Digest #23

Happy New Year!

I'm pleased to present the first annual Santa Cruz Tech Year in Review -- 2013 Highlights, below.

Santa Cruz Tech Beat is seeking sponsors for 2014. Not just individuals who want to advertise their products/services -- although you're welcome, too -- but supporters who care about the future of the Santa Cruz technology and business ecosystem, and want to help build better brand awareness for tech in Santa Cruz. Please contact me.

Thanks,

Sara Isenberg, Producer, Editor, Curator

Santa Cruz Tech Beat
http://santacruztechbeat.com

UC Santa Cruz

South Swell Ventures

PLT Labs

ProductOps

City of Santa Cruz Economic Development

TEDx Santa Cruz

The Startup Challenge

Sara Isenberg Web Consulting & Project Management

Features:

What a year!
Read Santa Cruz Tech Year in Review -- 2013 Highlights!

Tech in Santa Cruz? Grok! Are you new to the Santa Cruz tech community and want to catch up? Here's your reading list.

Yardarm Technologies has tech that can track stolen or lost firearms, and prevent firearms from being fired if moved or stolen. The company was recently selected by CNBC as one of the top 10 most innovative small companies in North America for 2013.

Read about Watsonville installing dark fiber beween key public buildings and through the core business areas of the city.

The Launch Festival is offering 50 free tickets to Santa Cruz TechRaisers for Feb 24-26 event, and Foundersuite is offering two toolkit for entrepreneurs deals. Limited time only.

News:

Coming up:

SC New Tech Meetup meets on Wed, January 8, 2014, 6:30pm.
Intro to The Startup Challenge: Tue, January 14, 2014, 4-6pm, at NextSpace and Tue, January 21, 2014, 4-6pm, at Cruzioworks.
Save the date: TEDx Santa Cruz: Activate is coming up on Sat, March 8, 2014.

Brenda Romero, program director for Games and Playable Media Master's program at UC Santa Cruz, was named one of 25 people that changed the game industry in 2013. More about Romero, below.

Gamers could help debug military code? Researchers at UC Santa Cruz have released a game, Xylem, that helps the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency debug programming code.

Listen: NPR podcast features farm tech coming out of Salinas lettuce fields.

Steve Blum keeps us informed on recent Central Coast broadband and development priorities and protecting our economy with broadband.

Really? VC Tim Draper wants to split CA and turn Silicon Valley (including Santa Cruz) into its own state. Yup, Silicon Valley Business Journal and TechCrunch and HuffPo and SVBJ again all covered Draper's plan for Six Californias. (Sadly, in the Sentinel and SJ Mercury coverage, the author called Santa Cruz a "nontech hotbed." What's that?)

After a successful Kickstarter campaign, Velvetwire launched their webstore on Dec 17.

UCSC's David Haussler, director of the Center for Biomolecular Science and Engineering at UC Santa Cruz, leads cancer's digital revolution.

Noteworthy, but not brand new

Brenda Romero inspired a standing ovation as women devs let loose on sexism in games in panel at GDC2013.

Watch David Hausler's local October Ed Talk, "The Quest to Conquer Cancer: Computer Geeks to the Rescue."