They still have charity auctions here, but it's a measure of the distance from 1999 to 2000 that the biggest-ticket item at this year's gala was both more practical as a marketing device and much cheaper. A new sense of restraint, if not woe, was obvious this month at Silicon Valley's holiday parties. Yet even as stock fortunes disappear and companies undertake layoffs and shutdowns, a process capped on Friday by the once-highflying eToys' announcement that sales were so bad it will die without an immediate rescue, there remains faith in technology's promise.
People think they are simply going to have to work harder for that million-dollar payoff.
At the auction, hostesses were doing a brisk business selling cigars, and the smoking room was full. Just months ago, Sokolsky said, so many new dot-coms were being funded here that PR firms could pick and choose their clients. Now the traditional relationship is reasserting itself. This is merely a return to Earth. There were also people like Jamis MacNiven, owner of Buck's Restaurant, a popular place for making high-tech deals.