In this issue:
 Cindy Rubin to Manage California Competes
Cindy Rubin, a specialist in community relations and economic development, is Joint Venture's new manager for "California Competes", a state-wide coalition of technology, business and education leaders. The group is promoting an innovation agenda in Sacramento, in areas including clean energy, health care and information technology.
Rubin, a veteran of Intel and Intuit, is currently community relations directors of the Bio-Info-Nano Research & Development Institute (BIN-RDI), a partnership between the University of California at Santa Cruz and NASA-Ames Research Center in Mountain View. Rubin also works on economic development issues for Santa Clara County, and in that capacity helped with the launch of Silicon Valley Prospector (see next item). UC-Santa Cruz, NASA-Ames and Santa Clara County together agreed to fund Rubin’s work on California Competes, because these organizations view the initiative as vital to their mission.
Click here to learn more about California Competes.
Joint Venture Defends Industry-University Partnerships
Joint Venture CEO Russell Hancock co-authored a May 30 editorial in the San Jose Mercury News defending collaboration between industry and academia. Joined by AeA president William Archey and TechNet president Lezlee Westine, Hancock argued that Silicon Valley owes no small part of its success to private sector partnerships with Stanford and the University of California-Berkeley. The column was motivated by recent criticism of a $500 million grant for alternative energy technology from energy giant BP to UC-Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. The BP grant protects academic independence, according to the three authors, and will also be “an important catalyst for the rapid development of our region’s next great cluster of industries.”
Click here to read the Mercury News op-ed.
Climate Protection Initiative Sets First Goals
The new Joint Venture Climate Change Task Force held its first meeting on May 10, and the task force members – including representatives from 24 cities and other government agencies – announced their first goal: to conduct a comprehensive inventory greenhouse gas emissions by their respective operations. By standardizing a single approach for analysis, the Task Force reasons, it will be easier to establish regional standards and benchmarks. 
The Task Force, which is championed on the Joint Venture board by John Maltbie, will also form a buying consortium to evaluate and purchase a variety of carbon-neutral energy solutions, including photovoltaic systems, fuel cells, hybrid and biodiesel vehicles, methane capture equipment, LED lighting, and technologies for reducing heating and cooling requirements in buildings.
“Silicon Valley has a rapidly growing industry cluster in clean technology,” said Tom Werner, CEO of SunPower, a partner in the Task Force. “It’s great to see the public sector taking a leadership role to encourage widespread adoption of new technologies, which encourages more entrepreneurs to develop solutions to the global warming crisis.”
Click here to learn more.
Joint Venture CEO Tells the Silicon Valley Story in Madrid
 Russell Hancock, Joint Venture’s president and CEO, took the story of Silicon Valley to Madrid, Spain, in a presentation delivered on May 11. He delivered a keynote speech to an audience of 600, explaining Silicon Valley’s unique model for regional economic development, at a conference organized by the Madrid Institute for Economic Development, the Greater Madrid Chamber of Commerce, and the Madrid Entrepreneurial Association.
Hancock was part of a Silicon Valley delegation that included Stanford Professor William F. Miller, who led workshops on venture capital and nanotechnology; David Gilbert, of the US Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute at Lawrence Berkeley Labs, who led a session on biotechnology; and Marguerite Gong, Associate Director of the Stanford Project on Regions of Innovation & Entrepreneurship (SPRIE), who led sessions on university-industry linkages and technology licensing.
What sets Silicon Valley apart, Hancock said in Madrid, is the region’s unwavering support for entrepreneurship. “Silicon Valley has a remarkable capacity to create and grow new companies,” he declared. The Valley’s “habitat for innovation” is supported by many inter-locking features, bringing together a results-oriented meritocracy, a climate that rewards risk and tolerates failure, a fluid workforce, and a specialized infrastructure in areas such as venture capital, law and accounting.
Click here and scroll to the bottom of the page, where you’ll find a link to download Russ Hancock’s PowerPoint presentation from Madrid.
New California Network Luncheon in San Francisco on June 19
 New California Network, a non-partisan group that is working to improve decision-making on the state’s $145 billion annual budget, is holding a planning luncheon in San Francisco on Tuesday, June 19, from noon to 2 p.m.
Unlike many lobbying and public-policy groups, New California Network isn’t trying to influence where money is spent. The network, co-founded by Joint Venture, instead wants to overhaul how the state spends money, so that legislators and the public can be more effectively involved in the process.
The lunch meeting will feature James P. Mayer, executive director of New California Network and a former director of the Little Hoover Commission; as well as Fred Silva, one of the state’s foremost experts on public finance. To reserve a place at the luncheon, contact Toby Ewing of New California Network at or 916-491-0022.
Click here to visit the Web site of New California Network.
Valley Vision is compiled as a public service by The TDA Group (www.tdagroup.com), a high tech marketing and custom publishing agency in Los Altos. |
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Rick Ellinger Leads Disaster Planning Initiative
Rick Ellinger, long-time leader in local emergency-response volunteers programs, has joined Joint Venture as interim director of the Disaster Planning Initiative.
Ellinger is founder and president of the Wireless Communications Alliance, a Silicon Valley non-profit working with Joint Venture on the wireless project. His volunteer work includes wireless emergency communications for Santa Clara County, the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services and his home town of Los Altos Hills. In his professional life, Ellinger has worked as an executive with Agilent, Hewlett-Packard, Madge Networks and MFS Datanet. While at HP, Ellinger worked directly with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in responding to the Mississippi River Floods of the early 90's, creating an instantly delivered cluster of workstations for visualization of the central United States.
Click here to read a profile of Rick Ellinger.
Silicon Valley Prospector a Hit
Silicon Valley Prospector, the one-stop-shopping site for commercial and industrial real estate, has been a runaway success since its launch on March 19. Organized by Joint Venture as a partnership between the regions major brokerages and 20 Silicon Valley cities, the Prospector currently offers an easily searchable database of 4,500 properties. It also enables users to conduct detailed demographic analyses. From mid-March through mid-May, the site registered 250,000 page views, with visitors calling up 42,000 property listings.
Try it yourself! Click here to go to Silicon Valley Prospector.
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