Many people are blissfully unaware of the fact that Dublin and San Jose are sister cities. I feel this was a sly twinning job on behalf of the Irish Industrial Development Agency (IDA Ireland) many years ago to promote connections between Silicon Valley companies and Ireland (if so, it worked well as most of the top 10 companies in tech have offices and operations in Ireland).

The SJ-Dublin connection is of course played up at this time of year, as we roll towards St Paddy’s Day. While I was out visiting family in Menlo Park, I heard a radio segment all about the many events planned for the saint’s day in San Jose as part of this celebration of sisterhood. The Big Deal is that Bertie, our beloved taoiseach, is heading out to do his St Patrick’s duty on the 14th at the Spirit of St Patrick dinner there. This is exciting enough to qualify as ‘breaking news’ on the news section of the website! Whaddya mean, what website? Of COURSE there’s a website, this is Silicon Valley!