Agreed about Silicon Valley colocation being unnecessary. I'd go further and argue that imposed colocation anywhere is unnecessary. For over a decade I've wor

Agreed about Silicon Valley colocation being unnecessary. I'd go further and argue that imposed colocation anywhere is unnecessary. For over a decade I've worked exclusively on distributed teams which came together only during those times when it was naturally productive to do so. For the majority of the time, team members worked in distributed locations independently. Consider Joy's Law [1]: "No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else" Generalizing, I believe: "No matter where you are, most of the smartest people are somewhere else." Face-to-face productivity gains are easily overwhelmed by losses due to having restricted the search for team members unnecessarily. Distributed organizations will win in the future. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_Law_(management) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_Law_(management)