On 9/22/07, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
Delirium wrote:
Florence Devouard wrote:
I have another argument to push along, which I think would impair our grown very soon in the future. People. People as in staff. We had the chance to find very good people in St Pete (or had the chance some staff members, such as Brion, moved to Florida in the past), however, we must face a fact: we are more likely to find the skills we need for our development in a big multicultural city than in St Pete, in particular for the senior management.
I think the last part of your comment is key. The Bay Area is great for wealthy people like senior management; less so for other people (the median house costs more than US$500,000). Unless you plan to only hire wealthy people, or to pay very high salaries, nobody can really afford to live anywhere near a downtown-SF office. And I say this as someone temporarily living in the Bay Area (how do I afford it? tiny, temporary rental housing until I finish up my PhD and move somewhere more affordable). It's also extremely expensive for visitors; any savings in flights for SFO versus Florida will be swamped by the massively more expensive hotels.
Since this is supposedly a grass-roots-based organization, that ought to have been a consideration IMO.
With the way the US mortgage market is going there could be some cheap foreclosures to pick-up.
If that includes a small apartment building. We could have a wiki-house as a place for visitors to find inexpensive accommodation.
Ec
Heh -- a wikihouse sounds like a permanent home for DevHouse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperHappyDevHouse
-- phoebe