Every morning, I reach the street by walking out the back of my apartment, through the gates of something called the “Digital Hub.” For a while, I didn’t know what the Digital Hub was. All I knew was that well-dressed young businesspeople seemed to come and go all day, always holding fresh cups of coffee. After a quick Google search, I learned that the Digital Hub is a set of eight buildings that hosts around 75 technology, digital media and internet companies. The Irish government started the Digital Hub in 2003, near the start of what turned out to be a huge boom for the tech industry here in Dublin.
If you keep walking east toward the ocean, away from my apartment and the Digital Hub, you’ll eventually hit an area called “Silicon Docks.” You’ve probably heard of Silicon Valley, the nickname for the region in the San Francisco Bay Area, California, where there are tons of technology companies and start-ups. (A start-up is a small new company with big goals.) Silicon Valley is named after silicon chips, which are an important part of nearly all computers. And Silicon Docks, here in Dublin, is named after Silicon Valley.
