alan wells

On the way back from San Diego a few weeks ago, I had a conversation with my friend Tom that made the last few hours of the drive fly by. As always, our conversation covered a lot of ground, but one thing we talked about was what makes a person interesting, what draws the line that we know to exist between those people that seem to have something of substance to talk and think about, and those that seem to be walking the world on autopilot. I think I can summarize our conversation graphically better than verbally, in the style of indexed.

This is a question that’s been floating around in my head for a while: Why California?

As in, why is California home to the tech industry, Hollywood, many top-tier universities, lots of influential thinkers and writers, the country’s most environmentally progressive laws, and an explosive start-up and entrepreneurial industry, among other things. I have to say that as a native Californian, it’s a comfort to be roaming the international blogosphere and see my home state mentioned so frequently.

I started asking this question because as I started to do more reading about business, sustainability, design and other things that interest me, it seems like a disproportionately large number of the interesting things I read about are happening in California. Granted, I’m tech-oriented and environmentally conscious so I think that’s a big reason why many things I read about are coming from California, but that still begs the question of why California is the center for these things in the first place.

A quick scan of California’s Wikipedia article gives many possible answers:

- 3rd largest state in the US
- Most populous state in the US
- Mediterranean climate
- Diverse geography
- Coastal geography
- Home to the largest agricultural industry in the US
- 10th largest economy in the world, if it was a country.

The metrics that make California notable in the global economy are well-known in the modern world. However, in Bill Bryson’s book, Made in America, he quotes an historian that explains that the native languages in California encompassed a diversity that surpassed that of the entire European continent. Now, I’ll be the first to agree that California’s diverse geography and climate may be the original source for our wealth and prosperity, but I doubt that this diversity in climate and geography can’t be matched by the entire European continent.

The fact put forward in Bill Bryson’s book makes me think that the answer to my question can’t be in the people here. The fact about native language variation makes me think that whatever people happen to be here enjoy a rare life of diverse culture and prosperity, that there must be something about this place that is the source for this, or makes this possible, for native people and immigrants alike.

I think the key to answering my question lies in the fact that California not only has diverse geography and climate, but something about this combination encourages specialization, niches, and therefore promotes biodiversity. From an ecological perspective, biodiversity is one of the world’s most valuable resources. Wikipedia defines it as “the variation of taxonomic life forms within a given ecosystem, biome or for the entire Earth.” Tropical places are often fountains of biodiversity because their climates allow for the construction of complex ecosystems with many trophic levels and niches. But California isn’t tropical. So how do we explain the fecundity of our state? Certainly, the relatively mild weather in California helps, but I think it is this combined with the huge variation in geography that accounts for the diversity here. If you drive the length of the state, you can drive through almost every climate zone from alpine to near tropical, mountain to coastal. This complexity allows an almost infinite number of ecological niches – which in turn leads to a high level of biodiversity.

And now the conceptual jump – I think that high biodiversity in natural ecosystems can be mirrored and reflected by an equivalent level of diversity in human enterprises, and I think that California is proof of that. The success that we Californians enjoy is just a continuation of success that other species in this area have been enjoying for millions of years. The biggest implication of this: we need to protect those other species to maintain our own success, as our wellbeing depends upon their survival. I think that’s a big issue for business in California to tackle, but I think it will be essential to our future as a state.

Seth Godin recently wrote about why people blog:

“What do most people get out of blogging? After all, most blogs are virtually unread by outsiders…

The act of writing a blog changes people, especially business people. The first thing it does is change posture. Once you realize that no HAS to read your blog, that you can’t MAKE them read your blog, you approach writing with humility and view readers with gratitude. The second thing it does is force you to be clear. If you write something that’s confusing or in shorthand, you fail.

Respectful and clear. That’s a lot to get out of something that doesn’t take much time.”

Since my blog definitely falls into the “virtually unread by outsiders” category, why do I bother? For me, its more of a replacement of a journal. Of course its public and I suppose that limits what I can write about, but I’m a pretty open person so I don’t find that to be a huge limitation. For me its about having a written record of my thoughts and musings, as well as the books I’ve been reading, the music I’ve been listening to, and some of the other things that are a big part of my life. Being a child of the internet, I like that writing a blog (instead of a journal) makes this written record searchable, linkable, and easily shared. Also, it allows me to include digital things that are hard to get into a hardcopy journal – and although the converse is also true – there are things that exist in the physical world that are hard to get into a blog, I find that the balance sways in the direction of the digital. But I do keep a paper sketchbook/journal/notepad/collection of interesting things to fill in the gaps. In fact, if I had a scanner, I’d probably scan some of those pages and post them here, because I think they’re interesting in a raw, unpolished sort of way. I did this in my digital portfolio and I like the depth that adds to an otherwise all-digital website.

More accurately, this would be a job decision update, as I was fortunate enough to have some really awesome opportunites dropped on my doorstep. Last week, I decided to move forward with a job at SNP. I’ll be doing a lot of things there, including some web design and web 2.0 kinds of things, but so far the people have proved to be great co-workers and I’m enjoying the work.