When I drill down on that term, you can see why with posts like: Hollis-Eden Pharmaceuticals Lops A Third Of Company THQ Lays Off 100 Employees, Closes San Diego Office Citrix Cuts 10 Percent; Santa Barbara Hit And it's also interesting to see what geographies are being associated with "Layoffs" more often than others: Layoffs Woodland Hills Layoffs San Diego Layoffs Santa Monica Layoffs Los Angeles I guess this is a sign of the times. The Scott Sanfilippo Interview Media Optimization Firms Are Red Hot In Southern California in 2009

Often good topics and interesting networking. And here's where you can find more events: SoCalTech Calendar – A great aggregation of events around Southern California that has been pulled together for years by Ben Kuo. Meetup – My personal experience has been mixed with these. Southern California Tech Central – Brings together posts from top bloggers around Southern California including John's blog and this blog. You can use keywords like: Events in Los Angeles or Southern California Events or even Santa Monica Events . You can also use Southern California

Santa Monica-based DECA has raised $10M in a new round of funding worth $10M, according to a regulatory filing. The firm's CEO, Michael Wayne, confirmed the funding with socalTECH, but said that the company would not be making any official comments until a formal announcement next month. The funding was led by new investor Rustic Canyon Partners, with participation from Series A investors Atomico, General Catalyst Partners, and Mayfield Fund. DECA is a digital media studio which produces online video content.

Santa Monica-based DocStoc , the online document sharing site run by Jason Nazar, just released a new feature Thursday afternoon, DocStoc Collections , which allows users to create their own groupings of documents by topic. Nazar told socalTECH that the new feature was released so that the site could provide the "best quality experience when looking for documents." The new feature so far includes collections such as "Starting A Small Business," "Traveling On A Budget," "Writing Better Cover Letters," and similar topics. The new feature follows a major update by the firm

According to a report from the Los Angeles times, Martin Schaedel, an advisor to a number of local startups and former VC, was the second victim in a plane crash in Santa Monica Wednesday. Schaedel was also an avid photographer, and had provided a number of photos to socalTECH of local high tech entrepreneurs in our articles, including our interviews of Brian Biniak, Mike Jones, Hamet Watt, and Rafat Ali. ...Tags: Confirmed dead was Paulo Emanuele, general manager of the website www.airliners.net . The men crashed in a two-seat, Marchetti SF-260, according to reports.

Santa Monica-based Zag , which has developed an automobile configuration and buying service for affinity organizations like credit unions and automobile organizations, has a funding round of undisclosed size. spokesperson for Zag told socalTECH that a round had closed, but would not confirm the investors or details of the round, saying that earlier disclosures by TechCrunch were incorrect. A Apparently, the company was a victim of TechCrunch's Arrington's crusade against PR embargoes, and disclosed the funding based on preliminary discussions with the firm.

Santa Monica-based Zag , which has developed an automobile configuration and buying service for affinity organizations like credit unions and automobile organizations, has raised around $32.4M spokesperson for Zag told socalTECH that a round had closed, but would not confirm the investors or details of the round. in a funding round. A

A quick analysis by socalTECH of our tracking of venture capital deals in Southern California finds that there was around $879M in venture funding activity here in Q3. The information--gleaned from funding announcements, regulatory filings, and other sources--are not far off from socalTECH's totals from last quarter, which totaled up around $932M in investment activity. Outside San Diego, Coda Automotive, The biggest are for venture activity in the quarter was Biopharmaceuticals, which was $299.13M of the quarterly total. San San Diego led investment activity in Q3, with a large

Santa Monica-based GumGum , the online startup headed by Ophir Tanz which licenses photos on a CPM basis to online publishers, confirmed it had raised $2.6M in a venture round Wednesday, telling socalTECH that the Series A-1 round was led by GRP Partners , with participation by First Round Capital . Publishers are really hurting online, and this is a new revenue opportunity for our publishing partners," Tanz said that GRP's Mark Suster will be joining the firm's board along with the funding. Other board members at the firm are Michael Jones, COO of MySpace; Howard Morgan

Santa Monica-based CampusExplorer.com is announcing this morning that the firm has raised $2.25M in a Series B funding round, for the firm's online service for searching for colleges. In addition, Slavonia told socalTECH that the firm may benefit from the interest of many people in going back to school--CampusExplorer.com's site offers guidance to both adult and traditional students to find information about two- and four-year colleges, technical and career-oriented schools, and online programs. The firm said the new round was led by OCA Ventures, and also included Origin Ventures and Rincon Venture Partners.