watsonville

Five teams compete for cash and honors at Watsonville agtech hackathon

16 March 2016 by Steve Blum
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It’s more complicated than you realise.

An application that farmers can use to manage the hundreds of tasks they have to work through every day was the winner at the third Apps for Ag hackathon, held in Watsonville on Sunday. The two-person Central Coast Coordinate team took top honors with a web application that uses calendar and map technology to schedule individual jobs for specific locations in the fields.

A total of fifteen competitors representing five teams took part in the competition, hosted by Cabrillo College at the Solari Green Technology Center in downtown Watsonville.… More

Local broadband policy models presented to central Sierra policy makers


Click to download the presentation.

Like it or not, convincing an incumbent provider to invest in improving broadband infrastructure in your community means putting a better deal in front of them than they can get elsewhere. Both Google and AT&T have money to spend on fiber upgrades, but not very much, relatively speaking. So they’re issuing short lists of cities, and then sitting back and waiting to see what those candidates put on the table.

Two things top their wish lists: getting permits quicker and cheaper, and access to public right of ways and real estate.… More

Watsonville growing economy and cash with muni dark fiber

“We want to be able to service other business”, said Bob Berry, public works project manager for the City of Watsonville. “We think we want to turn this into an enterprise fund”.

The city is installing dark fiber between key public buildings and, incidentally, through core business areas of Watsonville. The project was launched after Charter Communications raised the price it was charging for similar connections from free to $150,000 a year, a move made possible by its shift from local to statewide cable franchising.… More

Watsonville moving ahead with city fiber project to replace Charter service

18 September 2013 by Steve Blum
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New conduit is in blue, existing conduit in red, existing fiber in green.

The Watsonville, California city council voted last week to ask for bids to build a fiber optic backbone network that will connect public facilities from one end of the city to another.

The first phase of the project, which is now out to bid, involves installing a total of about one mile of conduit that will link up to another three miles or so of existing conduit and fiber lines, creating a continuous path.… More