As Seattle grows and changes we’re always looking to create meaningful moments and connections for you and everyone in our New Tech community. We work hard to create opportunities for you by bringing the PNW tech silos under our umbrella for all of us to collaborate and assist each other in building our careers and companies.
This year was a banner one for our community, which means we have to thank you as a member of the New Tech community.
Some of the highlights we’ve achieved together were planned and others were bonuses that showed up from just doing what we all do together. I’d like to share a few with you as we look back on 2018.
- New Tech Seattle and New Tech Eastside became Meetup Sugergroups when Meetup rolled out this beta program a few months ago based on members rating Meetup groups. It’s a symbol that the group creates exceptional experiences and fosters real community among its members. Since NTS has 538 ratings averaging 4.5 stars out of 5 and NTE has 152 ratings averaging 4.5 stars out of 5, both groups became SuperGroups.
- New Tech Northwest has grown to almost 40,000 members (15,300+ in Seattle, 5,500+ on the Eastside, 1,600+ in Tacoma, 7,500+ in Portland and almost 9,000 newsletter subscribers)
- This year we had our 14th women in tech event and our 7th diversity in tech event bringing together hundreds of women, untapped minorities and allies to share what’s wrong and what’s working to build more diversity, equity and inclusion in our tech companies. We also had fun and made new friends through the process. J
- New Tech Seattle moved to Thinkspace Seattle. There were multiple factors that made this a great move for us including partnering again with Peter Chee who helped us to launch New Tech Eastside, being closer to SLU where a large number of techies are working, free street parking, and did we mention that the event space is on the edge of Lake Union with a deck on the lake and views of the lake? What better way to appreciate Seattle while we eat, drink, learn about Seattle’s leading edge tech together and make new friends?
- The Title Sponsorship we created last year with T-Mobile was utilized by Google Cloud in July to promote their first Cloud Summit in Seattle, and now it will be filled by Nintendo for the next year. In addition to these fantastic companies we had over 80 sponsors and advertisers connect with our awesome community of techies for recruiting, building brand awareness, getting user feedback on products and more. We’re beyond grateful for the support of these community-minded companies and their teams who add great energy and opportunities to our community.
- We’ve now had 246 New Tech monthly events featuring leading edge technology from fresh startups to legendary enterprise companies. The amazing tech they’ve shared has covered most categories you can imagine from gaming, blockchain, biotech, IoT, VR/AR, communications, marketing, productivity, travel, AI and many others.
- Our job fairs expanded to happen quarterly to keep up with demand. We’ve now assisted over 2,000 job seekers to connect with over 175 companies. Our next one is January 31st!
- This year we’ve enjoyed partnering with Washington State Opportunity Scholarship, ebay, Geekwire, WTIA, HERE Seattle, Diverse City, United Way of King County, Women in Tech Regatta, AI Nextcon, UW, Seattle Tech4Housing and many other local organizations contributing to our great region.
- Since there are dozens of organizations doing stellar work for our Seattle community we’ve started a monthly Featured Non-Profit presentation at our Seattle events every month to connect them with our community.
- Next year we’re looking to create mastermind groups for people looking to grow their impact and growth. Additionally, I’ll be expanding office hours and taking on a few more business coaching clients.
Along with all of our good news from 2018, I’d also like to note how amazing the Seattle tech community has been to each other. While we constantly hear about how divided our country is becoming, our local tech community continues to create new ways to come together.
This Seattle tech ecosystem that we’re all a part of keeps creating new companies like Flying Fish Partners, Female Founders Alliance, Create33, We Work Labs, and so many others that impact our community in positive ways. Please support them and add your voice and talents in our community where they can make a difference.
It’s a privilege to be on this journey with you as we all work together making a better PNW and better world. Please keep supporting each other and shining your light when and where you can to assist others. Thank you again for being an active part of our dynamic community.
