Updated below
Seems Google is hiring for offices in Montreal, and looking to employ 200-300 people. I’m not an engineer, so it’s not like I want to go there, but I’m still really excited, and it has something to do with Hugh and Boris, interestingly.
Basically, the idea is as follows: in other cities, nerds interact and develop communities. In Boston, the podcasters know each other, and in San Francisco, the offices for Obvious (i.e.: the Twitter company) and Podshow are a block away from each other, I hear. What does this mean? People in other places, they talk. In Montreal, we don’t– like, ever. Somehow, the geek culture, where people talk about their ideas and help develop them, it doesn’t happen as much here. It’s weird.
Boris was the first person to mention this, to Hugh, and then to me, at which point I started seriously bitching about how right he was. Hugh is the founder of Librivox, which is huge. Casey and Rudy probably do the biggest videoblog in Canada (that I know of, anyway), and we have loads of other people here who work on great stuff (Austin, Boris, and others comes to mind). I’m not doing too bad either, I’d like to add! So why don’t they ever talk to each other? Why don’t we band together and create… I don’t know, anything???
The answer? Honestly, I don’t have a clue. If there are secret things happening that are under NDA, I obviously don’t know them. If there’s a hell of a lot of that, great– but part of me doesn’t really think so. So why do I care that Google is coming? It’s because Montreal needs not only brain power, but brain power that communicates and is excited about stuff. I have a feeling, a hint, that Google will finally get people excited.
Update: Three possible meetings have been proposed as fulcrums around which to discuss these things: Hugh proposes an evening (Thursday at Zeke’s), Ben proposes a weekly early morning coffee. Philippe also reminds us that Yulbiz is tomorrow, and we’ll be certain to discuss the issue.
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