Short trip to San Francisco area : photo report !

Last week I went on a three day trip to the San Francisco area with my colleague Tim to prepare/inspect a trip which we will organize at the end of March with our 80 students.

We only had three days and the program was fully packed with company visits in Silicon Valley but I had a really great time. Let the pictures tell the story…

It all started on the plane… since october 2007 Delta airlines has caipirosca cocktails on board so we definitely had to try that ;-). In this way the flight trip (about 14 hours) was kind of a pleasure to do :-). (me at right in picture)

We we finally arrived in San Francisco first thing we did was visiting CISCO and I was really surprised that they could write my surname (almost never happen) … but then I saw they missed in my first name :-(… it’s not KEON… but KOEN !

We had some meetings at Cisco and afterwards we went to Electronic Arts (EA games). These folks have a really nice campus! We got a guided tour and saw their fitness hall, sports hall, football field, basket fields,…. tooo much to say it all. Really impressed by this company and especially by the company store (only 10 dollar per game).

When we went back to our car (wonderful Chrysler SUV) we saw a really cool car plate on a car of an EA employee… check this one out :

After we visited EA, we drove to Stanford University. I really love that place, it is such a wonderfull University and soooo big ! This is the famous fountain at Stanford (yes, it was sunny):

At Stanford they also have a very big library + shop. So we went in to have a look and… see what they were selling there ;-)… Wohooo… my book at Stanford University library (excited) !

Actually not so far from Stanford University there is a special little house with a garage… and in that garage Silicon Valley is started. Unbelievable but true! The HP founders started in that garage with their company as you can read on this plate standing before the house :

Next day we went to visit Yahoo. I was never been there before and was very impressed by the many buildings YAHOO has. It is a very nice campus. Someone told me there that more or less 15000 people are working in the buildings… that’s impressive !

Coolest thing about the Yahoo campus is that everything is yahoo (purple) branded soo well. The seats, tables, floors, even the restaurant has his own name… which is actually very original for web company’s restaurant :

After we went to YAHOO , we drove to Infinite loop 1… better known as Apple ’s street :-).

Coolest thing about the Apple buildings is that every building has his own apple logo in a specific color. For example: this is the logo for the fitness center building:

After our Apple visit we drove to a NASA facility in the neighbourhood but is more or less an empty facility. We visited the museum and walked a bit around to see some old planes:

Then it was time to drive back to San Francisco city. We did a drive by the beach and stopped at lovely “Half Moon Beach” to watch the sun going down in the sea :

On our third and last day we visited the ADOBE offices in San Francisco. I was there already before but it still is a wonderful building to visit. We had a very good meeting with the Adobe developer and the Adobe education group.

I also had a talk with John Dowdell, it’s always so cool to meet him ! He said to us we had to try to get in at the MACWORLD conference which was just around the corner… so we tried …

and yes…. we were able to get in at the MACWORLD conference !! So isn’t that a nice way to end a three day trip to San Francisco. I had the chance to see the new Macbook AIR and yes… I even touched it

In the evening we had dinner with Sumi Lim (developer relations Adobe, EMEA region) in a very nice and cosy restaurant! She definitely know how to treat developers Thanks Sumi for the wonderful evening!

It was a very busy but very nice 3 day trip to the San Francisco area. I am really looking forward to go back in March with my 80 students… it will be fun !