Technology has its perks, especially in Silicon Valley

NET RESULTS:The venture folks are feeling flush with the prospect of a string of initial public offerings this year

TECHNOLOGY IS at its best when it automates and makes more efficient a process that doesn’t necessarily need human intervention.

Take airline travel. On the US end of a pair of flights from Ireland to San Francisco last week, I watched several passengers take advantage of the new direct-to-mobile e-tickets that let passengers simply show their mobile screen at security and again to the ticket collector at the gate to board their flight.

A barcode on the screen, sent by e-mail, is scanned by the airline staff, the same as would happen with a paper ticket issued by the airline, or a web printout ticket. Very fast and very handy, and no fussing with counter check-ins or digging around for a crumpled print ticket.

Even better – at least for me on the day – was electronic kiosk technology that lets passengers scan their own tickets if a flight is missed. If the airline has already automatically rebooked the passenger, as is often the case, the kiosk prints out the new boarding passes, saving passengers the hassle of waiting to rebook with airline staff.

I’d been on a delayed flight that had to circle Atlanta for over an hour due to a thunderstorm. Then fuel ran low and we had to land in another state to refuel before heading back to Atlanta.

In the terminal, massive queues packed the service desks as thousands of passengers arrived late and struggled to find alternatives to their missed flights. I was in one such queue with about 200 people stretching before me and only three agents handling the mess, when I spied one of those rebooking kiosks.

My flying companion and I duly scanned our tickets and out popped our rebooked boarding cards. Had we remained in the queue, I doubt we would have made the flight on which we were already rescheduled to fly.

My only criticism is that ground staff were not making much attempt to redirect the huge mass of waiting passengers to the kiosks.

If you are in any US airport, you can often pick out the gate for the flights to San Francisco or San Jose. They’re the ones with lots of fellows in chinos, wearing shirts with technology company logos, and people busy on laptops.

Waiting to board my flight was a guy whose attire silently shrieked “geek”: the requisite chinos, plus a rucksack with solar panels built in for recharging electronic devices. Handy in California, but probably pointless in a washed-out Irish summer.

Two days later I found myself in the recently Michelin-starred restaurant, Madera, on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park.

Part of the luxury Rosewood Hotel built there by special (and I am sure, lucrative) arrangement on Stanford University land, the restaurant is popular with the moneyed Valley set. It’s a suitably understated but posh place to bring a client or cut a deal.

On a Friday lunchtime, it was packed. The venture folks are feeling flush, I suppose, with the prospect of a string of initial public offerings this year – nearly 300 have been filed so far, the most since the dot-com heyday of 2000. According to Bloomberg, one in 10 of those is a company in California, and odds are that most of those are in Silicon Valley.

No doubt the money guys can feel that IPO payoff in their wallets already, while a new set of youthful geeks await the jackpot payouts that justify their late nights spent coding or thinking up social media features.

Maybe the young Asian couple near me in Madera were among those. They certainly presented one of those only-in-Silicon-Valley sights: while the guy worked at pulling up websites on his smart phone, the gal typed away on her iPad on her lap beneath the table.

Occasionally, they actually spoke to each other. I doubt such a scene would be repeated in many Michelin-starred restaurants. Then again, Madera is pretty laid back. No one was any more bothered by their quiet geek antics than by the chattier group of women nearby, inspecting the large silver flasks with Apple logos they’d just been given at their corporate lunch.

Outside, a string of shiny Maseratis basked in the sunshine – the company was apparently holding a private viewing for buyers at the Rosewood. About a year ago, Maserati opened a showroom in the area, stating they felt there were enough buyers among the Valley’s entrepreneurs to justify the investment.

Red Ferrari Testarossas used to be the flashy car of choice. The subtler Maseratis don’t try quite so hard. I guess Maserati hoped a few of the crowd leaving Madera might opt for an Italian dessert.

I stuck with the spongecake with candied grapefruit and “carbonated lime curd”. Luxurious but gentler on the bank account.