Santa Cruz Techies MeetUp for the Future
SANTA CRUZ (April 2009) —Amid the glum economy that has cleared storefronts and hampered business, Santa Cruz techies have been packing the rooms of a monthly local geek-friendly gathering with an irrefutable optimism about the future.
The Santa Cruz New Tech Meet-Up, a networking and educational event for locals, has been so popular in recent months that organizers have had to turn members away at the door of their monthly meetings in downtown Santa Cruz. It is, they say, just one indication that the ongoing effort to galvanize the local design and tech community is gaining some serious traction.
“We’re in the vortex right now,” said Doug Erickson, who founded the local meet-up last year. “A lot of things are coming together. There has been a really big shift in the city.”
The agenda of each month’s meet-up, which is patterned after hundreds of other local tech alliances that convene across the country, includes10-minute presentations by three or four technology companies along with munchies provided by a local sponsor. There is a brief time for questions followed by informal networking. Organizers try to include at least one local company among the presenters but the focus is on what’s new and interesting technology rather than just on what’s local.
The simple format drew about two dozen attendees to the first meeting in February 2008. Since then, local membership has jumped to more than 525. Monthly meetings draw between 100 and 150 people who cram into the unorthodox meeting spot of NextSpace at 101 Cooper Street in downtown Santa Cruz. There, the economic doom and gloom, so pervasive these days, is held at bay at least for the first Wednesday of the month while techies consider the latest innovations and potential partnerships in the industry.
The most recent gathering included presenters from Cupertino-based SugarCRM, Sunnyvale-based Dash Navigation, San Jose-based FreshBrain and the UC-Santa Cruz Business Plan Contest.
The purpose, according to Erickson is to get local high tech professionals to network, but it’s also about introducing new technologies, “to get their geek gears moving,” and to spawn additional local gatherings that boost the budding infrastructure for local ventures and partnerships.
In the last six months, numerous other local tech groups have launched online MeetUp sites. SantaCruzGeeks.com has signed up about 120 members since January. A MeetUp for Santa Cruz iPhone Software Developers, launched in November, has 65 online members and Santa Cruz Business Connect, launched in January, posts 53 members focused on business referrals.
“We want to encourage that,” Erickson said. “This is a way to get things going in Santa Cruz. It is a way to get people to start moving.”
In a recent electronic survey of its membership, 35 percent of 129 Santa Cruz Tech Meet-Up respondents said they saw the event as a way to increase income, according to Robert Blumberg, a Soquel patent attorney who has stepped up to help organize events. “That’s significant.”
There is also a strong focus on what is unique to SantaCruz.
“Doug seems to have a special sensitivity for the Santa Cruz community,” said Patrick Reilly, an Aptos-based patent attorney who has sponsored the event. Compared to similar events in Silicon Valley, “it’s a little more green, a little more risky and more about the social impact of the work,” Reilly said.
In Santa Cruz, collaboration is a central theme playing out among organizers, entrepreneurs and local government officials focused on improving the economy.
“Santa Cruz is still trying to decide its future,” said Kathleen Duncan, a MeetUp organizer.
NextSpace, the Santa Cruz Design + Innovation Center and cruzbusiness.com, the city’s new tech-focused online redevelopment site, are all weaving together what they say is the future of Santa Cruz.
“In the old days you were just all by yourself,” Reilly said. “Here you can really quickly find many of the assets that the community offers and quickly identify the needs that you can fill. It’s all about acceleration. We used to say it’s important to hurry up and fail so you could learn from your mistakes. The MeetUp and NextSpace help you accelerate your successful strategy.”
The weak economy also seems to be an impetus for the group’s success as well as a renewed sense of community.
“I think it’s a good sign that the concept is being embraced,” said Don Frederickson, Got.net founder. “It’s nice to see a whole bunch of people sitting in a room being unified on trying to do more stuff in SantaCruz, which is one of the bigger thrusts of it all. It’s not just an extension of your work day but has a real emphasis of keeping business in Santa Cruz.
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