Digital Media/High-Tech

WHERE INDUSTRIES ARE BORN

Recognized worldwide as the birthplace of the multimedia revolution, San Francisco continues to be the location of choice for digital media companies. By locating in San Francisco, these businesses find themselves at the center of the country’s primary digital media hub, with some of their largest and most respected contemporaries nearby—including Pacific Data Images (a division of Dreamworks), Dolby, Pixar Studios, Adobe Systems, WILDBRAIN, Orphanage Animation Studios, and Electronic Arts. In 2005, George Lucas moved his LucasFilm, LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic operations into San Francisco’s historic Presidio district, redeveloping the vacant Letterman Hospital Site into the state-of-the-art Letterman Digital Arts Center—a 23-acre campus supporting more than 1,000 qualified employees.

And they’re in very good company. San Francisco lays claim to the largest, most innovative high-tech workforce in the world, with a full 25% of the industry’s jobs clustered in the Bay Area. From cutting-edge Web 2.0 firms to leading Silicon Valley companies, hundreds of high-tech companies have leveraged the San Francisco workforce advantage and now call San Francisco home including: Salesforce.com, Google, Riverbed Technology, Advent, Microsoft, Bebo.com, Cisco Systems, CNet Networks, Autodesk, Wikimedia Foundation, Yahoo! and Service Source, among others.  

San Francisco’s world-class lifestyle and vibrant, highly creative culture make it easy to attract and retain top-tier knowledge workers from all over the world. And, thanks to San Francisco State’s new Institute for Next Generation Internet program, the City is already cultivating the young talent needed to keep the industry fresh and flourishing far into the future.