Category: News

San Diego’s Good News of the Week – August 16, 2024

By Enya Castañeda,

Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week. GNOTW is sponsored by Manpower San Diego.

Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday. → Sign up

For the week of August 16, 2024, here’s what we’re reading:

…and here are some events and opportunities:

From our partners:

Last call: Join us at EDC’s Summer Bash

Together with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. and Novo Brazil Brewing Co., join us August 22 at EDC’s annual Summer Bash. Meet our keynote speaker Vividion Therapeutics’ President and CEO Aleksandra Rizo, and enjoy a lively evening celebrating all that makes San Diego: Life. Changing.

Get Tickets!

 

Business information and resources page

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Enya Castañeda
Enya Castañeda

Coordinator, Investor Relations & Marketing Communications

A note from Mark

By Mark Cafferty,

Inspiring leadership, culture, and coaching

How would it feel if all your employees truly loved their job at your company? What if your entire team was dedicated to your company’s mission, vision, culture, and values?

These questions formed the foundation of a wonderful and impactful discussion that a small group of our EDC board members and investors got to have with retired WD-40 CEO Garry Ridge last month.

If you knew Garry when he was on our board or crossed paths with him over the years in San Diego, you know that he is relentlessly dedicated to people, culture, and continuous learning and growth. You feel it in every conversation you have with him and in every presentation you hear him make. Garry never viewed himself as a manager of people, but rather a coach who had the privilege of helping every team member he supported meet their true potential while finding joy and meaning in the work. And even in his retirement, Garry is still coaching and helping other business leaders grow to see themselves in new and different lights, and to find and embrace every learning moment.

As the summer months wind down, Garry’s words serve as a great reminder to make sure we are always putting the needs of our teams first, and that we are continuously challenging ourselves to live the missions, visions, and values we so often speak of—because “happy people create happy communities” right here in San Diego.

While our EDC board and executive committee do not meet in the month of August, we hope to see many of you at our Summer Bash on August 22 for an inspiring keynote from Vividion Therapeutics President and CEO Aleksandra Rizo, local drinks and bites, live music, and more than 350 innovators like you.

With gratitude,

Mark Cafferty
Mark Cafferty

President & CEO

Read EDC’s monthly report

San Diego’s Good News of the Week – August 9, 2024

By Enya Castañeda,

Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week. GNOTW is sponsored by Manpower San Diego.

Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday. → Sign up

For the week of August 9, 2024, here’s what we’re reading:

…and here are some events and opportunities:

From our partners:

Three things to expect at EDC’s Summer Bash

Ready to join EDC and Alexandra Real Estate for our summer party on August 22? We’ll enjoy an inspiring keynote from Vividion Therapeutics’ President and CEO Aleksandra Rizo, hosted food and drinks, good vibes, live music, and more than 350 San Diego: Life. Changing. innovators like you!

Learn More & Get Tickets!

 

Business information and resources page

Be in the know – sign up below to receive future editions of GNOTW.

Want to submit your event or news update to our weekly newsletter? Contact us for more information.

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Enya Castañeda
Enya Castañeda

Coordinator, Investor Relations & Marketing Communications

San Diego’s Good News of the Week – August 2, 2024

By Enya Castañeda,

Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week. GNOTW is sponsored by Manpower San Diego.

Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday. → Sign up

For the week of August 2, 2024, here’s what we’re reading:

…and here are some events and opportunities:

From our partners:

Join us at EDC’S 2024 Summer Bash!

Together with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc., EDC invites you to join us August 22 at our annual Summer Bash celebration. NOVO Kombucha in hand, guests will enjoy an inspiring keynote from Vividion Therapeutics’ President and CEO Aleksandra Rizo. Get to know 400+ industry leaders who continue to make San Diego: Life. Changing.

Purchase Tickets Here!

 

Business information and resources page

Be in the know – sign up below to receive future editions of GNOTW.

Want to submit your event or news update to our weekly newsletter? Contact us for more information.

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Enya Castañeda
Enya Castañeda

Coordinator, Investor Relations & Marketing Communications

San Diego’s Good News of the Week – July 26, 2024

By Enya Castañeda,

Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week. GNOTW is sponsored by Manpower San Diego.

Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday. → Sign up

For the week of July 26, 2024, here’s what we’re reading:

…and here are some events and opportunities:

From our partners:

Join us at EDC’S 2024 Summer Bash!

Join us August 22 together with Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. at our unforgettable summer celebration hosted just for you, San Diego. Enjoy an inspiring keynote by Vividion Therapeutics’ CEO Aleksandra Rizo, plus live music, local food and drinks, and ample networking opportunities. Get to know 400+ industry leaders who continue to make San Diego: Life. Changing.

Purchase Tickets Here!

 

Business information and resources page

Be in the know – sign up below to receive future editions of GNOTW.

Want to submit your event or news update to our weekly newsletter? Contact us for more information.

sign up for gnotw

Enya Castañeda
Enya Castañeda

Coordinator, Investor Relations & Marketing Communications

San Diego’s Good News of the Week – July 19, 2024

By Enya Castañeda,

Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week. GNOTW is sponsored by Manpower San Diego.

Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday. → Sign up

For the week of July 19, 2024, here’s what we’re reading:

…and here are some events and opportunities:

From our partners:

Best practices for AI in higher education

One in four firms utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the San Diego region. To support a local talent pipeline, EDC partnered with Deloitte to address student preparedness and AI utilization. Nearly 50 faculty and administrators from Advancing San Diego’s Verified Programs attended the workshop to discuss the future of AI implementation in higher education.

Here’s What We Learned

 

Business information and resources page

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Enya Castañeda
Enya Castañeda

Coordinator, Investor Relations & Marketing Communications

Best practices for AI in higher education

By Olivia Jones,

takeaways from Advancing San Diego’s AI Best Practices event

In a regional economy where one in four local firms utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI), it is essential that San Diego students be prepared with the skills necessary to maximize the use of AI. To address this need, Deloitte and San Diego Regional EDC convened nearly 50 faculty and administrators from Advancing San Diego’s Verified Programs to collaborate and workshop the future of AI implementation in higher education.

Six THINGS WE LEARNED:

  1. Personalize learning and content

    AI can revolutionize personalized learning by analyzing student performance data to identify areas where students need more support and adjust curriculum accordingly. Additionally, AI enables educators to quickly adjust to student needs by creating lecture materials, interactive learning modules, and more. This dual capability expands educators’ ability to create tailored content and saves time on resource creation, enhancing both the learning experience and instructional quality.

  1. Streamline administrative tasks

    AI tools can manage routine administrative tasks such as scheduling, grading, and responding to common student questions. This can reduce the administrative burden on educators, allowing them to concentrate more on teaching and mentoring, thereby improving overall efficiency.

  1. AI literacy and prompt engineering

    Understanding prompt engineering, the skill of constructing the right questions, can significantly enhance the utility of AI in educational settings. The way questions are framed can drastically impact AI responses and, if done properly, reduce the risk of “hallucinations,” AI-generated information that may be incorrect or outdated. This literacy ensures that these tools are used to their full potential, providing accurate and relevant information that supports learning objectives. It also effectively prepares students for jobs in San Diego’s innovation economy, which is already adopting AI at staggering rates .

  1. Emphasize higher-order thinking

    The integration of AI in education is shifting instructive approaches, emphasizing higher-order thinking skills outlined in Bloom’s Taxonomy. With AI handling lower-order tasks such as remembering and understanding information, educators can focus on fostering analysis, evaluation, and creation in students. This shift encourages deeper learning and critical thinking, preparing students for complex real-world challenges.

  1. Establish effective governance frameworks

    Integrating AI into education will require strong governance frameworks to address ethical concerns like bias and privacy, clear policies and guidelines for its use in assignments and assessments, and a regular process for evaluating and updating these frameworks to keep pace with the evolving AI landscape.

  1. Mitigate bias and protect privacy

    Addressing bias in AI training data is important for fair educational outcomes. Ensuring AI models are trained on diverse, representative datasets can improve accuracy and inclusiveness. Privacy concerns are also paramount; public AI tools can inadvertently use any input data for retraining, risking exposure of sensitive information. Enterprise-specific models, which do not learn off of private data, might offer a more secure solution for educational institutions.

To learn more and get involved in EDC’s work, contact:

Olivia Jones
Olivia Jones

Coordinator, Talent Initiatives

aPPLY TO BE A VERIFIED PROGRAM

sEE edc’S AI series

San Diego’s Good News of the Week – July 12, 2024

By Enya Castañeda,

Every week, ‘Good News of the Week’ features a curation of positive headlines from San Diego, delivered straight to your inbox. A blend of aggregated stories from San Diego’s most trusted news sources and original EDC-created content, GNOTW provides a comprehensive recap of the region’s best stories from the past week. GNOTW is sponsored by Manpower San Diego.

Get Good News of the Week in your inbox every Friday. → Sign up

For the week of July 12, 2024, here’s what we’re reading:

…and here are some events and opportunities:

From our partners:

EDC, WTCSD host international delegations for Invest in San Diego event

Together with Boston Consulting Group and Biocom, EDC and World Trade Center San Diego hosted an Invest in San Diego breakfast last month to welcome BIO International Conference attendees. More than 100 delegates from countries including South Korea, Canada, Taiwan, and France learned about the region’s Life Sciences industry, cross-border advantage, and local resources including EDC and the Life Sciences Industry Accelerator.

Read More

 

Business information and resources page

Be in the know – sign up below to receive future editions of GNOTW.

Want to submit your event or news update to our weekly newsletter? Contact us for more information.

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Enya Castañeda
Enya Castañeda

Coordinator, Investor Relations & Marketing Communications

A note from Mark

By Mark Cafferty,

Summer in San Diego

Summer always marks some fun, exciting, and impactful moments for San Diego’s community and economy. The Padres have continued to play great baseball as they head into the upcoming MLB All-Star Break. The Rady Shell is packing in world-class acts along with performances from our own San Diego Symphony. The San Diego County Fair in Del Mar continues to host concerts, agricultural exhibitions, and some of our region’s most creative food and drink offerings. And of course, when you are home to the nation’s largest population of active-duty military and veterans, Independence Day takes on a greater meaning. To celebrate, an estimated 800,000 travelers made their way through San Diego International Airport over the Fourth of July holiday.

When it comes to impact, our San Diego Convention Center has been in full swing. After hosting tens of thousands of life sciences leaders from across the globe at the BIO International Convention, San Diego is gearing up for 2024’s Comic-Con International, welcoming more than 100,000 visitors, generating $160 million in local economic impact, and boosting small business revenue.

Another event that has become synonymous with the summer months and has generated a great deal of pride within the San Diego community (no pun intended) is San Diego Pride. The San Diego Pride Parade and Festival is celebrating 50 years, having grown to become one of the largest civic events in the San Diego region and among the largest Pride celebrations in the country. The weekend-long event brings together more than 300,000 people and has an economic impact of almost $30 million.

As we focus on the continued advancement of a regional economic development agenda where inclusion is a cornerstone and economic imperative, we need to continuously reassess and re-evaluate what inclusion (and our related actions) truly means. Our economic development dialogue, agenda, and goals must recognize and remember the impact that small and LGBTQ-owned businesses have on our economy throughout the year and see the stimulus effect that events like San Diego Pride and others have on our community.

As ever, we invite you to lean in with us:

Looking forward to the weeks ahead and making the most of this summer season with our investors and partners.

Mark Cafferty
Mark Cafferty

President & CEO

Read EDC’s monthly report

EDC, WTCSD host international delegations for Invest in San Diego event

By Emily Irion,

Kicking off this year’s BIO International Conference, San Diego Regional EDC and World Trade Center San Diego (WTCSD) hosted an Invest in San Diego breakfast event together with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) and Biocom. The regional ‘pitch’ event played host to more than 100 attendees representing international delegations including South Korea, Canada, Taiwan, France, and more.

With idyllic views of the harbor and downtown, City of San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria kicked off the program highlighting the Life Sciences industry as a crucial pillar of San Diego’s economy. He underscored the region’s commitment to fostering industry growth through initiatives such as the Life Sciences Industry Accelerator, designed to streamline permitting for Life Sciences projects within San Diego.

EDC SVP and Executive Director of WTCSD Nikia Clarke then presented on San Diego’s competitive advantages:

  • San Diego is a top three Life Sciences market with a robust research and development hub and a growing manufacturing sector. With more than 60,000 total Life Sciences jobs countywide, 33 percent are dedicated to manufacturing.
  • The region boasts more than 80 research and 25 post-secondary institutions. Conferring approximately 17,000 STEM degrees annually, San Diego is growing its degree-holding population at a faster rate than any other California metro.
  • San Diego’s proximity to Mexico provides dynamic cross-border economic opportunities for businesses to access additional skilled talent and Baja California’s manufacturing expertise in medical devices and more.

The event concluded with a panel moderated by Miguel Motto, Vice President, Strategic Operations and San Diego Office Head of Biocom, together with panelists Matt Abernethy of Neurocrine Biosciences, Sarah Boyce of Avidity Biosciences, Alison Budelsky of Eli Lilly, and Jeff Labbadia of Element Biosciences. With representation from Life Sciences companies of all sizes, the panelists shared why they continue to expand in San Diego. Although their individual stories are unique, they all made one thing clear: they invest in San Diego because of its diverse and highly skilled talent pool, collaborative spirit, and unrivaled quality of life.

Interested in investing in San Diego?

EDC and WTCSD work directly with companies—free of charge—to help them grow in San Diego. Contact our team today:

Emily Irion
Emily Irion

Sr. Manager, World Trade Center San Diego

Learn more here