oftwominds.com / By Charles Hugh Smith / January 23, 2013
Washington D.C. is not even on the Hipster Techie mental map.
We all have inner maps that assign awareness, priority and importance to geographic features. For those who work inside the Beltway, Washington D.C. dominates their mental map of the world. Residents of Manhattan famously regard it as the center of the financial, art, fashion, etc. world.
In the hipster techie mental map, Washington D.C. doesn’t exist, and New York has a small tech innovation footprint. In this world view, politics, finance and fashion are not what changes the world for the better; only tech does that.
Everyone wants to defend their city as important, if not the center of the universe, but the reality is that people who want to “make it” gravitate to the capital of their interest, be it Nashville, New York City, Hollywood, San Francisco or a regional magnet-city.
The typical hipster techie works for a start-up or fast-growing company in the social media / e-commerce / marketing mobile/web apps/software space. While these firms can be found in many cities, a great many are located in San Francisco and the S.F. Bay Area (Silicon Valley, etc.) for a variety of reasons, including a culture that celebrates innovation and understands that failure and success are two aspects of the same dynamic.
