Silicon Valley Fall Tour 1998

Visits Evaluation

From April 25 - May 4 1998, the Silicon Valley Association (Switzerland) conducted the ninth study tour to Silicon Valley. The tour comprised 10 company visits, one Panel on Silicon Valley and 3 academic visits. The visits were evaluated by 14 of the 17 participants. There were 12 Information technologists from several Swiss Universities and Multi-National Corporations, 3 Management Consultants and 2 recent university graduates.
This report represents the observations of the participants after the visits.

Program

Date	Day	Company	Speakers	Topics
27 April	Monday	Broadvision Redwood City	Peter Downs, Perry Thorndyke, Marty Connell, Steward Lin	One-to-one Commerce/Electronic Marketing
		Would have preferred a real on-lin demo A product with a bright fulture
		Exodus Santa Clara	Janine Renee Hogg	Security, Verifone credit card payment, Fraud Detection Service
		The good old computer center back again Very competent speaker
		Panel on Silicon Valley Stanford Terrace Hotel	Christian Simm, Swiss Consulate Eric Hautemont, Ridge Ventures Mark Heyer, HeyerTech Laurent Miéville, Stanford - Conductus	Moderated by Henri Slettenhaar
		Gave deep insight in the culture and business Not enough time, 1-2 fewer panalists woul allow for more discussion in a short time The Venture Capitalist was especially interesting
28 April	Tuesday	The Knowhere Store Palo Alto	Michael Kaufman	The virtual workplace, a resource of solutions, a service, or an experience, for your work environment
		Very interesting It would be fantastic to experience at the end of the tour Something completely different Very exciting and refreshing
		Tomlinson/Zisco/Morosoli&Maser Attorneys at Law Palo Alto	Timothy Tomlison, Eugene Morosoli, Richard Horning,Polly Dinkel	Starting a business in California, Legal and Financial aspects
		Had a similar message than that of the panel on Monday evening
		Versign Mountain View	Andrew Leventhal, Michael Baum	What is the market, what is the business and what we do
		Had a similar message than that of the panel on Monday evening
		E-Trade Group, Inc Palo Alto	Debra Chrapaty, Senior Vice President and CIO	The business, the market and the technology including a demo of speech recognition
		Great Company - A winner Very interactive with a "future focus" Decided to become a client! Powerpoint which makes the point
29 April	Wednesday	Stanford University, Center for Design Research	Larry Leifer SLL/CDR director, Charles Petrie, CDR George Toye	Stanford Learning Lab, Overview, Center of Design Research collaborative product development
		A pity that the first two presentations had no visual aids Very good presentation by George Toye
		Stanford University, Graduate School of Business	Jeffrey H. Moore, Assistant Dean for Computer and Information Systems	Lunch presentation on the future of IT
		Great talk Presentation was too general Most value we received in the shortest time
30 April	Thursday	SUN Microsystems Menlo Park Campus	Helga Hatvany, Phil Parkman, Shirish Netke, Sarita Mallya, Robert Iskander	SUN in Electronic Commerce, Electronic Commerce Solutions, Electronic Commerce Target Industries
		One of the best visits ever Very professional presentation
		Digicash Palo Alto	Web Augustine, Vice president of Marketing	Overview of the Company and its product ecash
		It was a pity that we visited two similar companies the same afternoon It was difficult to understand the speaker Explanation of the technology behind was not clear enough
		Cybercash Redwood City	Stephanie Tom, Manager, Global Services	Overview of the Company and its products
		It was a pity that we visited two similar companies the same afternoon Explanation was lacking technical detail Presentation was too commercial
1 May	Friday	CISCO Systems San Jose	Paul D. Yankey, Program Manager Barbara G. Jones, Director, Customer Service Dr Bruce Nelson, Chief Science Officer	Company Overview, E-Commerce, Demonstration, Lunch discussion
		Good food and discussion Not enough technical information Too commercial & rather arrogant
		University of Berkeley, Haas Business School, Fischer Center for Management and Information Technology Berkeley	Arie Segev, Professor and Director, Marti A. Hearst, Assistant Professor Hal R. Varian, Dean School of Information Management and Systems	Overview of the Fischer Center, Research on Web-based Info Retrieval (SIMS)
		It would have been interesting too see real applications of SIMS, linked to the Internet

The overall results of the 14 visits evaluation are shown in the next graph (10=highest)

Extra Program

Several special events were also on the program: a walk in Foothill Park, a tour of the Stanford campus, a visit to Fry's electronics, the largest electronic supermarket in the world. We had cocktails in one of the tallest buildings of San Francisco and had dinner at Chevy's, finally we visited several wineries on the way to Monterey and its world famous aquarium where we spent the afternoon.

Comments from the participants about the tour:

• A fantastic trip
• Really enjoyed it and learned a lot
• Bravo! A very nice tour
• It was a very interesting tour
• It was very important for me to see and feel Silicon Valley and the companies to understand what will be going on in Europe.
• It would be interesting to have as a start or at least the analysis by one of the market analysis companies: IDC, Forrester, etc.

CISCO got the most votes for the company to work for

E-Trade got the most votes for the company to invest in

The overall results of the tour evaluation on a ten point scale are shown in the next graph.

Created: July 8, 1998 by Henk Slettenhaar
Your questions, comments are very welcome.