I'm native NY/NJ, but have been in the SF area the past month for conferences and hackathons. I have to say that tech is much more mainstream here. Whereas hack

I'm native NY/NJ, but have been in the SF area the past month for conferences and hackathons. I have to say that tech is much more mainstream here. Whereas hackathons in NYC are largely white guys, here you see a lot more women and other cultures involved. One group of Mexican participants put together a cool 5 player tank game running on a bunch of devices in many modes and all demo'ed it on stage. An iPhone using business major friend here I was hanging out with picked up my Nexus 7 from a pile of devices at the side of my room and fell in love with it. Back in NYC there'd be much less interest and willingness to try something other than a fashionable, everyday-person-celebrated-and-marketed iPad. So yes, there are blind spots in that people think the world in general is much more interested in esoteric tech (like APIs), but there are also much more real world things and histories getting dragged in and overlapping as well - much like how colleges and universities are always arguing that diversity is a strength worth biasing admissions toward.