All posts tagged: San Francisco

Digigram Newsletter of January 2023!

Published by Gert Christen

Welcome back to DIGIGRAM! Thanks to those who read our last issue and inquired about USA Launching Pad and the recent Connected Life class at UC Berkeley. Excited to share that the next USA Launching Pad starts in March, and Connected Life will make a comeback in the fall semester (it was voted the second-most popular startup class at UC Berkeley, woohoo!). 2023 is off to a stormy start – literally! San Francisco just recorded the wettest 22-day period since 1862. It was so wet that it saturated sand dunes, which gave way to drop a world-war II bunker onto the beach below. Looks like a scene from the “1941” movie! Luckily, the sun has finally returned to dry out a soaked California. Photo: “Relocated” bunker at Fort Funston (Source) In this edition of Digigram: #1: MIT & Climate Energy Prize – This long-running competition for student-led climate startups is solving some of the biggest issues facing our environment. Hear from this year’s organizing team about how promising young people from the world’s best universities fight climate change today. #2: …

Hybrid Work and San Francisco Commercial Real Estate

Published by Gert Christen

The COVID-19 pandemic has completely shifted the state of work in the country. While many employers are demanding their employees return to the office, workers are seeking much more flexible arrangements. A survey from Gallup in June 2022 found that approximately 56% of full-time employees in the U.S., or more than 70 million workers, say their job can be done remotely. Of those surveyed, 50% were adapting to hybrid work schedules, 30% were exclusively working remotely, and only 20% were working entirely from their office. The same survey found that six out of 10 employees working exclusively remotely are “extremely likely to change companies” if not offered remote flexibility at work. In Silicon Valley, 2-3 days of remote working has emerged as the new normal, with Wednesdays and Thursdays as the days when most employees work at the office. With technology moving in the direction of catering to remote and hybrid employee needs, employees are moving out of more expensive cities in an effort to save money, cut back on commute time, and achieve better work/life balance. If you’ve …

Silicon Valley Innovation Tours Done Right

Published by Gert Christen

This article was first published as a LinkedIn article by Antonio Grgic on November 12, 2018. He condensed his personal learnings from a study tour to Silicon Valley organized by HWZ University of Applied Sciences Zurich. What follows is the English translation of the article with an introduction by Gert Christen who organized and led the study tour. Silicon Valley Tours – Just Tourism or Meaningful for Innovation? If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area you know the two types of buses shuttling people between San Francisco and Silicon Valley: Employee buses of the large tech companies on the one hand and chartered buses carrying visitors from all over the world to the same tech companies on the other. Each week there are hundreds of delegations from all over the world traveling around the Silicon Valley determined to learn its secrets. They fall into five categories: Politicians who want to learn how to set policies that attract innovative companies, resulting in more high qualified jobs and highly profitable and future-proof companies. Business people who want to learn how to be more innovative and who want to sell their products, find new suppliers or create …

Invitation to BRIDGE SF Summit, San Francisco, September 6-9th, 2016

Published by Gert Christen

BRIDGE SF brings public, private, non-profit, and academic institutions together to  drive innovation for a better tomorrow in cities. Organized in conjunction with the San Francisco Mayor’s Office and the University of California, Berkeley, City Innovate  invites policymakers and leading innovators for a four-day event focused on citizen-critical issues. Topics among others are: Mobility in Cities (City of San Francisco, City Innovate and MIT Media Lab) City Planning Best Practices (University of California Berkeley and UI Labs Chicago) City Infrastructure of the Future: (ID3 and CivicMakers) Urban Sensors (City of Los Angeles and Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University) Global City Knowledge Transfer (U.S. Department of Commerce and National Resource Defense Council) The Digital Age of Manufacturing (City Innovate) Clean Energy (City of San Francisco and Intelligent City Forum) The full program of the event can be found here. An event brochure can be downloaded. Registration for the Bridge SF Summit here. Looking forward to meeting you at the Bridge SF Summit 2016!

Waiting for the mayor of San Francisco in his meeting room…

Published by Gert Christen

I had the opportunity to visit with the City of San Francisco as a part of a delegation from Zurich. Very impressive how San Francisco deals with tight budgets, constant growth and the need to specialize. There is much more to the management of this city than this impressive meeting table and door leading to the mayor’s office….. Zurich and San Francisco have been sister cities for more than 10 years and I am representing the startup community on the committee. And, interestingely, both San Francisco and New York city managements seem to have a thing with very massive wooden tables!