I'll skip to the main part of your question: Is it a big problem? My answer is the same as what I wrote above cities. Whatever works best for you. It's totall

I'll skip to the main part of your question: Is it a big problem? My answer is the same as what I wrote above cities. Whatever works best for you. It's totally personal. For me, it's a problem, but for other people, it's not at all, and I'm not mad at that. Diversity can mean lots of different things. For some it can mean people from different countries, different genders, different schools, different parts of the country. For me it mostly means different backgrounds. I basically seriously dig it when the people i discuss tech stuff represent the world i otherwise live in + with. (As Alex hinted at with "1st world problems...") Some can people stand in a circle at a launch party where everybody talks about their favorite ipod headphones for 45 minutes and totally dig it, and others can walk away from that feeling really out of place. Neither one is wrong or right, but it is quite easy to slip into an intense, concentrated subculture in quite an exceptional way. (the second part of your question: startups vs big tech co's) I go down to SF a lot for conferences. I notice more diversity and different backgrounds at events from large companies (like VMworld) than i do at open source things, i wish that were flipped, as i do more open source stuff than corporate stuff, but it's cool. Either way i get a lot of good info from the events.