San Diego Meets the Xconomists: A Real-World Innovation Commons

Meet the Xconomists

The heat wave broke with impeccable timing, and we were grateful that “California weather” was back as San Diego’s innovation leaders gathered for Xconomy’s sixth annual networking event.

Xconomy founder and CEO Bob Buderi also returned to San Diego for the reception, which brings together local startup founders, investors, and innovators in a real-world realization of the virtual commons that Xconomy provides online. The discourse that brings us together, in both the real world and through Xconomy’s 10-city network, is the stuff that dreams are made of—advancing new technologies in IT and the life sciences, startups, mobile, cleantech, and healthtech.

Our annual “Meet the Xconomists” reception is our way of saying thanks to the folks who have helped Xconomy become the most authoritative source of news and insight about San Diego’s startup ecosystem. Increasingly, though, innovation communities outside of San Diego are tuning in to our stories about local entrepreneurship and innovation.

After adding websites for Texas, Boulder-Denver, and Wisconsin in 2013, Xconomy recently put the Raleigh-Durham region on our innovation map. As our network has expanded, there are now more Xconomy readers outside San Diego who are following the innovation in our region than there are in San Diego itself.

This was the vision that led Bob to start Xconomy in the first place: We provide a way to connect people and ideas through a unique online network that provides local coverage with a global impact.

Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.