The group had a first meeting with Don Steiny. He lives in San Francisco, studied Linguistics (University of California, Santa Cruz) and works as a free lancer for companies, such as IBM, Sun and other. Don Steiny talked about the phenomenon "Silicon Valley" and the USA in general emphasizing the differences between the United States of America and Italy. Der komplette Reisebericht in Folgen ist hier nachlesbar!
Don Steiny is the principal of Infopoint, a small firm aimed at understanding the human interaction in a business. InfoPoint aims at becoming a leader at creating and integrating computer software that allows people to share information and communicate to help businesses be more successful.
Don described his business and his goals. He discussed with the group how he managed to become a successful IT specialist.
He presented the “Silicon Valley” as a great place for companies, not only because the infrastructures provided are very good, but meanly because the people are very open minded, thus interested to share information. These key aspects make it possible to set up a company in a fairly fast way, and this is very important because nowadays business lifecycles are very short.
The demand of skilled workers is very high, so the best people from all over the world are attracted. They come here rising on their part productivity and the quality of work.
Taking about the differences between USA and Italy, Don Steiny treated the taxes and the laws regarding companies and labours.
Don Steiny said that in America, people have more freedom to choose how they want to invest the money they earned. For instance, you can decide whether you pay more for your healthcare insurance or less depending on your needs.
The laws in the USA are not as elaborated as in Italy and so the government, but also the companies have to work very transparently.
In the afternoon the group devoted to a visit to the Intel Museum and to Intel. There they had the opportunity to learn how processors are developed and how technology evolved over time.
The group analysed the Intel white chambers, the environments where processors. Intel let us see via remote cameras what was going on in their chambers. To provide rooms with the needed high level of purity, there is the necessity of plants with eight or more floors. But only one floor can be used, the others h