After a couple weeks in San Francisco, it was time for me to reboot the Drive-By cross-country trip.

I re-started the trip by meeting Sean Tario (@eurotario) in Santa Cruz, California to learn about his passion in building authentic communities and engaging the local Santa Cruz geek community to drive local economic development.

Sean and I originally connected at a SXSW party in San Francisco (another reminder that a big part of life is in showing up), and I immediately loved his passion, energy and authenticity. Given what I’ve learned about local entrepreneurial communities throughout my current cross-country trip, I couldn’t pass up his gracious offer to show me around the Santa Cruz scene.

What’s Happening in Santa Cruz?

In short, people are organizing, getting involved and finding productive ways to drive economic change by focusing on the local community. Santa Cruz has some great assets: a great climate, beautiful surroundings, a deep talent base, proximity to the Valley “over the hill” and growing community support. The foundation for attracting and supporting the creative class is in place.

But it’s not perfect: the proximity to the Valley clouds the opportunities and “realness” of the entrepreneurs in Santa Cruz. Even successful entrepreneurs living in Santa Cruz may not know about the depth of entrepreneurial activity in the area, yet another reminder that organizing, building and promoting local communities can play a huge role in driving economic change, particularly entrepreneurial activity.

Even though we often focus on business leaders, building the community requires a broader focus on business, culture and politics.

Good Times Santa Cruz | New Blood:

Santa Cruz Next [is] an organization that is determined to get more twenty- and thirtysomethings involved in Santa Cruz civic life.

… “Since Santa Cruz Next has gotten started we’ve had dozens of people in our generation get off their butts and start applying to local positions in government and industry, to local boards and organizations,” says Sean Tario, a SC Next member who works for a tech company over the hill. “That’s a testament to what we’re trying to make happen.”

What’s awesome?

Lots:

• Coworking “entrepreneurial catalyst” NextSpace. The kind of place I have always wanted to create (or lacking that, work from).
• Customer feedback service UserVoice, a simple, easy way to capture customer feedback and empower innovation. Richard White, Marcus Nelson and Scott Rutherford were kind enough to take an hour out of their day to riff on business models and web innovation, topics I could have discussed all day, keeping them from, well, actually doing it.
• Sol and Jacob from 12 Seconds.tv, a place to share video status updates online. Why only 12 seconds? “Because anything longer is boring.”

And lots more: if you want to learn more about Santa Cruz and its economic, entrepreneurial and community evolution, I’m sure Sean would love to help you out, or start with the links below:

• Sean Tario
• Santa Cruz Geeks and the corresponding Google Group
• Good Times Santa Cruz | New Blood
• Santa Cruz Summit 2009
• Santa Cruz Next
• Santa Cruz Business Portal, and Cruz Business: 2008 was a Great Year for Santa Cruz Geeks
• NextSpace
• UserVoice
• 12 Seconds.tv
• Richard Florida, the Creative Class and The Rise of the Creative Class

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Do you have a suggestion on people and communities I should check out on my way back to Virginia? Drop me a line…