Evhead, the Valley, and the Awesome Power of Communication

Evan Williams (Nebraska native and co-founder of two Silicon Valley companies that produced Blogger and now Twitter) has written a great post sharing his experiences and thoughts on the pros/cons of the Valley versus anywhere else from the perspective of both an individual wanting to get into the game and an entrepreneur building a new tech startup.  Ev’s advice is fantastic, and I agree with him on all points. 

I spent close to a year of my life all told in my twenties living out of hotels in Sunnyvale working with Tandem Computers (the two Motel 6s across the street from each other on Lawrence Expressway — I was high-end in those days), and the relationships I built and the spirit of the area play a big part in who I am today.  Today though I’m a husband and father working with my partners to build a growth enterprise to revolutionize part of the US health insurance industry and capture a $50B annual payment processing market.  We’re using state-of-the-art Internet based technology to do this, but we need insurance and payment processing experience and contacts as much as we need technical skill, so Omaha is a great place to be.

What is really cool about all of this though to me is that Ev, whom I’ve never met, wrote his post in response to a question I posed on his blog, Marc Andreessen’s post here, and my post here.  The fact that Ev played such an instrumental role in revolutionizing the way the world communicates by founding Blogger and now Twitter just makes it even more fun.

I think perhaps that many Americans don’t appreciate how incredibly precious and powerful access and communication are.  Censorship in China is a hot topic on the blogsphere these days, but I’d like to tell a more personal story.

Lori and I had the great fortune to spend our honeymoon 5 years ago traveling through Eastern Germany with great friends.  A long time friend and colleague, Horst Franz from Wiesbaden, arranged a trip for us from Berlin through Dresden and the Wartburg and down to Munich for Oktoberfest.  While Oktoberfest was great, the most amazing part of this trip were the days we spent in Berlin and Dresden with Horst’s wife’s younger brothers and their university friends.  All of these people in their early 20’s had grown up behind the wall.  They all spoke brilliant English, and we spent great days bicycling along the Elbe, drinking and talking, exploring Berlin and Dresden, drinking and talking, climbing through hilltop castles, drinking and talking… 

The drinking aside, what they wanted to do more than anything, was TALK.  They wanted to know everythingabout the US, and Lori and I were equally interested in learning what their life was like growing up behind the Iron Curtain.  Perhaps our most interesting discovery though was this — about 8 of the students in Dresden lived together in an apartment in an old cement block building which should probably have been condemned.  Their bedrooms had simple mattresses on the floor, and their kitchen and one bathroom were worse than my fraternity house.  However, when you first walked in the front door, you had to duck to avoid the brand new Cisco router mounted to the wall, and brightly colored Cat 5 cables snaked down the long hallway and into each room.  In each bedroom, next to the mattress on the floor, was a fully loaded, high-end PC or MAC.  When I asked them about this apparent incongruity, they each explained that their computer was the most important possession they owned.  When asked why, they each said “access and communication.”  To them, the fall of the wall and restoration of their freedom meant that they finally had access to truth and the free ability to communicate with others — not just talking to friends, but communicating with the world.  It is easy for us today in the US to debate the pros/cons of blogging, twittering, tumblogging, etc., but the greatest thing is simply that we can.  And, we owe great thanks to people like Ev Williams who keep creating new and better ways for us to communicate.