why Silicon Valley why not here well for
about the last two Jen
maybe 30 years similar time skelter that
my colleague was talking about just now
Silicon Valley has been a sort of
touchstone of tech it’s been the sort of
visionary almost mythical place where
the Sun always shines a chip wonderful
people and tech gets done and it’s
wonderful and it’s had a really strange
influence even if you’ve never been
there or know nothing about it
it seems that whenever a city or a
region build a new Technology Park
that’s bigger than a garden shed or an
employer says there’s a new technical
revolution they say we see this as the
new Silicon Valley and we’ve got
examples in the UK people talk about
Silicon Glen say look around about Combe
silicon Newport no really they don’t
talk about much recently but it’s it’s
an aspiration and it’s this sort of
picture that it’s a replicatable or
replicable entity is it let’s see why
couldn’t we build Silicon Valley or a
successful analog of Silicon Valley in
say a small West Wales time could be
Aberystwyth for the sake of argument
let’s test the case a little bit but
first we need to go to Silicon Valley
now I’m very lucky I’m a science writer
and I first went to Silicon Valley in
San Francisco in 2008 before I went
there I thought why would anybody want
to live in a place where they have
earthquakes and the city burns down then
I went there now I think I’ve got some
sort of understanding of why people
actually live in this weird place
because it is a weird place first of all
you do a 10-hour flight from Heathrow
and you’re wined and dined and it’s all
wonderful well maybe not back in cattle
glass where I am but one of the things
you see first as you swing into San
Francisco Bay on your 747
is of course the iconic Golden Gate
Bridge as you get closer begin to see
the city itself actually I’m not
actually you know playing taking these
plays tend to come a bit higher if
you’re lucky you see the city on the
hill
the great white city it’s like
ministereth you know it’s Gondor the and
it’s immediately attractive the sun is
shining the Falk hasn’t come in yet
and you’ve got this wonderful waterfront
city it looks almost European there’s a
very strange mixture of influences of
air a unamerican city so you look around
the city and it’s wonderful public
architecture q funded activities like
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
big endowments to art culture and at the
same time you’ve got this artistic
resonance of the hippie era the flower
power generation it’s all still churning
away and bubbling away but you have got
if you look back at this you’ve got a
big commercial district so right in the
middle of the city and there’s a lot of
corporate headquarters there a lot of
lawyer and these are largely supporting
technology culture technology industry
but to find that you need to go to
Silicon Valley itself which is a train
ride so 40 miles south takes about an
hour on this is wonderful double-decker
commuter train that’s the way to do
trains will have them in Aberystwyth
everything’s bigger in America I fit
right in and on the way down you go
through the sort of identikit American
suburbia and the tree-lined avenues
that’s not iceberg at the end of the
street by the way there’s another
corporate Technology Center and you end
up in Silicon Valley a lot of it is like
this quite unassuming sort of collegiate
campus sort of feel to it
tricky everything you need
you come to this place to work you can
do your laundry at lunchtime for free
free food everywhere all-you-can-eat
buffets just wave your car that is
wonderful the childcare is on-site you
can see the doctor anything to make you
feel good about being at work because
this is a very strange environment its
corporate but it’s quite enclosed and
we’ll come back to that in a minute
one of the things that makes Mike’s it’s
a Silicon Valley
special and I’ve spent I’ve know a
couple of months there in total the last
few years the people and the way they
think about stuff wildly intelligent
highly skilled very motivated very
engaged people like these three here
they look they work long hours they
enjoy work and they’re prepared to have
a very good time it’s quite a nice
environment the Sun is always shining
and in Silicon Valley they don’t get the
fog they get in San Francisco even the
motels come fully equipped with
hummingbirds these are real hummingbirds
they’re not animatronic ones yet
although I’m sure someone is working on
it so you said you’re sitting having
your free European buffet breakfast that
there’s no resemblance to a European
breakfast on your patio by the pool at
your cheap motor well not cheap motel
that would be you know there used to be
cheap they’re not now and you can watch
the hummingbirds you do this you go into
the office
you stay there till it gets dark you go
to a pizza place you can back to your
motel or your shared flat then do it all
again it’s quite an enclosed environment
there are risks to that aside from the
sort of software industry technology
Silicon Valley has some not legacy
infrastructure but very very large
public infrastructure
this is the linear accelerator Stanford
Linear Accelerator it’s two miles long
it’s got its own freeway bridge going
over it this is big money hundreds of
millions of dollars a year to run this
sort of facility which is on the campus
of Stanford University at Menlo Park or
pan Palo Alto depending where you draw
the line this is a very dangerous place
I was told when I got shown rank what
did I press I don’t think I press
anything maybe I’m being censored by
some yeah oh we’re back yes I said is it
the radiation or boxes I’ve been given
this badge to wear in and they said well
it’s it’s um it’s not that exactly it’s
two miles long you’ve got these golf
buggies that go up and down
I said yeah they’re not going to go very
fast though are these well most of the
people that work here have got PhDs in
heavy electrical engineering so they’ve
made some modifications they like to
brace so the implication was look both
ways before you step out into this this
corridor that’s two miles long they can
get up quite a speed about anyway big
infrastructure more big infrastructure
this is take from the hill above
Stanford University and this is some of
the relict infrastructure from when
Silicon Valley started up as something
completely different
aerospace this is the Ames Research
Center of NASA it used to be the Moffett
Field federal airfield back in the 30s
when it’s put together the big sheds you
can see here are airships which they
built for the Navy that’s the sort of
length of time it’s taken to build this
infrastructure up to the point it is now
talking infrastructure
this is the sort of commute that most
people have to work
the reason it’s empty is because it’s 10
o’clock Saturday morning everyone’s
already in the office look at the the
road signs this is iconic Silicon Valley
left-hand Lane Cupertino Apple middle
lane Sunnyvale Yahoo right-hand Lane
Mountain View Google all laid out in
neat rows every tool you’ve used today
within about a 10-mile radius it also
makes you think about driverless cars
because the people that write the
software drive on roads like this you
can read that sign with very very simple
code I’m sure you can probably drive a
driverless car on this sort of highway
with a reasonable degree of security can
it drive me home from Devil’s Bridge in
sleet at 4 o’clock in the morning that’s
what I want to know and I’ll come back
to the concert later on so why does
Silicon Valley work history of
investment and success Stanford
University was established in 1891 it’s
got some form so you know it’s a private
research university supports all sorts
of other things the Linear Accelerator
Center is federally funded through the
Department of Energy more big public
funding it’s continually reinventing
itself airships then semiconductor
technology actually building
semiconductors and they were doing that
before silicon was what you built them
on it should have been germanium Valley
and then from actually making components
to writing the code that goes on them so
the software industry moved in then the
next big thing genomics and personal
health all that sort of stuff
so this churn of all sorts of
interesting things
massive private corporate investment is
the center for venture capitalism if you
add up all the stuff that gets done in
venture capital between San Francisco
and San Jose 40 miles south it comes to
over ten billion a year in a normal year
that’s a sizable percentage of the of
the global venture capital market so if
you go to a cafe in Silicon Valley you
can make your life there’s someone in
that cafe trying to spend money on a new
innovation it’s going to be the next big
thing they ran at the face set us up
building new ones on venture capital
parks up out of tan which incidentally
was the first place I spent $20 on a
toasted cheese sandwich a shock from
which I will not recover soon always ask
you paying before you agree where you’re
going the integrated research and higher
education communities like Stanford and
the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
result Laurie all this sort of stuff it
all integrates very very tightly and
that enables this rolling program is
reinvention to be successful the
proximity and abundance of skills you
can always find someone who knows about
some people can do something they’re
always real in a few minutes bus ride
away not that anybody except people like
me drive buses drive around in buses and
attitude it’s this sense of yeah let’s
do it
at every meeting you go to it’s really a
significant part you saw this three
young people you know intelligent highly
skilled and with an attitude to actually
get the job done so how can we replicate
this in say a small well suits our time
where we put a head start we’ve got a
history of innovation in education those
old college sitting there beautifully on
the summer’s day glinting in the
sunlight some of you may recognize this
at the workstation image of the
University
music a not a bad place to live is it we
have a university of some style
there’s no neater titter it was very
fashionable in the 70s now we have that
we have an estimable university with a
very respectable arts facility in his
own right we have public libraries of
all scales the National Library of Wales
a major institution a major digital
archive in its own right ten thousand
seagulls can’t be wrong this has got to
be a place as a lifestyle choice and of
course the full Welsh landscape so what
do we need to do based on this sort of
infrastructure to bring a slice of
Silicon Valley’s venture capital to us
should we is it a good idea let’s ever
think I’ll do the calculations yesterday
that suggested that the data rate I get
on my internet connection at home is 200
times what it was when I first had a
dial-up connection that’s not bad but
it’s not great
so investment in digital infrastructure
across the whole county no not spots no
places without one of these masts is the
not not the tree the mass next to it we
need policies that say we want to do
this the go beyond a single Parliament
so five years okay ten years 20 years an
ambition to market West Wales as a place
of innovation of a skill base of
technology and lifestyle all in can go
so can we replicate Silicon Valley not
given the scope
of what Silicon Valley has done after
the last century or so but what we can
do is give an open platform for the next
generation of digital research and usage
think of it what have we got an average
with got Welsh government county council
government University Hospital National
Library of Wales a large population of
digitally aware people and we can offer
that platform to the world to say we’re
putting in the communications
infrastructure you come to us and say
what you want in order to build the next
generation of infrastructure that’s
going to influence government and
management and employment and healthcare
over the next 20-30 years so that’s my
pitch anybody think of a answer to that
or away we do it I’ll be finding my way
to the bar thank you very much
[Applause]
about the last two Jen
maybe 30 years similar time skelter that
my colleague was talking about just now
Silicon Valley has been a sort of
touchstone of tech it’s been the sort of
visionary almost mythical place where
the Sun always shines a chip wonderful
people and tech gets done and it’s
wonderful and it’s had a really strange
influence even if you’ve never been
there or know nothing about it
it seems that whenever a city or a
region build a new Technology Park
that’s bigger than a garden shed or an
employer says there’s a new technical
revolution they say we see this as the
new Silicon Valley and we’ve got
examples in the UK people talk about
Silicon Glen say look around about Combe
silicon Newport no really they don’t
talk about much recently but it’s it’s
an aspiration and it’s this sort of
picture that it’s a replicatable or
replicable entity is it let’s see why
couldn’t we build Silicon Valley or a
successful analog of Silicon Valley in
say a small West Wales time could be
Aberystwyth for the sake of argument
let’s test the case a little bit but
first we need to go to Silicon Valley
now I’m very lucky I’m a science writer
and I first went to Silicon Valley in
San Francisco in 2008 before I went
there I thought why would anybody want
to live in a place where they have
earthquakes and the city burns down then
I went there now I think I’ve got some
sort of understanding of why people
actually live in this weird place
because it is a weird place first of all
you do a 10-hour flight from Heathrow
and you’re wined and dined and it’s all
wonderful well maybe not back in cattle
glass where I am but one of the things
you see first as you swing into San
Francisco Bay on your 747
is of course the iconic Golden Gate
Bridge as you get closer begin to see
the city itself actually I’m not
actually you know playing taking these
plays tend to come a bit higher if
you’re lucky you see the city on the
hill
the great white city it’s like
ministereth you know it’s Gondor the and
it’s immediately attractive the sun is
shining the Falk hasn’t come in yet
and you’ve got this wonderful waterfront
city it looks almost European there’s a
very strange mixture of influences of
air a unamerican city so you look around
the city and it’s wonderful public
architecture q funded activities like
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
big endowments to art culture and at the
same time you’ve got this artistic
resonance of the hippie era the flower
power generation it’s all still churning
away and bubbling away but you have got
if you look back at this you’ve got a
big commercial district so right in the
middle of the city and there’s a lot of
corporate headquarters there a lot of
lawyer and these are largely supporting
technology culture technology industry
but to find that you need to go to
Silicon Valley itself which is a train
ride so 40 miles south takes about an
hour on this is wonderful double-decker
commuter train that’s the way to do
trains will have them in Aberystwyth
everything’s bigger in America I fit
right in and on the way down you go
through the sort of identikit American
suburbia and the tree-lined avenues
that’s not iceberg at the end of the
street by the way there’s another
corporate Technology Center and you end
up in Silicon Valley a lot of it is like
this quite unassuming sort of collegiate
campus sort of feel to it
tricky everything you need
you come to this place to work you can
do your laundry at lunchtime for free
free food everywhere all-you-can-eat
buffets just wave your car that is
wonderful the childcare is on-site you
can see the doctor anything to make you
feel good about being at work because
this is a very strange environment its
corporate but it’s quite enclosed and
we’ll come back to that in a minute
one of the things that makes Mike’s it’s
a Silicon Valley
special and I’ve spent I’ve know a
couple of months there in total the last
few years the people and the way they
think about stuff wildly intelligent
highly skilled very motivated very
engaged people like these three here
they look they work long hours they
enjoy work and they’re prepared to have
a very good time it’s quite a nice
environment the Sun is always shining
and in Silicon Valley they don’t get the
fog they get in San Francisco even the
motels come fully equipped with
hummingbirds these are real hummingbirds
they’re not animatronic ones yet
although I’m sure someone is working on
it so you said you’re sitting having
your free European buffet breakfast that
there’s no resemblance to a European
breakfast on your patio by the pool at
your cheap motor well not cheap motel
that would be you know there used to be
cheap they’re not now and you can watch
the hummingbirds you do this you go into
the office
you stay there till it gets dark you go
to a pizza place you can back to your
motel or your shared flat then do it all
again it’s quite an enclosed environment
there are risks to that aside from the
sort of software industry technology
Silicon Valley has some not legacy
infrastructure but very very large
public infrastructure
this is the linear accelerator Stanford
Linear Accelerator it’s two miles long
it’s got its own freeway bridge going
over it this is big money hundreds of
millions of dollars a year to run this
sort of facility which is on the campus
of Stanford University at Menlo Park or
pan Palo Alto depending where you draw
the line this is a very dangerous place
I was told when I got shown rank what
did I press I don’t think I press
anything maybe I’m being censored by
some yeah oh we’re back yes I said is it
the radiation or boxes I’ve been given
this badge to wear in and they said well
it’s it’s um it’s not that exactly it’s
two miles long you’ve got these golf
buggies that go up and down
I said yeah they’re not going to go very
fast though are these well most of the
people that work here have got PhDs in
heavy electrical engineering so they’ve
made some modifications they like to
brace so the implication was look both
ways before you step out into this this
corridor that’s two miles long they can
get up quite a speed about anyway big
infrastructure more big infrastructure
this is take from the hill above
Stanford University and this is some of
the relict infrastructure from when
Silicon Valley started up as something
completely different
aerospace this is the Ames Research
Center of NASA it used to be the Moffett
Field federal airfield back in the 30s
when it’s put together the big sheds you
can see here are airships which they
built for the Navy that’s the sort of
length of time it’s taken to build this
infrastructure up to the point it is now
talking infrastructure
this is the sort of commute that most
people have to work
the reason it’s empty is because it’s 10
o’clock Saturday morning everyone’s
already in the office look at the the
road signs this is iconic Silicon Valley
left-hand Lane Cupertino Apple middle
lane Sunnyvale Yahoo right-hand Lane
Mountain View Google all laid out in
neat rows every tool you’ve used today
within about a 10-mile radius it also
makes you think about driverless cars
because the people that write the
software drive on roads like this you
can read that sign with very very simple
code I’m sure you can probably drive a
driverless car on this sort of highway
with a reasonable degree of security can
it drive me home from Devil’s Bridge in
sleet at 4 o’clock in the morning that’s
what I want to know and I’ll come back
to the concert later on so why does
Silicon Valley work history of
investment and success Stanford
University was established in 1891 it’s
got some form so you know it’s a private
research university supports all sorts
of other things the Linear Accelerator
Center is federally funded through the
Department of Energy more big public
funding it’s continually reinventing
itself airships then semiconductor
technology actually building
semiconductors and they were doing that
before silicon was what you built them
on it should have been germanium Valley
and then from actually making components
to writing the code that goes on them so
the software industry moved in then the
next big thing genomics and personal
health all that sort of stuff
so this churn of all sorts of
interesting things
massive private corporate investment is
the center for venture capitalism if you
add up all the stuff that gets done in
venture capital between San Francisco
and San Jose 40 miles south it comes to
over ten billion a year in a normal year
that’s a sizable percentage of the of
the global venture capital market so if
you go to a cafe in Silicon Valley you
can make your life there’s someone in
that cafe trying to spend money on a new
innovation it’s going to be the next big
thing they ran at the face set us up
building new ones on venture capital
parks up out of tan which incidentally
was the first place I spent $20 on a
toasted cheese sandwich a shock from
which I will not recover soon always ask
you paying before you agree where you’re
going the integrated research and higher
education communities like Stanford and
the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
result Laurie all this sort of stuff it
all integrates very very tightly and
that enables this rolling program is
reinvention to be successful the
proximity and abundance of skills you
can always find someone who knows about
some people can do something they’re
always real in a few minutes bus ride
away not that anybody except people like
me drive buses drive around in buses and
attitude it’s this sense of yeah let’s
do it
at every meeting you go to it’s really a
significant part you saw this three
young people you know intelligent highly
skilled and with an attitude to actually
get the job done so how can we replicate
this in say a small well suits our time
where we put a head start we’ve got a
history of innovation in education those
old college sitting there beautifully on
the summer’s day glinting in the
sunlight some of you may recognize this
at the workstation image of the
University
music a not a bad place to live is it we
have a university of some style
there’s no neater titter it was very
fashionable in the 70s now we have that
we have an estimable university with a
very respectable arts facility in his
own right we have public libraries of
all scales the National Library of Wales
a major institution a major digital
archive in its own right ten thousand
seagulls can’t be wrong this has got to
be a place as a lifestyle choice and of
course the full Welsh landscape so what
do we need to do based on this sort of
infrastructure to bring a slice of
Silicon Valley’s venture capital to us
should we is it a good idea let’s ever
think I’ll do the calculations yesterday
that suggested that the data rate I get
on my internet connection at home is 200
times what it was when I first had a
dial-up connection that’s not bad but
it’s not great
so investment in digital infrastructure
across the whole county no not spots no
places without one of these masts is the
not not the tree the mass next to it we
need policies that say we want to do
this the go beyond a single Parliament
so five years okay ten years 20 years an
ambition to market West Wales as a place
of innovation of a skill base of
technology and lifestyle all in can go
so can we replicate Silicon Valley not
given the scope
of what Silicon Valley has done after
the last century or so but what we can
do is give an open platform for the next
generation of digital research and usage
think of it what have we got an average
with got Welsh government county council
government University Hospital National
Library of Wales a large population of
digitally aware people and we can offer
that platform to the world to say we’re
putting in the communications
infrastructure you come to us and say
what you want in order to build the next
generation of infrastructure that’s
going to influence government and
management and employment and healthcare
over the next 20-30 years so that’s my
pitch anybody think of a answer to that
or away we do it I’ll be finding my way
to the bar thank you very much
[Applause]
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