I moved to the hills near Sebastopol, in Sonoma County about an hour north of San Francisco, almost 17 years ago. We came for the rural lifestyle and the natural beauty. The one thing I’ve missed is the technical and entrepreneurial community that thrives in our old town, Palo Alto, and in all of Silicon Valley.

For most of the time I’ve lived in Sonoma County, I’ve remained intimately involved with businesses based in the valley. Although I’ve always had an office up here, I’ve also spent a few days a month in the valley, and most of my contacts remained there.

When I decided to leave Adobe last fall, I also decided to seek out the local technical and entrepreneurial communities and get to know them better, in the hope of making new friends and forming a new venture that would be truly centered here in the redwood country. Along the way, I’ve joined a few groups and created one, and met a lot of great people.

There are many, many talented folks in Sonoma County, but they tend to be isolated, and often connected to businesses in San Francisco or Silicon Valley. I believe we can create a much stronger environment for entrepreneurs and technical people here by providing more opportunities for us to all meet each other and share ideas and dreams.

Announcing the North Bay Internet Society

After looking around for a group of like-minded folks to join, I couldn’t find one—so I decided to create one. The North Bay Internet Society (NBIS) is about to have its third meeting, and our membership has grown to a little more than 20 people. It’s a remarkable group, including several technologists, a few marketing folks, a couple people helping run established web businesses, and a few people building new web startups.

We meet once a month, over dinner, and have a couple short, informal talks and lots of discussion. I’ve enjoyed it tremendously, and I think most of the other members have as well. I’ll be surprised if the relationships forming there don’t lead to some long-term collaborations. Our discussions sometimes veer into technical issues, but our focus is on delivering value to people from the technology, rather than on the technology itself.

It was striking to me that as I asked around for people who might be interested in this new group, I kept finding new people who didn’t know any of the others in the group. This reinforced my feeling that there are a lot of people up here with common interests, but they typically don’t know each other. I hope that this group can help change that.

If you’re interested in joining us, please send me a note telling me a little about who you are, to ms (at) mslater (dot) com.

North Bay Ruby User’s Group

At about the same time, Rob Orsini (author of the Rails Cookbook) and Keith Fahlgren from O’Reilly founded NBRUG, the North Bay Ruby User’s Group. The first meeting was held a couple weeks ago, with about a dozen attendees. This is a much more technically oriented meeting, and it is focused on a single technology platform (which happens to be my favorite one!). So it is quite different from the NBIS, but equally valuable. This group meets on the third Thursday of every month at the O’Reilly campus in Sebastopol. See their web site for more information, or join the NBRUG mailing lst.

North Bay Angels

Another group I’ve become involved with is the North Bay Angels. This is a group of people interested in investing in small businesses. It has a very different character than the two groups listed above, for several reasons. First, it is focused on business, not technology, and the deals discussed run the gamut from wine to biotech. Second, it is well established (founded in 1999) and much larger (about 80 members). And finally, it is relatively expensive to join and attend, plus you need to be in a position to make at least small private investments, so it tends to be an older, more established crowd, with lots of people from the legal, financial, and real-estate worlds.

I’ve found NBA to be a great place to meet a diverse group of people interested in building (or helping others build) businesses. It also provides a wonderful peek into some of the startup businesses seeking financing. If you’re interested in becoming a member, see their web site for more information.

More North Bay Groups

I’ve found a couple other north bay groups that seem interesting but which I haven’t had time to visit yet. Among them:

• North Bay Linux User’s Group

• Sonoma County Web Developers

There’s lots more in Marin County, but for now I’m trying to focus on groups that meet further north.

If you know of any groups to add to this list, please add a comment to this post.

I think there’s a great opportunity to make Sonoma County more of a center for web development and entrepreneurship, and I’m grateful for the chance to help move it along.