Hawaiʻi's Technology Community
What does your city say to you?
Greetings from Sapporo, Hokkaido:
Here's a good essay and food for thought from Paul Graham. I am curious as to what you all might be thinking of Honolulu and its message, as well as with regards other cities in which you may have lived/worked.
Born and raised in Honolulu, and also having since gotten my start in the IT world in there, I think that Honolulu has a surprising amount of energy and innovation. However, having also lived and worked in the Silicon Valley / Bay Area, I saw that Honolulu pales in comparison to the vitality and sheer drive that is keeping Silicon Valley as the center of the tech world.
Tokyo has a different message, to be sure, one that is more focussed on doing business rather than innovating. This may have a lot to do with the best universities not being within close proximity to the business hub, as it is with the Valley. Also, there still is not as much hiring of foreigners as there is in the States, where a lot of the best engineering and development talent come from overseas.
I live in Sapporo now, the capital of the northern-most Japanese prefecture of Hokkaido. Being so far-removed from Tokyo, there really is not a lot of innovation and ambition here. The pay scale here is depressingly low, which is all a part of the negative cycle that forces the young people of Hokkaido to leave for Tokyo and other places. Kind of like the brain-drain that is happening in Hawaii. Not much happening here, even though Hokkaido University does have a lot of interesting projects going on. I understand that Sapporo city is trying hard to link research at Hokkaido University with local IT businesses. But that's a story for another day.
Tell me: what sort of message are you hearing in Honolulu? And what messages have you heard / are hearing in other parts of the globe?
Here's a good essay and food for thought from Paul Graham. I am curious as to what you all might be thinking of Honolulu and its message, as well as with regards other cities in which you may have lived/worked.
Born and raised in Honolulu, and also having since gotten my start in the IT world in there, I think that Honolulu has a surprising amount of energy and innovation. However, having also lived and worked in the Silicon Valley / Bay Area, I saw that Honolulu pales in comparison to the vitality and sheer drive that is keeping Silicon Valley as the center of the tech world.
Tokyo has a different message, to be sure, one that is more focussed on doing business rather than innovating. This may have a lot to do with the best universities not being within close proximity to the business hub, as it is with the Valley. Also, there still is not as much hiring of foreigners as there is in the States, where a lot of the best engineering and development talent come from overseas.
I live in Sapporo now, the capital of the northern-most Japanese prefecture of Hokkaido. Being so far-removed from Tokyo, there really is not a lot of innovation and ambition here. The pay scale here is depressingly low, which is all a part of the negative cycle that forces the young people of Hokkaido to leave for Tokyo and other places. Kind of like the brain-drain that is happening in Hawaii. Not much happening here, even though Hokkaido University does have a lot of interesting projects going on. I understand that Sapporo city is trying hard to link research at Hokkaido University with local IT businesses. But that's a story for another day.
Tell me: what sort of message are you hearing in Honolulu? And what messages have you heard / are hearing in other parts of the globe?
Views: 66
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Lance Furuyama on
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Brooke,
First of all, thank you for the link to Paul Graham's essay. It was a great read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
When I moved back from a two-year stint in the Bay Area & Sacramento, it made me realize that Honolulu is far more relationship-driven than any of the other markets that I've been involved with.
I wouldn't say that it is about who you know, as much as how well you know influential people in the business community.
In my heart, I really do believe that Technology/IT will drive the local economy in the not-so-distant future. Hospitality and Tourism will always be the powerhouse industries here, but as technology becomes an integral part of day-to-day business, the Tech sector will be crucial to our local economy.
To answer your question, Honolulu is saying "Don't be so quick to run away to bigger cities, I'm on my way to becoming a major player."
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Permalink Reply by Brooke Fujita on
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Hey there, Lance, and thank you for participating in this discussion.
I like your take on the message that Honolulu is giving you. Agriculture has had its day in Hawaii, and I don't think that relying on tourism (which is largely unsustainable, or at least pretty damaging to Hawaii's natural resources and ecosystem) or on defense will take Hawaii in the 21st century.
You are spot on: technology should be exploited and leveraged, so that the local economy can grow in new ways that were not possible before.
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Permalink Reply by Daniel Leuck on
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Hey Brooke - Great essay! Thank you for the link.
Brooke Fujita: Tokyo has a different message, to be sure, one that is more focussed on doing business rather than innovating.
This is true in general, although there is a lot of innovation in certain areas such as consumer electronics, robotics and alternative energy. The software scene in Tokyo has always been disappointing. I've always wondered why. Any thoughts?
Brooke Fujita: This may have a lot to do with the best universities not being within close proximity to the business hub, as it is with the Valley.
Really? Tokyo has one of the highest concentrations of universities of any city in the world. As you know, most of the country's top universities (Tokyo University, Keio, Waseda, etc.) are located in the capital.
Brooke Fujita: Also, there still is not as much hiring of foreigners as there is in the States...
I agree this is one of Japan's great weaknesses. This will eventually change. Its already become en vogue to hire foreign execs at financial institutions and car makers. On the flip side, Japan's record in terms of importing foreign scientists and technologists is very poor.
Lance Furuyama: To answer your question, Honolulu is saying "Don't be so quick to run away to bigger cities, I'm on my way to becoming a major player."
I absolutely agree. I have faith that great things are in store for Honolulu. There is a lot of activity in the technology sector. We have built a real mass of young innovative companies doing interesting work. Everyone I know is hiring - Ikayzo, Sprout, Blue Lava, Oceanit, Digital Mediums, etc. Its an exciting time!
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@Dan:
Yo there, Dan...
Hm, I can't say one way or another about Tokyo's ranking in the world for city with highest concentration of universities, but consider it this way: Stanford is right there in Silicon Valley, and UC Berkeley is just a drive northwards. Tokyo's pretty spread out, with the business hub arguably being in Shinjuku.
But I suppose that proximity to good universities is not the end of it. Silicon Valley has got a lot of other factors going for it. The magic that is Silicon Valley hasn't been reproduced in Tokyo's Bit Valley, afaik. Software doesn't seem to be one of Japan's greater strengths, but consumer-oriented hardware is.
Funny thing is, software development is considered in Japan to be one of the undesirable "3K" jobs: "kitsui" (difficult), "kitanai" (dirty), and "kiken" (dangerous). Or at least, the dwindling numbers of software IT grads in Japan seems to indicate that software is sinking in terms of respectability. The pay scale here definitely reflects that.
Now that I think about it, perhaps one of the messages coming out of Tokyo is: "You really shouldn't be coding, you should become a business-man".
One of the nice messages I got out of Honolulu was "There are a lot of things happening in Honolulu, take your pick or come up with something new."
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Permalink Reply by Clifton Royston on
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Software development and technology in Honolulu right now seems better to me than it has been at any time in the last 28 years that I've lived here.
No, it's not a patch on Silicon Valley and probably never will be - I doubt anywhere in the world will catch up to that for a long time - but things are good here. There are a lot of small companies here now doing a wide variety of innovative things. I do believe that anyone with real talent in software or hardware design can make it here now without leaving Hawaii, and that wasn't always true.
The gap right now is that most of the talent and companies and openings are "invisible" - awareness is mostly spread by word of mouth and how well you know people. This is where the traditional local attitude of "don't speak up" and "no make A" hurts us all. (Or, as in the Japanese saying, "The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.") It means we don't hear about each others' achievements and events, because nobody wants to be rude and blow their own horn.
We need more institutions like Tech Hui, like Electronic/Cyber Pizza, like "Hawaii Geek Day" and others to bridge the gap. There needs to be a steady flow of events and places that local techies and outsiders alike can go to make those connections!
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Clifton Royston: The gap right now is that most of the talent and companies and openings are "invisible" - awareness is mostly spread by word of mouth and how well you know people. This is where the traditional local attitude of "don't speak up" and "no make A" hurts us all.
I agree. This is exactly why we started TechHui.
Clifton Royston: We need more institutions like Tech Hui, like Electronic/Cyber Pizza, like "Hawaii Geek Day" and others to bridge the gap. There needs to be a steady flow of events and places that local techies and outsiders alike can go to make those connections!
I'd like to coordinate a TechHui event, but its getting a little intimidating with 300+ members. We've had numerous inquiries about this, but I'm not sure what the proper venue would be.
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