About to move to NYC (grew up in SV) and looking forward to experiencing this paradigm shift. I have grown to resent the hive mind around social networking and big data around my home town. The one thing I worry about is moving away from the hardware backbone that made SV great originally. I've been very happy to discover a lot of 3d printing and open hardware work going on in NYC at the very least, even if it's a little "softer" than some of the R&D out west.