Geneva Auto Show

Today I treked over to Geneva to see the Auto Show there. It was much much bigger than the portland autoshow, and tons of car companies I had never heard of before. Additionally they put almost all the non-car companies (oil, rims, tires, brakes, and other generally boring components) in one room so it could be avoided if one so wished.
One of the more surprising aspects was that many of the car companies hired students from the Geneva area to work the booths, which while good for the students wasn't so good for the car show goer as they didnt know much about the brand, the specs, or anything that couldn't be learned by reading a little pamphlet.
The most interesting exhibit I saw was the Tesla Motors display which fortunately was manned by actual employees who were quite knowledgable and clearly loved what they were doing and throughly believed they were going to change the world.
Seeing this company and speaking with them was really helpful in identifying one the elements that I think has caused so many american companies to be successful. The belief or in many cases the delusion that if one works hard enough they can change to world. I mean specifically with tech companies. The dream of Gates was to have a pc on every desk in the country which at the time was recklessly optimistic if not completely crazy. I am not sure, but I guess it seems that here people are much likely to opt for the well-thought out, predictable, safe business plan. In many cases I guess that is probably better, but not nearly as fun and very little chance of flipping the world on its head