A Slow Process of Revitalizing Santa Cruz

Strongly recommend you take the time to read Tom Honig’s recent opinion piece in the Good Times Santa Cruz entitled A Slow Process of Revitalizing Santa Cruz and check out the document he’s referencing that started out on the back of a napkin… where most great ideas start out IMHO :)

As I said in my introduction to the Envision Santa Cruz event in March, though parts of the existing systems that have been around for generations are failing all around us, I see more opportunity than ever these days. Times of crisis present incredible opportunities for those bold enough to take action and present new paradigms.

Santa Cruz is full of such people in fact and I am so stoked and feel so blessed to be among a community of like minded DOERS who are out there taking bold action, creating new paradigms and at very least TRYING to create a better world for themselves and future generations.

Happy Santa Cruz is Indeed Very Happy :)

After a lot of hard work and help from Todd Schafer, Davy and Ruby at Parachute Creative, Nick Sobrak-Seaton and James Lafferty (HUGE PROPS TO JAMES!) Happy Santa Cruz is now a reality. Check out the site at www.happysantacruz.com, let us know why Santa Cruz makes you happy, and spread the love!

Big thanks too to Genevieve Bookwalter with the Santa Cruz Sentinel for doing a phenomenal write up on the cover of the Sentinel Tuesday as well!

(HSC business partner and homeboy Nick is missing from the picture above)

Santa Cruz – Our Quality of Life is Good for Your Bottom Line

Yet Another Win for Geeks in Santa Cruz

Congratulations to Rich, Marcus, Emily and Scott @UserVoice!

UserVoice Raises Funding, White-Labels User Feedback Facilitator

Expect some more awesome things coming from UserVoice and a few other rock’in statups here in town…

Law of Attraction – Case in Point…

I love my friends, especially those who take bold action and consistently surprise me by the awesome projects they’re working on, companies they’re working for and people they’re working with.  To this extent, the decision I made a few years ago to start pro-actively networking with and developing meaningful relationships with these types of people has been hands down one of the best decisions I ever made.

Not surprisingly, I’ve found that like minded people tend to flock together and are many times drawn together without ever going out of their way to make the connection.

Case in point, a new friend of mine Taylor Davidson (who I randomly started up a conversation with at a SXSW meetup in San Francisco and wound up talking with for 90 minutes about life, entrepreneurship, love, the global financial systems, and seemingly a million other topics).  Taylor has spent the last few months traveling the country on the cheap and meeting with entrepreneurs and communities throwing elbows and making interesting things happen…  all the while documenting what he learns and contemplates along the way.

One of his recent posts in fact is specifically on Santa Cruz and the time he spent touring around and talking about all the cool stuff going down in our neck of the woods. If you’re a regular reader this will be nothing new but does serve as yet another outside perspective confirming that what we’re building here is in fact unique, powerful and, IMHO, Awesome.

Building Communities in Santa Cruz, California by Taylor Davidson

Another Step in the Right Direction for Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz Sentinel has a piece today on the Pilot Project for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (PPIE) program between the City and UCSC that is helping to engage entrepreneurial minded students from UCSC with the City and its entrepreneurs, innovators and other movers and shakers.

Piece is linked below and worth the short read.

Students Give Back
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/business/ci_11661207

Time will tell if this program is a success or not, but from having spoken with the students in the program first hand I can say their eyes and minds are starting to open to the possibility of actually staying and making a living in Santa Cruz for the first time… which is definitely the paradigm shift we’re looking to make happen here.

Congratulations to Peter Koht for getting this up off the ground!

My Morning on KUSP’s GeekSpeak

Had a great time this morning with GeekSpeak host Lyle Troxell and his fellow geeks Drew Meyer, Miles Elam, and Ben Jaffe at KUSP’s GeekSpeak.  Thank you Drew for setting this up, thank you Lyle for making it happen and thank you Santa Cruz Geeks for all your support pre/during/post the broadcast!

Check out the 12second.tv Vid I took Prior to the Show Starting

Listen to the Broadcast (meat of it starts @ half way through)

Podcast on Economic Transformation in Santa Cruz

This is a bit belated now, but my good friend Alex Lavidge hosted a Podcast last week with me and a few other movers and shakers here in Santa Cruz (@jjneuner and @pkoht), specifically speaking to the work we’re doing here in town to transform the old economic landscape and way of thinking from a grassroots level.

Episode Two – Learning from Santa Cruz, CA and nextspace.us

In all seriousness, if you’re interested in how government and the private sector can work together to make positive change happen, there are no better case studies than the ones Alex is working on in Knoxville, TN and we are actively living right now in Santa Cruz, CA.

Encourage you to give a listen if you’ve got the time.

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