Last week, when I started discussing the technology startup climate in DC (DC to Silicon Valley?), I started from a faulty premise, but not the one that trips up most. After reading a great historical analysis from SFGate and some further research and brainstorming, here's a slight correction to my previous post and some futher thoughts on how to improve things in DC.

Many people tend to peg the start of Silicon Valley to the foundation of HP in the infamous garage. True, the name wasn't attached to the area until 1971, so part of that is correct. Unfortunately, my linkage to the "Traitorous Eight" in the 1950's ignored the long and established history of the San Francisco region in the area of radio.

Long prior to the very existance of Fairchild Semiconductor - the creation of the Traitorous Eight - there was a vibrant tech community focused on and revolving around the creation and usage of radio. It brought brilliant researchers, government contracts, innovators, and investors from all over and began to sow the seeds for Silicon Valley. Oh, and this was in 1906...

Since the fine tech summit that was BarCampDC, there has been quite a bit of rumbling about the lack of investors (Angels & VC's specifically) lurking in and around DC. In the past couple weeks, some people have laid out a grand vision of "Bringing the Valley to DC" (Nick O'Neill), while others are focusing on building it from the ground up by motivating groups and connections (Will Kern), and others are just ticked because - despite pitching the idea a month earlier (Ann Bernard) - everyone is acting like its a new idea.

DC is a funny and unique place. In the 6+ years I've lived here, here are the key aspects I've identified:

First, there is a huge amount of tech. I've discussed this recently, on any given week you could easily attend 2-3 meetings in the area between downtown DC and Reston, VA. There are groups on everything from general web design to PHP to Ruby to Drupal to startups and probably more that I haven't heard of. And those are just the communities, when you consider the companies, the number quickly grows. The sheer amount of technology people and projects is staggering.