Roughly 1,300 people attended the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s (SVLG) Annual Lunch last week at the Santa Clara Convention Center—but not everyone left satisfied. Carl Guardino’s boosterism of one San Jose mayoral candidate has created concern that the leadership group CEO is blurring the line between personal preference and organizational support.

I applaud Congressman Michael Honda’s recent convening of the STEM Advisory Council, which I attended last Friday at Applied Materials with 60-plus engineers, educators, policy makers and non-profit leaders. We must act now, as more and more firms in the U.S., like Applied Materials, require science, technology, engineering or math degrees to satisfy their employment mandates.

How many more years will the country and Silicon Valley put up with broken promises made to our children, before it is too late for us to recover from the lack of political will? This year we commemorate the 30-year anniversary of a national report that provided a clarion call to improve our public education system.

With its vastly superior public education system, will Boston surpass Silicon Valley as the global leader of technological innovation? It’s a distinct possibility unless we get our act together. Boston is poised to win, considering the current fights focus on turf instead of better educational results for our children.

Madison Nguyen, San Jose’s vice mayor and councilmember for District 7, filed paperwork Dec. 19 with the City Clerk’s office declaring her intent to run for mayor.

Someone asked me last week if there are underreported stories about public education in the Bay Area. Absolutely there are. People and ideas are converging in Silicon Valley, and they have the potential to alter the landscape of schools and learning.

This year, working with newly elected Santa Clara County Office of Education President Grace Mah and Trustee Darcie Green, as well as city and county leaders, we will launch a grassroots effort to secure quality preschool for all of the county’s 3 and 4 year olds. There is a roadmap to achieve the goal.

It saddens many tree huggers that the once heralded California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) is being so abused by NIMBY groups that simple justice, common sense and economic progress demands its reform.

A U.S. patent office will open in San Jose. This is the result of diverse political interests uniting in a shared goal. It is a victory for San Jose and the region, and it will help Silicon Valley businesses, which are the heart of our nation’s economic engine. But considering California accounts for 25 percent of all new patents—with half of those coming from Silicon Valley—why wouldn’t San Jose be chosen? Let’s do the political math.

Almost four years ago, John McCain came within a Sarah Palin of capturing the White House. But last week, the U.S. senator huddled with several of Silicon Valley’s most powerful CEOs and San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed to talk green technology, Obamacare, tax reform and ... sports. The meeting was part of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group’s semiannual trip to Washington, D.C., which features a parade of meetings with Capitol Hill’s influence makers.

I was a little bummed out Tuesday afternoon. I had my popcorn ready. I had my browser pointed to the City of San Jose website. I was keyed up to watch the council discussion of an update on progress with the city’s economic development priorities. Essentially, the city’s current economic strategy has been condensed to a five-point plan—as if we don’t have enough of those. To be frank, it should really be a one-point plan.

San Jose made a play for a satellite office with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), submitting a proposal with the help of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. Included in the application are letters from Mayor Chuck Reed and Silicon Valley business execs stating their case to David Kappos, Under Secretary for Intellectual Property with the USPTO.

Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom made an appearance Friday at an event hosted here in San Jose by the Silicon Valley Leadership Group. At the event, he proposed several plans to boost the state’s economy while also eliminating agencies that he says are redundant.

In a few weeks it will be 20 years since the Loma Prieta earthquake that rocked the Bay Area at 5:04 P.M. on Oct. 17, 1989. Tragically sixty-three people were killed on that fateful day, however the infrastructure damage done by the shaking has been repaired, even better than before