A recent article in Time Mag. discussed the proliferation of “Silicone Valley” type startup regions in various parts of US, specifically the Silicone Beach area in West LA near Santa Monica and Venice. The point was made that while Silicone Valley (which now includes San Francisco as well as southern suburbs around Stanford, Palo Alto etc…) produces product to sell to enterprise at a rate about the same as that to sell to consumers…. the area near LA sells 4-1 to consumers, or professional consumers (“prosumers”).
Another article in the LA Times discusses the Silicone Beach area, and the nearby Pasadena tech development, tech incubator activities.
Surmise is that the LA region, with the film/digital video industry there (movies and TV but also increasingly video for online cloud purposes) has more familiarity with “what consumers want”… Hollywood has about 100 years of experience in knowing the mass market customer, and in addressing the whole person in various ways such as: emotional, psychological, sexual, stimulation, excitement, suspense, and other needs such as identifying with the hero or heroine and hating the bad guys.
What is also noted is that app development requires knowing the user/audience, and for certain grass roots targeted efforts, it seems logical to assume that those “on the scene” would know that audience better than a “one size fits all”, “mass media”, “lowest common denominator” approach.
This is one of the keys to why learning apps, DLE, developed in SNM will fit the needs of the grass roots in SNM better than something done in Silicone Valley, Silicone Beach, or most, if not all, other regions where tech development, especially ed tech, is underway.
Assuming the ed tech is actually not a whole lot different in it’s best incarnation than an intense immersive experience such as media creators elsewhere might come up with. Except for that secret sauce we have here, at PSA and elsewhere, in knowing the market, and then creating what we know.