This year is the seventh year that Santa Clara University has been host to the Silicon Valley Boomer Venture Summit and Business Plan Competition. The event’s co-producers, the university’s Leavey School of Business and Mary Furlong & Associates, describe the now-annual event as a “unique forum to explore, share and design products and services that … Read more
How many videotapes, 35mm slides, and photos occupy space in your house? Chances are, more than a few. You might even have 16mm film reels collecting dust in the attic. You’re not alone. Back in the 1990s, microprocessor engineer and founder of Santa Clara-based YesVideo (www.yesvideo.com) Sai-Wai Fu also had an ever-growing home video collection. … Read more
Maybe California’s Citizens Redistricting Commission needs a geography lesson. Apparently the commissioners think the city of Santa Clara is in the middle of Alameda County. The “preliminary final” district maps published last Friday shocked Santa Clara officials by putting the city in state senate and assembly districts with East Bay cities. “We firmly believe that … Read more
The above statistic is: The result you get if you divide Santa Clara’s employee compensation/benefits ($142,341,810) by the number of full-time employees (924). An illustration of the adage, “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” An accurate representation of what the city pays individual employees. A factoid in an emerging class … Read more
It might not have seemed like it, but there was other important business on last week’s City Council agenda besides Mr. Montana’s I-only-have-eyes-for-Santa-Clara development plans for seven acres of unused city-owned land across from the proposed 49er stadium site. Montana Madness Drawn by the football hall-of-famer, council meeting turnout attained levels unseen since it was … Read more
Sometimes low-tech is all you need. Take, for example, the basic telephone. These days mobile phones have so many gizmos, gadgets, features and functions that making a simple phone call is often anything but simple. This swiss-army-knife-ification obscures that fact that telephone technology hasn’t really changed in the more than 100 years since its invention … Read more
The 49ers stadium project continues to advance. At its July 5 meeting, the Stadium Authority (which is one and the same as the Santa Clara City Council), unanimously approved six agreements with the 49ers stadium entity (Stadco) covering subcontractor and concessionaire selection, stadium design, seat license sales (“Stadium Builder Licenses,” SBLs), and ongoing consulting services. … Read more
Pot – Not At last week’s City Council meeting, what was expected to be a routine motion to renew Santa Clara’s moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries turned into a two-hour discussion that highlighted the confusion and contradictions following in the wake of California’s medical marijuana law (1996’s Prop 215). The immediate issue in Santa Clara, … Read more
With the end of the Jersey Shore season, it was only a matter of time before my reality TV fixation dropped anchor on the shores of TLC’s Extreme Couponing. My first response was that couponing women – couponing seems to be an almost exclusively female obsession – are not a new phenomenon. Years ago, it … Read more
An RDA By Any Other Name… Tuesday night as the California legislature – or at least, the Democrats in it – passed a state budget that spells the end of California’s redevelopment agencies (RDAs), the Santa Clara City Council enacted another in a series of measures intended to dodge the RDA shutdown bullet. The Council … Read more