The #blogbus goes to Silicon Valley in search of the future

By Glenn Le Santo

I’m excited! Genuinely excited, in that kid-the-night-before-Christmas way. Why? Because I’m one of the lucky 15 writers from Europe, Australia and China to have been chosen by Orange to go on a blogger bus tour of San Francisco and Silicon Valley in September.

The tour aims to find out what makes Silicon Valley tick. We want to examine the culture of the Bay Area and meet the companies, institutions and individuals that make the area what it is – a world leader in technological innovation.

The area spawned the giants such as HP and Apple – and latterly Facebook and Twitter. We want to know how the area does this. We also want to find out if it will continue to do so, especially as some observers think the Facebook IPO might have signalled the end of the Valley’s long reign.

To help us on our mission we’ve arranged to visit several companies in the Bay area, both large and small. We’ll be heading off to see Adobe, Swipp, Eventbrite and many more – the list has more than ten companies on it already and we’re still looking for more hosts. We’re also visiting Stanford University, which has always been at the centre of the Valley’s development. We want to hang out where the main movers and shakers hang out – we want to experience the Valley vibe.

Apart from having a brilliant, inspiring and memorable trip, we also want to produce content. We intend to come away from the trip with lots of compelling content. We’ll also be telling you the story of our trip, not just the company visits, but the travel and social stuff that goes with it. I’ll be keeping a video diary of our experiences.

To find out more about the #BlogBus tour that Futurity organised on behalf of Orange, check out the live.orange.com blog. You can also see the pitch at http://www.slideshare.net/Orange/en-san-francisco-blogger-tour-presentation

Glenn’s posts will be at http://live.orange.com/en/category/high_tech/blogger-bus-tour/ and his own personal blog, http://www.lesanto.com/pt/