In this issue:

• Silicon Valley Prospector launches March 21
  
• San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed Joins Board
  
• Saving the Planet, Starting in Silicon Valley
  
• Wireless Project Moves Into Test Phase
  
• Eric Benhamou Receives Joint Venture's Packard Award
  

Silicon Valley Prospector Launches March 21

Want to buy a house? It’s no problem to go online to instantly find every available property in the neighborhood of your choice. Want to find office or industrial space for your business? Not so fast. There hasn’t been a one-stop-shopping site for locating commercial space in Silicon Valley—until now.

Joint Venture has just launched Silicon Valley Prospector (www.siliconvalleyprospector.com), a unique collaboration between cities and the broker community delivering a powerfully interactive tool that companies can use to make location and expansion decisions. The site offers listings from multiple commercial real estate agencies, as well as searchable market data from 20 local cities, such as demographics, composition of the workforce and consumer spending.

“Finding the right ‘home’ is often a difficult process – particularly for Silicon Valley start-ups experiencing rapid growth,” said Heidi Roizen, managing director at Mobius Venture Capital. “I foresee this site becoming an essential resource for the entrepreneurial community.” 

Wireless project moves into test phase

Joint Venture's Wireless Project, which aims to blanket the region with wireless Internet access, has moved off the drawing boards into the streets – or, to be technically precise, onto the streetlights.

The cities of Palo Alto and San Carlos have agreed to host the first test sites for Silicon Valley Metro Connect, the collaboration of IBM, Cisco Systems, SeaKay and Azulstar that is building and operating the network. Each of the sites will have 30 to 45 access points installed on light poles and other outdoor locations, for up to six months, to study how many access points will be required for the full project.

Wireless Silicon Valley has also formed its first two user groups – one for traffic management and related transportation issues, another for emergency services – to explore new ways of utilizing the proposed network.

Click here to learn more.

Saving the Planet, starting in Silicon Valley

Joint Venture’s board of directors has approved a new initiative aimed at making Silicon Valley’s public sector “carbon neutral”—tapping technologies such as solar power and fuel cells to make local governments into models of how to produce and consume energy without contributing to global warming.

The initial goal is to create a procurement pool for local government agencies to share the costs of evaluating, purchasing, installing and operating energy-efficient systems that don’t generate greenhouse gases. These agencies will show the way for other public-sector facilities, such as schools and hospitals, and ultimately private business and homes.

The climate protection project, which is still in the formative stages, will also run educational programs and help support Silicon Valley’s “clean tech” companies.

Want to get involved? If you’re not already a member of Joint Venture, click here to sign up.

Valley Vision is written and edited as a public service by The TDA Group (www.tdagroup.com), a high tech marketing and custom publishing agency in Los Altos.

San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed Joins the Joint Venture Board of Directors

Chuck Reed, the newly elected mayor of San Jose, is one of three new members elected to Joint Venture’s board of directors. The board composition reflects Joint Venture’s broader mission of bringing together representatives of the entire Silicon Valley community—including business, government, labor and academic leaders. Along with Reed, the board elected Bob Tabke, principal and founding partner of The TDA Group, a high tech marketing and custom publishing agency in Los Altos; and Sara Spivey, vice president of worldwide sales and marketing for AMD.

Click here to learn more.

Eric Benhamou receives Joint Venture’s Packard award

Eric Benhamou, chairman of 3Com and Palm and tireless community leader, received the 2007 David Packard Award, presented by Joint Venture at the State of the Valley conference. The award is presented annually to an outstanding “civic entrepreneur,” or in other words a person who brings an innovative, cross-boundary, problem-solving approach to our region’s challenges. John Morgridge, chairman of Cisco Systems and a close friend of Benhamou, presented the award with a moving tribute to Benhamou’s dedication an leadership.

Read Morgridge’s tribute here.