Live from the 2019 Top Tech Awards in Del Mar, where 1,000 people gathered to honor 228 finalists from over 400 nominations. Hear award presentations across education, government, nonprofits, startups, and companies, plus backstage interviews with IT directors and CTOs about their work and ties to San Diego.
Welcome to a special edition of the Tacos in Tech podcast where we recently recorded live during the annual Top Tech Awards alongside our great ecosystem partner Cox Business. We set up backstage to quickly interview the recipients as they had just received their award. Something interesting you'll note of our interviewees of this episode is the broadness of their industries in that tonight we got to appreciate how widespread tech has penetrated from government to biotech to even a hardwood floor company. Listen in as the nearly 1,000 attendees shuffle up to the stage in Del Mar in May of 2019. Ladies and gentlemen, it's time to present the 2019 Top Tech Awards. Returning as this year's master of ceremony, he's a Fox 5 Sports analyst and the host of Extra 1360's Hardwick, Schaefer and friends. And she's an associate press and EMMY Award winning KFMB Channel 8 anchor Nick Hardwick and Heather Myers. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the 2019 Top Tech Awards. Here we are. Come on, you've had enough drinks to be a little louder than that. Let's go. You're here. It's Thursday night, Friday light, and we owe it to our event planner, Sarah Brown, who somehow pulled all this off. The logistics that go into this thing are absolutely astounding. Sarah is a rock star. By the way, Heather, you nailed it with the weather this morning. Great job. There's a joke somewhere to fit in here about a weather woman in San Diego and the percentage of getting it right. Nailed it. You know what? The weather did call for rain in the morning, sunshine by the afternoon. But can I get an amen for the ladies in the house? We're inside and our hair is not going to be blowing in the wind. Yeah, I helped you out a little bit here. Well, thanks to so many of you for being out here this evening. The vision and tenacity of innovators like those in the audience this evening are why we are here to celebrate tonight's qualified top tech nominees. All 228 of them culled from more than 400 nominations received, representing a wide variety of industries. Ladies and gentlemen, for making it to the final cut, please join us in congratulating the 2019 Qualified Top Tech nominees. All right, it's time to reveal our 2019 Top Tech Honorees Awards will be presented in the categories of private and public business and nonprofits of varying sizes, as well as in government, education, and as Duane mentioned, our brand new store startup category. We'll also be presenting the 2019 Top Tech Lifetime and Cox business exemplary Awards. All right, let's begin with the category of education. Our first 2019 Top Tech Honoree was recently voted district employee of the year and is recognized for gently pushing the adoption of new technologies that have improved working and teaching conditions, reduced maintenance and support costs, and. And made everyone's job, in fact, their lives, a whole lot easier. Ladies and gentlemen, please help US in congratulating 2019 education Top tech honoree, Director of Information Technology for the Encinitas Union School District, Nathan Short. Hi, I'm Nathan Short, IT Director for Encinitas Union School District. Awesome. Nathan, thanks so much for coming out. Have you been to Top Tech before? I have. I've been nominated several times before and love to come to this event even just as a date night for myself and the wife. That's awesome. Very cool. Tell us a little about NCN School Union District. Sure. I was just speaking with some of the staff recently, and I really wanted to convey to them how much working for the school district has really felt like a Camelot for me. So we're shepherds of Camelot, and what we do with putting children first means so much to me, and it's the passion of everyone around me at the district, and it's fantastic. That's awesome. How has technology kind of impacted you and how the school kind of works? I mean, I'm guessing they're way more tech forward now. Yes. A lot of the implementations, some of the tiny corners of technology implementation have had actually really big impact on children's lives. When we've got children that have no ability to communicate other than eye movement, we've implemented technology and worked with the county. So that child, just a week before last, they've been working with some prototype equipment for the past two months. They were able to speak to their mother for the very first time in their life. That's awesome. Well, Nathan, thanks so much for being here. We're really excited to be hearing how much we're impacting the community through your technology work. So appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. In the category of government, the 2019 Top Tech Honoree is new to his position, having replaced a 15 year veteran. And while that was no easy feat, he's already made a tremendous impact enhancing network security and infrastructure by way of creative thinking. Ladies and gentlemen, please join US in congratulating 2019 government top tech Award honoree, Manager of Technology for the San Diego County Sheriff's Department, it's Keith Fernandez. All right, we are backstage here at the Top Tech Awards with Keith Fernandez. Congratulations, Keith. Thanks for being Here, tell us real quickly, what's your role within the sheriff's department? So within the sheriff's department, I manage the sheriff's network, the wide area network and then also the cybersecurity operations for the department. Interesting. Can you tell us a bit like how has cybersecurity advanced within the department over the years? Oh, it's grown greatly. When I first started years ago, we used to use older firewalls where it literally was just like one PC for the entire department to cover it. And it was an antiquated technology, you know, 20 years ago to where, you know, basically it would turn red and you'd flip a switch and you'd be done. Either it was working or it wasn't. Whereas now we're using so many different technologies and so many different security layers, it's grown greatly. That's awesome. Have you been impacted by the local technology community at all and what you kind of what you implement into your day job? Yeah, yeah. We do leverage a lot of the local technology that's from talent or other things like that. Most of the vendors, the local vendors, we've looked at some off the top of my head, I can't think of any of that. All good, all good. Well Keith, thanks so much for being here and congratulations again. Appreciate it. Thank you. Congratulations. Ladies and gentlemen, this year's small nonprofit top tech awardee is credited with the conversion and enhancement of the core networking technology of A community chartered 71 year old credit union. Here's his story. With his vision and constant quest to improve the banking services Point Loma Credit Union provides, Maurer is changing the way we bank. Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in congratulating 2019 Small Nonprofit Tomtech Award Honoree Chief Information Officer for Point Loma Credit Union Matthew Maurer, the 2019 large nonprofit top tech honoree credited with the re architecture of revenue generating technology products that transition to a more secure and scalable cloud solution and a 70% reduction in his organizational's capital expenditure budget. Join us in congratulating 2019 large nonprofit top Tech award honoree Chief Technology officer for San Diego Family Health Centers. It's Das Bakamoudi. Das, thanks so much for being here. Congratulations. Thank you, thanks a lot. Tell us your role within the kind of the tech community and what you do. I work as a chief technology officer for Family Health center of San Diego. I've been working there for 15 years now. So what we do, we are a not for profit federally qualified health clinic and we have about 51 sites in which we actually take care of underserved uninsured patients. So pretty much this is for any patient that doesn't have enough insurance or no insurance, they're welcome. Yes, pretty much we take care of close to 4,000 plus patients a day, so about 300 plus providers. And we have 2,000 employees in our company. And pretty much when I joined the company, we literally had no products, just one product in there. Right now the whole company runs on products that me and my team develop. It is a team effort. There's never one person but we have a very small team and we do everything possible to actually make the whole medical records electronic. As well as everything that we do, the whole company runs on products that we develop. Wow, that's incredible. So I imagine the tech community locally impacts you from talent wise and getting ideas from startups maybe to implement there. Tell us a little bit about how that local technology community has kind of come in house in many ways. What we found is healthcare. When I started 15 years ago was in a place where everything was transforming to electronic. A lot of companies were back in paper based systems where it was very difficult. So we have noticed the same thing happening in other vendors. Everyone, they were just trying to support the electronic transformation of health systems. So we were the first to actually go in there right now. When we did this, we made sure that we are the guys who actually move to cloud the fastest. So we actually are on Azure cloud. So we have been on the cloud for last three years now stable. We have a meaningful stage two certified product which brings in a lot of money for incentives for the providers. So from ID being a cost center, it turned into a kind of like a profit center. So we make money off the products we make. So even as a not for profit we kind of pool in some money. So it helps in the mission that we have. Yeah. Wow. Das, congratulations. Really impactful. Thanks so much for what you do for the community. Thanks a lot. To present this year's lifetime Achievement award, please welcome 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Chief Technology Officer of Asset Marketing Systems and Madison Avenue Securities, Mr. Casey Cotton. I'm especially pleased this year to present the 2019 Top Tech lifetime Achievement Award to the man whose current responsibilities is for educational business systems integrated by more than 50 school districts throughout San Diego County. But that's only the tip of the OS bundle. Here's why Mark Zecka is a powerhouse in the field of business technology. He has extensive experience as a C level tech executive for Fortune 500 companies and also in the public sector. He's worked in the US as well as Paris as a Chief Technology Officer. He came back to the States and San Diego to bring his extensive knowledge and experience to the community as Executive Director of Educational Business Systems at the San Diego County Office of Education. A true leader, Zeka's accomplishments lie not only in the important technology work he spearheaded, but also in the people he's led and mentored. He notes his best accomplishments not through successful projects or bottom lines, but through the people he's been able to support throughout his experience. Zeka is now dedicating his career using technology to promote education in the youth of today. At the San Diego County Office of Education, Zeka is responsible for the educational business systems and that cover over 50 school districts throughout San Diego County. Zeca's passion for education extends beyond the office. He's passing on his expertise to the next generation and teaches at the University of Phoenix, Forbes School of Business and the University of Montpelier, France as a way to further give service to the community. Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in congratulating the 2019 Top Tech Lifetime Achievement Honoree, Executive Director of Educational Business Systems for San Diego County Office of Education, Mark Zakov. I am very deeply honored and grateful for this recognition. However, it wouldn't be possible without some special people in my life. I've had some very great bosses. Alex Lukianoff, Dave Ellington, Jean Luc Rivera, Terry Loftus. Even more important, this would not have been possible without the passion of some great teams that I've had the privilege to be a part of over the years. And I could not have done anything valuable without the support of my wife Barbara, who after 40 years has put up with 10 moves, thousands of nights of implementations, and more pizza than anyone could see stand as fellow technologists and geeks. You know, Moore's Law tells us that technology improves and replicates itself over any unit of time. And so over the years, I found that it's not just changes to systems or networks or data. It's really all about the people. If our craft doesn't have value, it is in leveraging technology to help and support and secure and improve the lives of the world around us. It's improving our community and improving the people whom we live with. It took me a lot of yesterdays to see that today, it's the most important mission for me and I urge you all to continue to make it a passion for the future. Again, thank you so much for this honor. I will cherish it always. We are backstage with Dr. Mark Zeca of the San Diego County Office of Education. Mark, thank you so much and congratulations. Thanks, Neil. Great to be here. Tell us about kind of the role of where education and technology converge for you. Well, you know, it's interesting. The students themselves, even down into the kindergarten, they're driving the technology. These kids live with this and they're really helping to push us to do better and better, both in networking in terms of applications and just accessibility and they're driving mobility to the end. And I think this is great. So they're bringing products and stuff that you then integrate because they're using it on the daily or how's that work? And that's going to be the way of the world I see for the future. You're going to have customer driven product base that you'll go. You'll not only integrate it, but you'll find out how to leverage it and make it better. Interesting. Do you find students even want to be on the development of product, even like working on new ideas of how we can integrate with your team at all? Has that happened yet? Well, actually, there's actual formal classes that the students are taking part of, so it's interesting to see how they kind of generate that and then what we do is kind of surround them with the right tools to just innovate like crazy. Wow, that's really cool. Thanks, Mark. Congratulations. You bet. Thank you, Neil. Now presenting this year's Cox Business Exemplary and Startup Awards. Please welcome Cox Business Director of Enterprise Sales, Daniel Martinez and Director of Order. Come on, give it up. That's all right. Director of Order Management Sales Support, Erica Burke. 2019 Cox Business Exemplary award recipient is described as a brilliant software engineer and with good reason. The online research marketplace place that he co founded and continues to lead as CTO not only serves researchers from more than 100 countries, it also played a pivotal role in the creation of the online research outsourcing market. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me congratulating the 2019 Cox business exemplary honoree, co founder and Chief technology officer of scientist.com, christopher Peterson. All right, we are backstage at the Top Tech Awards with Chris Peterson from scientist.com Congratulations. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. The startup community is really excited about what you guys have been up to, especially your recent just like uptick. Tell us like what I mean, what have you been excited about working on lately? You know, it's been a really exciting time@scIENTist.com We've been at this for I guess 12 years now, but the last 5 years has really started to take off and it's just, it's really gratifying to see researchers and drug discovery research in particular, using our software to help cure disease. Yeah, that's awesome. How do you feel connected to the local startup community? I mean, do you feel that connection from talent wise and other inspirations? Yeah, I do. You know, San Diego is. When I first moved to San Diego, my first boss here said it's the biggest small town in America and it really does feel that way. Yeah, I've met a lot of great people. I see a lot of familiar faces at events like this and yeah, it's a great place to be. Awesome. Well, Chris, congratulations so much and we're excited for you guys as well. Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. This is a great event. Good evening. In our newly minted top tech startup category, this year's honoree is described as a strong company leader who broke down barriers to create a more collaborative working environment while also implementing other important technological achievements. Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in congratulating 2019 startup top tech honoree, director of software engineering at Arista md, Travis Fawcett. And we are backstage with Travis Fawcett from Arista md. Travis, what's Arista? Can you give us a quick overview? Yeah. Arista is a platform that we built over the last four years that helps primary care doctors reach out to specialists for kind of the underserved community as far as healthcare. So we're solving that gap of providing healthcare services directly to kind of the non insured market. Got it. And that's what we've been working on. Very cool. I feel like that's the very San Diego thing, this digital health space, you know, kind of merging health, life sciences and tech. Do you feel that in San Diego too as kind of being that convergence nexus? I do. I think it's coming up. I mean the last, I mean when we started four years ago, it's still been a very, very tough market to break into. You have large EHR companies that control basically the hospital systems that go on and to get in and break in has been a challenge and there's some government onc stuff that's going on to help that, but I would definitely say it's up and coming. Very cool. How long have you been here in San Diego? I've been living in san Diego for 14 years. Oh, wow. So you've seen it grow and change for sure as far as the startup community and the ecosystem around startups. Yeah, yeah, it's been great. Awesome. Well, thanks, Travis. Appreciate everything you guys are doing. Yeah. Thank you, Neal. This year's private company awards, beginning with the 2019 Private Micro Company top tech honoree, who provided the necessary technology leadership to improve infrastructure and enable employees to focus on growth strategies. Ladies and gentlemen, please join US in congratulating 2019 private micro top Tech honoree, Vice president of technology for SmartDraw software, it's Mark Sulzan. All right, we are back with mark Zolzen of SmartJaw. Do you want to tell us what SmartJaw is real quick? Sure. SmartJaw is a business graphics program which runs online. So within any browser, you can build all types of diagrams, from business process to org charts, all kinds of things, all running in the cloud, if you will. That's great. And team's all based here in San Diego. It is very cool. Tell us a little about kind of running a tech company here in town. What's it like for you? You know, it's great. We really have had a lot of growth with our subscription business and having our subscribers come online. And it's really exciting to see them share documents, be able to create all different kinds of things. And we have a new thing called VisualScript, which allows you to automate drawing processes. And that's kind of the most the newest, exciting thing that we have going on. Very cool. From an ecosystem, does it feel cohesive? Does it feel like you're part of a greater, bigger technology community? Most definitely. This is a great community here in San Diego. We have kind of a small team of developers, but they're just really, really good at what they do. And it's exciting to work with them and basically provide them with the infrastructure to help them succeed in what they're doing. Awesome. Well, Mark, thanks so much. We're excited for you. Congratulations. Glad to be here. Thanks. This year's award for private small company goes to a VP that engaged in necessary research and then oversaw the troubleshooting and training for projects and failing under three distinct categories. Business systems, infrastructure, and customer experience. I think some of y' all might know her. Ladies and gentlemen, join us in recognizing 2019 private small company top tech honoree, Vice president of customer experience and transformation for Cali Bamboo, Alexandra Garrettson. And we are back stage here at the top tech awards with Ali Geertsen from Cali Bamboo. Want to tell us a little bit about the uniqueness of Cali and technology? Yeah. One thing that's unique about Cali Bamboo is we are kind of a disruptor in a traditional industry. We sell flooring, fencing, and decking direct to consumer. So Very different from a lot of our competitors that sell through retail chains like Floor and Decorate or Kohl's Fine Flooring here in San Diego. So we have technology that enables us for customers to shop online, call us, and we ship it to their home pretty much like an Amazon model, just with thousands of pounds versus a nice tiny little box. But we utilize technology in that area to allow us to differentiate from our competitors. Very cool. How do you feel connected to the technology community as a whole in San Diego? You know, San Diego is a small city in a lot of ways. I live in Carlsbad. I work in Mira Mesa. But the tech community, I think is kind of tight knit. And there's a lot of events, a lot of networking events that we can go to. So being from New Jersey, this is a nice space where you can get to know people and it's fairly intimate, not in a huge broad city like la. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thanks for everything. Congratulations, Ali. Yeah, thank you very much. The 2019 Private Medium Company Top Tech award goes to a recently named Trailblazer and Financial Services, recognized for moving his company and the industry forward with the transformation of the loan process into a completely online digital experience. All right, let's hear it, ladies and gentlemen. Join us in recognizing 2019 media and private company Top tech honoree, Chief technology Officer for national funding, Jeff Howard. And we are backstage here with Jeff Howard of National Funding. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's exciting. Yeah. How's the night going for you? It's awesome. I mean, it was a big surprise, but I'm super excited. Yeah, no, we're excited for you. Tell us a little bit about kind of the technology convergence with national funding and the fintech space. Like that. You know, fintech is changing rapidly and I got to join national funding. I was honored to join national funding like a little over three years ago. And we've, you know, we've been changing the technology everywhere from our contact center to our data platform, our websites, our sales portal, our employee tools. And it's just been fast moving and exciting and had a great opportunity with a great team to make a lot of changes to the business for the better. How do you feel connected within the greater technology ecosystem of San Diego? I mean, from talent and other things. What other connections that you feel locally? So, you know, I've been in San Diego for 20 years. I worked at Intuit for a long time. San Diego is a small town. Like, I looked around here tonight and I saw a bunch of people that I hadn't seen sometimes in 10, 15 years. And you know, it's a, it's a unique environment and it's still growing and there's a lot of great talent here. And it's, it's not that difficult to draw talent here if you have a great opportunity for people to join. And so that's kind of how I see it. And I think, I think San Diego is, continues to grow. You see the big companies that are coming in here now realizing the talent pool we have. And I'm excited about what the future holds for San Diego and tech. Awesome. Yeah, we're so excited as well, especially for national funding, doing so well. Give us a quick shout. Do you have a favorite taco spot in town? There's so many good ones. I mean, there's puesta, I'd say puesta, but on the harbor in downtown. Oh yeah, that's a great one. Yeah. Well, awesome. Thanks, Jeff, and congratulations again. Thanks a lot, Neil. I appreciate it. Top tech honors for large private company go to a CIO whose penchant for new innovative process technologies have enabled his company to save money while further establishing itself as a provider of high quality deliverables in decreased time frames. Cool. Ladies and gentlemen, join us in recognizing 2019 private large top tech honoree, Chief Information officer for Dudek, Brian Nordman. And we are backstage with Brian Norman from Dudek. Dudek from downtown Encinitas. That's right, yes. Beautiful spot, Encinitas. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Tell us a bit. I mean, Dudek is an engineering company, but technology is at the core. Tell us that convergence of how technology merges with what you guys do. Sure, yeah. Technology is really at the center of everything we do from our staff out in the field, our biologists and scientists, archaeologists, collecting data, then coming back into the office writing reports and now moving into more cutting edge fields from processing drone imagery. Do you develop a lot in house for this? We use mostly off the shelf products, but it requires quite the infrastructure on the back end to be able to process and store. We're talking just terabytes of data for any given project nowadays. So that's great. Being in downtown Encinitas. Do you have some favorite taco spots that you like to go to? Yep. Well, the taco stand, of course. Yeah. If you want to wait the line. Yeah, yeah. Well, I shouldn't say it here if anyone listens to this, but you can order online and just go pick it up and cut past the line. So that's what we do. That's the secret. Yes. The Secret. Well, congratulations Brian. Thank you very much for being here. We are already here onto our last category. Public companies and the 2019 Top Tech Award for for small public company. This year's recipient is recognized not just within his company but throughout the close knit small pharma community as a thought leader and valuable resource in the implementation of new technology. Ladies and gentlemen, join us in recognizing 2019 small public company top tech honoree, Director of information technology for Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Frederick Del Rosario. Yes Frederick, congratulations. Thanks for being here. Tell us a quick thing about what Xerox Pharmaceuticals does. We are a specialty pharma company that has a unique technology that allows us to take a non aqueous compound and be able to present in an injectable format. Got it. So interesting. So a strong wet lab science kind of space but obviously leaning heavily on technology. Tell us kind of that convergence. Yeah. One of the things that we wanted to do is enforce collaboration, ensure that the teams are working together with all our different product lines and so forth. So we built a lot of new collaboration tools and put in a lot of things in place for that. Some things that just new regulatory things that had to be put in place that weren't in there yet. So we did that as well. How do you, I mean how do you look at the greater technology scene of San Diego and how do you use that for your advantage? I think San Diego's tech hub is strong. You've got a lot of technology companies, you've got a lot of life science companies and with, you know, the way that can blend together, that's what makes San Diego unique. Awesome. Where are you guys based in town? We're in Sorrento Valley. Okay. It's a good central spot. Any good favorite taco places that you like to go to? There's a lot that's always the hardest. There's a lot. There's a lot. Give us first one that comes to mind. Wow. There's always the birdos. All the birdos, right? Oh yeah, yeah. Alberto's, Robertos, Rigobertos all can't go wrong. Yeah. Well Frederic, thanks so much and congratulations. Thank you so much. I can't believe we made it to the final award of the night. This year's public large company top tech honoree doubled his firm's expected year over year growth by way of consistent leadership, decisiveness and an ability to build solutions that meet clients future needs. Here he is. As vice president of caci, Mark Kohlheim is a key member of a team that provides information and Services to support national security missions in order to keep CACI ahead of its competitors. A key part of Kohlheim's role is to strategically assess the needs of the Navy and Marine Corps. In three to five years, Kohlheim has executed this seemingly impossible task flawlessly, delivering successful initiatives to his clients while growing the company's bottom line. His multifaceted efforts across the company, from business systems technologies to tactical edge war fighting technologies, have had a dramatic effect on the operations and capabilities of the United States Navy and Marine COR. Ladies and gentlemen, please join us in recognizing 2019 Large Public Company Top Tech CACI International Vice President Mark Kohlheim. All right, we are backstage here with Mark Kohlheim from caci. Yes. Congratulations. Oh, thank you. What does this mean tonight to see the whole tech community out in front of you? Oh, this is a fantastic event. I've been to these in the past, and this is tops them all. I'm really excited. Can you tell us a bit about how technology kind of is impacting day to day with what you guys are doing? Well, we support the National Defense, DoD and Federal Civil community. So it's all about how you produce capacity and sustainability for the warfighter. I'm focused on Navy, Marine Corps, and I want to provide the best solutions to our warfighters so they have what they need to have an unfair fight. That's great. How do you feel the San Diego local community, I mean, how do you merge that? You find good talent here? I think it's very attractive. We have center of gravity for high technology within DoD here with spay war in Niwake Pacific. We also have incredible universities here. And it's about convincing people that the idea of contributing something bigger than themselves is a worthy endeavor. And we have tremendous population here in tech talent that makes that happen easily. Awesome. Well, thanks, Mark. Congratulations and appreciate it. Thank you. Join us for one more round of applause for all of the 2019 Top Tech honorees. Job well done. And we will see you in the upcoming issue of the San Diego Business Journal where this evening's event will be featured and this year's honorees will all be commemorated in print. And with that, we say good night. We encourage you to continue motivating, innovating, except accelerating until we see you back here May 3rd May for the 13th annual Top Tech Awards. We'll see you next year. Have a great night, folks. My name is Ken Kraft. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. Awesome, Ken, thanks so much for coming out. And this is a fantastic night of just seeing the San Diego tech community come together. Curious from Atlanta, what's the perception of San Diego as a tech hub? It would be one word, vibrant. It's just very exciting to be here tonight. To see all of these technology leaders in San Diego, to be recognized for the work that they're doing is really outstanding. I get to go to a lot of different markets around the country and see what's going on. And here it's a very unique environment. It feels small, tight knit or like, what do you, what else do you feel about it? Well, very, very tight knit. Okay. Same people every year at Top Tech, but growing kind of thing. Yeah. Oh, well, yeah, absolutely. This event has grown significantly over the years. Right. I remember coming here seven years ago for the first time and it was smaller and now it is just exploded. And it's just very exciting to see what's going on here. There's a lot. There's a lot going on when you come here. Do you have any, like, favorite foods that you have to have when you come to San Diego? Favorite taco spot or favorite kind of. Well, yeah, so I've, I've been coming to San Diego for a long time and it's the only place where I'll go to eat a fish taco. Yeah. Do you have a favorite spot you go to? I can't remember it. It's out on the water somewhere. Yeah. Last night I ate Italian food at, I think it was called Biga. Oh, yeah. In downtown. Yeah, it was really good. It was. It was lasagna night. Oh, yeah, yeah. Special. It's a really good spot there. Yeah, it was fun. Well, thanks so much for being a part of this great night. Absolutely. All right, Jared Ruth in the house from Cox Business. We're going to ramble on back here. You got it. Little Led Zeppelin. Get the lead out. Yeah. It's exciting, nice, fun. Yeah. Really cool to bring it inside too. Yeah. A little different. Different vibe today than it's been in the past, but it's really fun. Yeah. So you've seen this over a few years. How are you seeing this grow as a reflection of the startup and tech community as a whole? Yeah. So, I mean, again, some subtle changes this year, moving from outside to inside. But, you know, I love this event for a lot of different reasons, but one is, you know, just celebrating technical leaders because it's something you don't see very often in the industry. And, you know, a lot of times you'll see accolades for, you know, CEOs and, you know, top sales executives and things like that, but not very often for technical leaders. And they're really, you know, a lot of the backbone about what. What's happening in these companies. So it's pretty exciting. How. How have you seen, like, the reflection of the growth of this event compared to the growth of the region? How do you think the region's growing reciprocally? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously the. The. The growth has been incredible through the last few years here, and so. And we've seen that reflected in the event attendance and just participation. But, you know, what I really like about this event is that we've got some technical people that have been around for a long time in San Diego, and they're kind of coming together with the new school version of tech that's happening in San Diego. And what I really love is that marriage and that energy, sort of seeing that discipline side and then the new side coming together as one is pretty exciting. Something else I see what's cool. You and I, when we usually meet up, we're in all tech startups, tech focused, but tonight you see IT departments, tech teams from hospitals and banks. It's kind of cool to see that come together with the startup and tech world too. Absolutely. It's almost like we forget that there's a whole bunch of other industry going on. Yeah, that's right. And I think when they come together, there's some really important problems that they can solve together, which, you know, this is a type of venue where they can do that. And in some cases, they may never talk to each other or meet each other. Yeah, it's true. One last question. San Diego lifestyle specific. You come down here all the time. You got a favorite taco spot that's like your go to. You got to have a fish taco from certain spot. Well, I've got probably a lot of them, but, man, that's a tough question. I don't know, because they're so favorite. Well, especially if you're gonna say it, you know, in your podcast, then I. Then, you know, if I go to the other taco spots, they might not me anymore. Can I say I like them all? That's fair. That's fine. We won't put you on the spot. But, Jared, thanks so much for tonight and appreciate it. Everything that Cox business does with us together. Thank you, Neil. Thanks for listening to the Tacos and Tech podcast, which has been in partnership with Cox Business. Come find us at Startup Week, where we'll be doing more live podcasting and having an amazing week starting in Tijuana, moving to the Convention center and ending the week in Carlsbad for a dedicated north county day. Follow Neil on Twitter and LinkedIn and look for the Fresh BroodTech San Diego Tech newsletter@freshbroodtech.com Sam.
