Many British politicians have heard of California, and Tony Blair made history by being the first sitting prime minister to visit the place. Better than that, he met a bunch of leading tech-company businessmen for a lunch of filet of Painted Hills Natural Beef, fresh local halibut and organic vegetable strudel at Cisco.
Blair said he wanted to talk about what governments could do to foster innovation and keep abreast of the rapid pace of technological change, reports the San Jose Mercury News: "What I'd really like to do is learn from you: Things we do right and things we do wrong."
Seated around an arrangement of tables were [John Chambers, chief executive of Cisco]; David Gardner, chief operating officer of Electronic Arts; Hector Ruiz, chief executive of Advanced Micro Devices; Vint Cerf, chief Internet evangelist for Google; Shantanu Narayen, chief operating officer of Adobe Systems; Jim Ward, president of LucasArts; Jonathan Schwartz, chief executive of Sun Microsystems; John Hennessy, president of Stanford University; Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple Computer; and Mark Hurd, chief executive of Hewlett-Packard.
A spokeswoman for Blair said some other, unspecified, valley executives were invited but were unable to attend.
Comment: And my reply would have been that Silicon Valley has been a phenomenon for at least 35 years, and it would have been a better idea to find that stuff out before becoming prime minister....
