Not to share here. I was at boring places my parents had the interesting experiences but those aren't my stories to share.
It had lots of small industry specific solutions, lots of hardware/software tied together solutions (so a large 'tech' community where 'tech' was the title for hardware technicians that hand built/designed/produced the hardware devices/circuit boards/etc). I'm surprised you never heard of the Santa Cruz software scene. Some examples:
Victor Technologies (specifically Victor 9000 Computer)
Texas Instruments had a fab/facility there.
Digital Research had a presence (CP/M, PDP)
Seagate
SCO
Borland
EMU Systems (hardware music samplers) (lots of cool musicians used to visit their facilities)
(current) Antares (Auto tune/music tools)
(current) Plugin Alliance (music tools)
(current?) Plantronics
But mainly it was smaller obscure companies. For example Parallel Computers working on parallel computing early on. IDX working on radio tags in the 80s. Triton doing sonar imaging with SGI boxes.
It was very much it's own sub-scene with people who picked it for lifestyle so a bit different mindset (more hippie, schedules around the tides so people could surf, everyone going to the Wednesday night sailing races together). I was just a kid but it seemed cool. And it was open and friendly (I always had summer jobs as a kid starting from duplicating floppies for CP/M or PDP software as a 10 year old). Plus just a cool vibe. I remember next door to where my mom worked going and talking to Lorenzo Ponza (inventor of the pitching machine) when I got bored of playing Trek or Rogue on the VAX at her office (she was a workaholic always working weekends and dragging me along) or skating the ramp (for the stoner tech(nician) crowd) in the parking lot.
Thanks for the response! No, the only one that rings a bell is Plantronics (recently changed hands/title) since you pass it on the way to the Santa Cruz Costco.
