by Matt Gardner, CEO, California Technology Council

Wednesday, September 23rd provided a fantastic perspective on the richness in California's entrepreneurial fabric. A simple glance at the calendar - and into CTC's own activities - reflected the depth to the market, the many facets of the innovation economy, and the contributions of many stakeholders.

CTC held it's own meeting in Pasadena that day. Hosted by leading life science developer Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the "get to know CTC" information session drew together creative firms, technology advocates, real estate interests, and a diverse group of early-stage startups from health IT to Big Data to technology platform companies.

While that was happening, a unique combination of startup interests and public officials convened in a collection of meetings in California.

The entire week played menu for a set of overlapping meetings known as Startup Europe Comes to Silicon Valley. Brits, Danes, Dutch, Germans, Italians, Czechs and many others produced meetings during the week.

All the while, TechCrunch Disrupt came to a close on the 23rd. Always packed, always full of new startup stories from around the world, always excellent at generating headlines, TechCrunch Disrupt kept up the momentum, through its conclusion on Wednesday.

Across San Francisco, on the eve of the opening of the NASDAQ Foundation's new Entrepreneurial Center, Thomson Reuters hosted its unique Highly Cited Researchers event on the 23rd. Powered by insights from its own innovation service, the Thomson Reuters view of research drew together some of the people who make the innovation economy tick.

Also the same day, the Department of Homeland Security brought EMERGE to San Francisco for a demo day. The EMERGE Demo Day brought first-responder technologies in front of investors and stakeholders.

While CTC was thankful for the hospitality showed by Alexandria, the mobilization of so many parallel meetings showed why we are all thankful that we live and work here. California remains a globally unmatched ecosystem for innovation that can sustain so many different gatherings literally on the same day.

Thank you, entrepreneurs, for making this possible.