Mountain View – Silicon Valley One World

East Bay Boom-o-rama; Silicon Valley Slip

19May

By EditorNo Comments

Demographics

East Bay Boom-o-rama; Silicon Valley Slip

Has the pendulum swung? East Bay suburbs are leading national population growth even as traditionally prestigious Silicon Valley residential enclaves are struggling to keep residents. By Sharon Simonson Milpitas and Dublin each added more than 5 percent to their populations in the last year alone. Their East Bay neighbors Emeryville, Fremont and the far East Bay’s Brentwood are also growing fast. Fremont has added more than 18,000 people since 2010, reaching 232,000 residents in total. But in what might be an ominous sign, a string of Silicon Valley’s most remote and expensive western suburbs are seeing their populations plateau and even begin to decline. According to just-released U.S. Census figures, more people left Palo Alto last year than moved in, and the same was true in Campbell, ...

African Filmmakers, Silicon Valley Bedazzle One Another

17Oct

By EditorNo Comments

Culture, Demographics

African Filmmakers, Silicon Valley Bedazzle One Another

By Sharon Simonson MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. — Late afternoon autumn squalls lift the long red carpet in front of Mountain View’s Community School of Music and Arts, creating fun havoc in the opening moments of the Silicon Valley African Film Festival. Organizers rush to find heavy — but aesthetically pleasing! — objects to weight the sides. The rug rises again before they succeed. Everyone laughs and scrambles to pull it back into place. Really, it seems nothing can suppress the joy that the gathering exudes, the uplift from another perfect Northern California evening—soft light, warm sun, cool air—and the young African and African-diaspora filmmakers arriving from points near (Oakland) and far (Egypt, Tanzania, Sierra Leone, Rwanda). Bonginhlanhla Ncube has traveled from Sout...

Economists: Google Garbles ‘Diversity’ Discussion

31May

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Uncategorized

Economists: Google Garbles ‘Diversity’ Discussion

By Sharon Simonson The ethnic and racial profile of Mountain View-based Google Inc.’s workforce is an irrelevant measure of the wrong metric premised on a weakly defined attribute, say the chair of the San Jose State University economics department and a labor-market expert at Cornell University. The search engine, advertising and invention-driven company released a demographic profile on May 28 showing that 61 percent of its U.S. workforce is white and another 30 percent is Asian. Seventy percent of its workers worldwide are men. “Google is not where it wants to be when it comes to diversity,” wrote Laszlo Bock, senior vice president of people operations for Google, in a blog post where he released the data. Bock does not indicate what demographic makeup would satisfy his company. H...

16May

By EditorNo Comments

Uncategorized

Bloomin’ ‘Burbs

By Sharon Simonson New residents settling in the East Bay suburbs and exurbs are leading regional population growth, according to new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Of 20 Bay Area cities, Pleasanton and Brentwood were the fastest growing at 2.7 percent from July 2012 to July 2013. Pleasanton neighbor Livermore; Brentwood neighbors Antioch and Pittsburg; and Walnut Creek helped complete the top 10 fastest. San Jose, the region’s largest suburb, also appears to have turned a corner. The self-named Capital of Silicon Valley added not quite 16,000 people, making it the country’s 11th fastest-growing city on a numeric basis. San Jose’s 1.6 percent growth rate was its fastest in three years. The Bay Area trends echo national trends reported May 22 by The Wall Street Journal bas...