Strategic Plan

Draft: October 27, 2007

The following compiles the SCTA Focus Group conversation October 26, 2007. Participants included:

Erica Aitken, Rods & Cones; Sam Bishop, Totlcom Inc.; Kathy Duncan, Santa Cruz Imaging; Don Fredrickson, GOT.NET; Kathy Kemp, JohnsonDiversey; Deborah Rousseau, Plantronics; Katie Scott, Kinnetic Laboratories Inc.; Brad Smith, UCSC; and from the Chamber, Patrice Edwards, Membership Committee Chair, Charles Eadie, Board Chair, Bill Tysseling, Executive Director.

Vision Elements: Things that should be included in an SCTA vision statement

Regional organization(Santa Cruz County / North Monterey)

• A network linking technology workers, businesses and industry clusters within Santa Cruz County. Elements of this network include
  • Channels for the flow of information and communications
  • Facilitating marketing of products and services of local technologists to regional enterprises
  • Catalyzing partnerships and the development and commercialization of IP
  • Addressing shared issues and opportunities, e.g., improving infrastructure, streamlining government purchasing from local vendors
• Improvement of recruitment, retention, and development of technology and technology-business administration workforce
• Creation of technology learning communities
• Connecting technology companies with other group working to improve community SWOT issues – e.g., housing, community branding, technology development of Westside SC industrial areas
• University / business communication, cooperation, and facilitation, achieving shared opportunities, e.g., student placement and shared research
• Growth of technology-topic communities and work groups – e.g., optics, biotech, ocean science
• Resulting growth and vitality of technology sectors

Goals: Outcomes of community efforts lead or facilitated by SCTA

•  Economic development
  • Growth of local technology industries clusters
  • Attraction and growth of technology businesses – technology business vitality
  • Increased profitability of local technology consultants, contractors, and “home” businesses
  • Branding Santa Cruz as technology community / a desirable place for technologists to work
  • Branding Santa Cruz as an epicenter of design in Silicon Valley; creation of a virtual, and, eventually a physical, Design Center
  • Attraction and growth of green tech / branding Santa Cruz as a leading green tech cluster
  • Expansive strategic community thinking regarding quality of life and prosperity including vital technology industry clusters

• Branding Santa Cruz:
  • Tech center
  • Green Tech Center
  • As a terrific place to work and live
  • Cutting edge tech center in its areas of interest – e.g., optics, human genome, data storage, game design…
  • A prime opportunity site for cluster-requirement businesses

• Business Development
  • Improve marketing efficiencies  for local vendors selling to technology business
  • Increased sales of local technology vendors to other local businesses and governments
  • Business connectivity – create opportunities for the sparks of collaboration and partnership to fly

• Infrastructure
  • Increase Internet bandwidth -- dark fiber / redundancy
  • Data center capacity / resources
  • Westside Santa Cruz development as a technology center
  • Downtown Santa Cruz development as a technology center
  • Improvement in relative cost of housing and other community infrastructure elements (transportation, water, k-12 education, etc.)

• Employers / Workers
  • Conversion of commuters to local technology workers
  • Lower cost / increase candidate-quality of recruiting and retention
  • Efficient “friction-free” job placement, especially re local students
  • Outreach / engagement opportunities for technology workers in the community
  • Superior learning opportunities for workers
  • Local technology professional communities (e.g., computer optics, human genome)

• Intellectual property / IP commercialization
  • Simplified UCSC technology - business indexing of resources and opportunities and communications
  • Increased technology transfer to the local community: partnerships, spin-offs, product development
  • Technology community engagement with growing areas of UCSC tech: digital arts, computer engineering, physical/bio sciences

• UCSC Engagement Activities
  • Faculty and graduate students engaged with business researchers
  • Delivery of education & research to local technology workers
  • Engagement with local workers in learning communities
  • Transfer and commercialization of new technologies

Activities: The follow are identified as SCTA activities that would result achievement of the above goals. This list is not sufficient to achieve all identified goals. Those elements listed under 2008 are proposed but not confirmed activities the Chamber / SCTA could/would undertake next year.

• Events
  • Education programs (less than 2 hours)
    • 2008
      • 1 Breakfast Briefing
      • 4 Lunch Programs
    • Future
      • Shared corporate training (e.g., a project management program)
  • Conference
    • 2008: 1 - ½ day conference
  • SCTA mixers
    • 2008: 5 tech mixers in months alternating with Breakfast briefings except August and December
• Networks
  • Build SCTA communications list including detail of areas of interest
  • Build communities of interest
    • 2008
      • Identify champions in two communities of interest
      • Develop communications stream and supporting events in two communities of interest
• Marketing for local technologists
  • Business exposition –
    • 2008: Business fair program element (mini-conference) to include tech vendor element
  • Presence / display at SCTA events (table / booth)

• Internship and job-placement programs for students
  • 2008
    • Cooperative with UCSC / Cabrillo placement organizations
    • Communication to technologists re placement opportunities

• Think-tank to benefit of local tech
  • 2008 – Salon on local technology (evening meeting with 20-40 invited thought leaders)

• Local social networking resource (LinkedIn; Plaxo; Facebook)
  • 2008 – research ability to earmark Linkedin pages to SCTA
  • Future –
    • Tech sector “facebook” pages in SCTA Extranet
    • Use SCTA technology to facilitate communications – e.g., Sharepoint, Connect

Plan elements: The following is a partial list of initial plan elements to achieve the above goals and activities.

• Organization
  • Form SCTA committee – provide program guidance, support marketing
  • Identify program / project champions
  • Develop Business Plan elements / Chamber board approval
• Marketing
  • Scoping SCTA vision and program / Define 2008 SCTA program
  • Review naming (SCTA or TASCC) and branding elements
  • Public Launch
  • Recruit SCTA/Chamber membership
  • Develop email list
  • Marketing for 2008 programming
• Infrastructure
  • Build SCTA CRM resource
  • Form Create SCTA Webpage
  • Provide SCTA group-work space
• Operations
  • Program definition and planning (per above)
  • Implementation