had a lunch meeting with a couple of people from Cupertino City Council. Cupertino is famously the home of Apple (hence the shot at the top of the page) and it was a very interesting chat. Headlines;
- California's Proposition 13 is crushing investment into schools and other desirable activities for cities by limiting increases in property taxes (much like our own Council Taxes) unless the house changes ownership. A crazy piece of legislation that the state is still paying the price for more than 30 years later. This drives a lot of the decisions and context that the city has to operate in.
- Apple run a highly comprehensive commuter bus service for their employees as far San Francisco. This is essentially of course a privatisation of what should be a public service. (Healthcare, anyone?)
- Cupertino doesn't really have a 'downtown' so the Council and the Chamber of Commerce are jointly working on a 'Main Street' project to create a focal point and broaden the tax base of the city.
Swiftly following this I was back to Palo Alto and a meeting with their Economic Development Manager. Thomas was a great guy, highly engaging and knowledgeable and I was desperately scribbling down as a much as I could during our couple of hours together. Loads to take in and digest still but a couple of key points;
- Palo Alto has a working 'dark fibre' network with nodes all over the city - this is exactly what Nottingham wanted to do with its (sadly unsuccessful) Super Connected Cities bid. I got some details and the contact name which will be really useful for the team back home to enable us to press on with this project.
- The City is using its high level of tech and IT people and businesses to run 'Hackathons' to bring together people to collaboratively solve local problems using the City's data and policy objectives.
So for a couple of days that I squeezed in in between Seattle and Yosemite I think there's a lot there to digest and think about. I am however hugely excited about the trip to Yosemite - hoping that the good weather holds and I get some good walks in - can't wait to fill my lungs with some fresh mountain air.
So I've not blogged for several days - don't worry, I'm still alive, just been busy having a great time! I arrived relatively early in the morning on the Friday and so had some spare time in the city before I met my Servas hosts, Sarah and Cale. I popped up the Columbia Centre tower which gave great views out across the City and the various bodies of water that surround it. I also took the chance to visit the legendary Pike Place Market - I saw some fish being thrown and also took advantage of the great local artists to pick up some Christmas presents.
I met Sarah at her office downtown and we walked up to Capitol Hill - the neighbourhood where they live. I'd read a lot about the Seattle micro-/craft-brewing scene so I was pleased when we went to a local bar to sample some of them. The evening then took its usual turn when you go for a "quick one" after work... We went for some excellent Mexican food in a local 'hispter' cafe and then sampled most of the local beers - especially from Elysian Brewing - their pumpkin ale is excellent! I displayed my usual self-control and light-touch when it comes to drinking and seem to remember displaying my British beer-mat flipping skills to any and all that wanted to witness them.
So it was obviously with a spring in my step and a totally clear head that I went off to the Seattle Art Museum the next morning. It's a really great space and had some cool exhibits - I'm just not sure that I made the most of it...
The Museum also has a satellite
campus of outdoor sculpture so I dodged the rain and took in that. In
the evening we went over to a local neighbourhood that was doing a kind
of 'open house' at the artists' studios - you can see some info here.
I moved on to another Servas host on the Sunday morning - Rebecca and Sara live in Mount Baker a few miles away from the city centre so it was interesting to see a different side of Seattle life. We did a whole variety of things over the three days I was with them, the highlight probably being a tour of several wineries and also going to a local bar to watch the second Presidential debate. I really enjoyed the conversations with Rebecca and Sara about the local and national political scene and what it's like to live in Seattle.
Seattle is a great city - still doesn't knock Chicago off top spot, but I like the culture and stunning scenery - even the British-style rain wasn't too bad!
(I'm going to do another post in a bit outlining the companies that I visited whilst here in Seattle).
As I talked about here, one of the things I was looking forward to doing in America was taking some trips on the Amtrak rail system. I've spent the last couple of days on the train from Minneapolis to Seattle as the first of two journeys I'm planning to make. (The other is from Los Angeles to Houston so I expect it will be different in many ways). If you like you can see more details of the Empire Builder route that I took on this trip.
Arriving at the station in Minneapolis was a bit of an adventure in itself - the Americans haven't quite cottoned on to the fact that the advantage of train travel is that you can arrive and depart right from the city centre - the station is out in the middle of nowhere - not the most fun when you need to be there at 11pm! Luckily my Servas host was kind enough (on her birthday no less!) to give me a lift out there. There was the usual chaos that you come to expect at a station (itinerants wandering about, people missing trains etc, etc) with the added excitement of some unsupervised toddlers wandering about that I had to stop from exiting the station out onto the busy main road outside. Never did find their mother.
I had made sure to book a sleeper car and was very glad that I did when I walked through the 'coach' standard accommodation - it really didn't look like a comfortable place to spent nearly 36 hours. That said, the 'Roomette' accommodation that I had been allocated wasn't exactly palatial, especially for someone who's 6'4"! But the service that came with it was (as you would expect for America) excellent. Dorothy was the allocated steward for our car and the adjacent one and she was fantastic - not least at being able to remember something like 20 peoples' names, destinations and dinner reservation times.
I was pretty tired and the light wasn't very good, but this an attempt to show the size of the sleeping accommodation - bear in mind that I was standing half-in-half-out of the door in the corridor...
Having managed to get a reasonable night of sleep and shower in the swaying train bathrooms it was time to experience the food available. It's all included in the price of your trip so I was going to maximise my opportunity... It was an ok breakfast, a triumph of quantity over quality really but the highlight was sitting with three other random travellers and hearing their stories. Over the four meals I sat with people from all over the US and also one intrepid traveller from New Zealand. It was really interesting in particular to talk to some people from Charlotte, North Carolina which I hadn't realised was the second largest financial centre in the US after New York - and so has been hit very hard by the economic downturn.
But the real highlight of the trip was just watching the scenery. I didn't even leave my cabin to go to the dedicated viewing car as I could see everything I wanted from my seat. I was sad that the length of day meant that it was dark when we went through Glacier National Park but the rest of the day was hour after hour of the relentless plains of north Dakota and Montana - it's not called 'Big Sky Country' for nothing. I found it hypnotically interesting just to watch it all roll by, the photo below doesn't really do it justice at all.
And then every-so-often this would be broken up by the appearance on the horizon of a small hamlet or settlement (either based around farming or more recently in ND, oil/gas drilling) on the horizon and then the slow recession of that hamlet behind you. Like I say, hypnotic...
There was also the opportunity to take part in a wine and cheese tasting which I couldn't pass up - you can see the selections here. The day after that just drifted along and before I knew it it was time for bed and an arrival in the morning in Seattle. Incredibly for a 36 hours journey we arrived in Seattle 25 minutes early and even better I was able to leave my bag at the station and wander into the city to check it out.
A quick update on my first day-and-a-half in Minneapolis. (As an aside, of there's one things I'm going to learn from this trip it's how to spell the names of various places I've always struggled with - witness my Connecticut, Cincinnati and Massachusetts skills...!)
I'm going to stop going on about the weather soon, but let's just say I went from t-shirt weather in Chicago (25C) to wearing four layers and a hat and gloves (6C) in the space of three days. Brr.
My Servas host picked me up from the station late Saturday afternoon and give me a little tour of St Paul and the surrounding area - and filled me in on the differences and the rivalry between the 'Twin Cities' of St Paul and Minneapolis.
On Sunday we did a tour of a cave system in St Paul that used to be where the Chicago gangsters would hide out - apparently the local police had a deal that they could take refuge in the city as long as they didn't commit any crimes within the city limits! The inside of the cave system reminded me of The Trip in Nottingham which was slightly odd but it was a very interesting tour. We then went to see one of the thousands of lakes in Minnesota - Lake of the Isles - which was great to walk around on a crisp Autumn day, lots of people out on their bikes and walking dogs.
Frustratingly a lot of the museums etc that I want to see in the Twin Cities are closed on a Monday so I planned out my own schedule based around staying indoors as much as possible - Lilian you'll be pleased to hear that I'm planning to maximise the tram system and also the Skyway!
(The title is a reference to a now defunct website that was big back in 2004/8 for the Presidential Elections in the US - it's now part of Daily Kos which is still probably the best clearinghouse for American politics)
Today I'm leaving Connecticut after 4 days and heading to the Midwestern state of Ohio - a classic bellweather swing-state in American politics. I'm excited to be heading into one of the centres of political action in America but also really sad to leave Connecticut. It's an incredibly beautiful state and one that I feel I've barely scraped the surface of. As outlined in my post the other day, part of it are essentially commuter-belt for New York but where I was staying in Glastonbury, near Hartford, it's lush and verdant and felt like a place I could easily live.
I headed off early this morning to get to Providence airport and was very glad to hand back the enormo-car that I've been driving the last four days. Given I hadn't planned to do that much driving on this trip I'm a bit frustrated that I've covered 700 miles in those four days. Some of that was necessary trips to and from the airport, but I also made an unplanned trip back to NYC (necessitating a drive to New Haven to catch the commuter train) and then a 6 hours round-trip to New Jersey (more on that below). Still, at least I've seen some of the country!
I've been staying the last few days with Michele and her husband Gary via Servas. Gary works as lawyer and Michele is part of an organisation fighting for access to healthcare for all residents of Connecticut. It was fascinating to hear about the challenges of healthcare for Americans first-hand. For example, Michele and Gary's family pay around $800 a month for healthcare insurance but even that hasn't saved them from around $12,000 in un-insured costs so far this year. It puts any gripes we might have the NHS into real perspective. Michele and Gary and their two children (Garrison and Vivian) were excellent hosts and I really felt lucky to be able to spend some time with them in their home. I'm only sorry that I had two very early starts and finishes when I was there so didn't get to spend much time with them.
The trip to New Jersey was set up for me by the Boots USA to meet one of the Regional Managers for the products that we have in Target stores here in the US. Rachel was a great host and very tolerant of me being over an hour late for our meeting. (The journey should have taken two hours and took four and quarter in the end thanks to an accident and then roadworks. Not fun). We took in a couple of Target stores and also visited Ulta and a CVS pharmacy. It was odd to see such familiar brands as No7 and Botanics on the shelves in a country thousands of miles away from their home but it was heartening to see women responding to the brands in much the same way as they do in the UK (see my thoughts here on that). It was also great to spend some time getting to know Target as a retail organisation. I hadn't realised that they also sold normal groceries and were also branching out into some high-end electronics and other equipment.
Some photos of one of the Targets - some ideas for the Baby team back in D90 I hope.
The thing I found hardest to enjoy was the physical layout and transport we had to navigate. As discussed here, I think that transport defines a place for its residents and the way that the transport options (or lack of) defined this part of New Jersey wasn't to my taste. Two things that really resonated for me;
- There's no defined centre of anywhere - it's strip mall followed by strip mall with a short drive to the next strip-mall. One of the places we went was actually called, 'Bergen Town Centre' but is obviously wasn't the centre of anything - a very dislocating experience.
- People too the driving to ludicrous extremes - we got into the car at one point to go to the next store and I thought we were going up the road for a while. Nope - we drove a total of 300 metres to the next shop and parked up again. It look longer than walking would have done! Insane. And don't get me started on the drive-through cash-machines and off-licenses!
So I was glad to get back in the car (I appreciate the irony) and return to rural Connecticut. I'm writing this in Providence airport waiting for my flight to Cincinnati where I'm looking forward to experiencing an American Oktoberfest, taking in a baseball game and also meeting with colleagues from P&G who are a major employment presence in the city.
When I was in Norwalk, CT with the Boots team this week the people I were speaking to all kept referring to 'the City'. I was confused by what they meant so in the end I asked. Turns out they were referring to New York. Geographically I guess that makes sense as it's only 50miles and an hour by train to get there but I hadn't really clocked that residents/workers in this area would look to New York as their major city. It makes loads more sense when you look at it on the map. I mentioned this at another meeting I was in today and this then led to a discussion of the 'Tri-State Area' - ie NY, CT and NJ - and how most of these areas look to New York as their centre. An interesting summary of this here. Again, makes loads of sense when you think about it but it reminded me of my blog on the boundaries of Nottingham and how boundaries influence policy and peoples' perceptions of where they live. I guess I'm grasping at something close to a 'travel-to-work' area which is used a fair bit in the UK.
This all became very relevent for me today (Friday) as I needed to go back into New York from where I am staying in rural Connecticut for a meeting. This involved a pretty early start and a drive to New Haven, CT (45mins) to catch the train (90mins+) into New York's Grand Central Terminal. From the people I've spoken to this isn't an unusual commute and the fact that the Dunkin' Donuts (love!) concession was open from 4am at New Haven station probably confirms this!
Somewhat bleary eyed I made it to Vanderbilt Avenue, just next to Grand Central for a meeting at the New York offices of British America Business. This is a non-profit organisation designed to foster positive business relations for UK companies operating in the US (and vice-versa for the UK offices on Brook Street in London). The meeting was really interesting - it's an organisation I've not heard of before but they were able to engage with me about the sort of challenges that UK businesses face when setting up in the US and also had some interesting context on what New York in particular is doing to attract start-up technology companies (trying to lure them away from Silicon Valley is a big challenge!).
A good discussion but then I had to get back on the train back to New Haven and then drive back to where I'm staying. Tiring - don't think I could do that every day!
The saving grace was again the hugely warm welcome from my Servas hosts and the view below from the balcony of their very comfortable house.
I've spent the day with the Boots USA team - these are the guys that are charged with distributing and marketing certain Boots branded products in the US - products like No7, Botanics, Expert and Extracts. They're based in Norwalk, CT so I jumped into my enormous minivan hire-car this morning just before 8am to do the 90 minute drive down.
I stayed last night with a great family in South Glastonbury in rural Connecticut. I found this place to stay through
Servas (you can read a bit more about this at my previous post - A Place To Lay My Head). Lisa and Wayne are my hosts along with their teenage son, Noah. They are so warm and welcoming, I couldn't have asked for more from them. A great chat over dinner and bottle of wine about the latest political happenings in the Presidential race (Romney's "47% comment" is getting a lot of play here - I wonder if it is in the UK?).
Anyway, the day with the US Boots team was incredibly inspiring. I met pretty much the whole team (which is only perhaps a dozen strong) and I was really impressed with the way that they represent the Boots brand so passionately and clearly when they're based thousands of miles away from Nottingham and the home of the brand. A few randoms thoughts that I jotted down during the day;
- If you've got a brand that is truly customer-centric then it can easily cross borders - womens' beauty needs are pretty universal
- The passion that I saw came from experiencing the using the products - none of the people I spoke to knew about Boots before they started working here but could all talk from the heart about how great the products were and how important the trust and heritage that the Boots brand represents are.
- Someone said to me before I came on this trip that the American people are generally, 'hard-wired to help' and I really experienced that today - a whole fay of meetings and interactions set up for someone they'd never met before and who they had no expectation of anything back in return.
The US focused website is here - gives a good flavour of the way that the UK marketing materials are translated to a similar but different audience.
The driving to get to and from Norwalk was OK - the minivan I'm driving hasn't got a blind-spot so much as a blind-entire-side: you have to crane your neck into the most ridiculous contortions to make sure you're not about to side-swipe someone when changing lanes. That aside and some brief slightly sticky traffic it was pretty smooth.
I'm back to NYC tomorrow for a meeting with The British-American Business Council which should be interesting. If I've got time I will pop into the New York Public Library which was closed at the weekend when I was in the city.
