As you can see from all the accounts of our visits, our week was a busy one! After we were given the opportunity of meeting dozens of successful and passionate working professionals from the web and localization industry, who were more than willing to share their knowledge and experience of their respective fields, our heads were virtually spinning by the end of the week!
San Francisco and Silicon Valley have left a positive impact on all of us and we will surely treasure all of the wonderful memories that we made during our trip in California. The encounters that we had with the representatives of their respective companies have certainly taught us many important lessons and have given us tools that will surely come in useful throughout our professional lives. Being introduced to various Silicon Valley companies of various sizes (from relatively new start-ups to giants of the industry) gave us the great opportunity to discover all the aspects of the world’s leading tech cradle.
We were equally confronted with the American mindset and culture, which allowed us to take a step back and take a careful look at the differences in attitude and ways of thinking between France and the US. We have learned not to be afraid of failure, which can unfortunately still be considered as something to be hidden and ashamed of for people with our cultural baggage. In fact, many of the people that we have met in San Francisco talked about their failures openly and without any kind of embarrassment. Failure is an essential step when it comes to evolving and learning in the professional world. We were actually told many times that the only people that never fail are those that never do anything during their lives. They also pointed out that experience is more valued than education and that it always wins out over diplomas, which is not always the case in France. Meeting so many expats in Silicon Valley (particularly of French origins) reassured us that with enough hard work, dedication and passion we can succeed in our professional lives and that we should be able to compete with the best of the best in the future, no matter the environment that we will find ourselves in.
All in all, one does not get the chance to go to San Francisco and visit some of the most prestigious companies and universities located in the Silicon Valley every day! We were lucky to have been given this opportunity and are immensely grateful for it.
Most of all, we would like to express our deepest gratitude to our headmistress Renate de la Paix without whom we would never have had this wonderful opportunity. We would also like to thank Leslie Dollet from Intern Abroad who did a formidable job when it came to organizing our visits and accommodation during our brief stay in San Francisco. Many thanks to our guide and driver (and sincere apologies for the state of his ears!), Olivier, who didn’t seem to mind our incessant questions and stoically suffered through a stream of endless chit chat and horrible off-key singing.
Last but not least, we want to thank all the wonderful and passionate individuals that were willing to dedicate us some of their time and to take a break from their busy working schedules, in order to share with us their knowledge and hands-on experience in their respective fields. Thus, in chronological order, we would like to thank Elżbieta Pętlicka and Karla Vargas at Venga Global; Baptiste Manson, Vincent Desmares, Samira Allahverdiyeva and Jeffrey Henderson from the Inovia-Team; Gauthier Vasseur who expanded our understanding of Big Data; Yseulys Costes from Numberly; Max Troyer and his students at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies; Stephan Lins, Thomas Huang, Nick Lambson and the entire team at Medialocate; Aurelia Laff; Scott Sheppard at Autodesk; Oury Thomas at ChoYou and the WeWork Transbay team; Jeff Daniel at StarMaker Interactive; Amy Hanly, Craig Paterson and Aprajita Jain at Google!
We will keep our fingers crossed for next year’s edition of CAWEB On Tour and are already eager to read about the future experiences of the CAWEB students that will follow in our footsteps. And who knows, maybe with a little bit of luck and determination you will be reading about one of our graduates and their new successful Silicon Valley start-up in the future!
