The New “We Make Seattle” Video Shows Off Our Amazing Culture

While we often hear about the fears and worries of our evolving city, it’s important to take a step back and celebrate what we love about Seattle. Some of our fellow Seattleites did the work of documenting many stories of our creativity, arts, and community spirit in a video sharing our Seattle awesomeness.

The project was started in 2012 by Scott Berkun and Bryan Zug after (former) Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn convened a leadership roundtable discussing Seattle’s reputation across the nation. The filmmakers’ vision was to capture stories from members of the community sharing what they love about Seattle’s culture.

Watch the We Make Seattle video here now to see the result of what our makers, entrepreneurs and creatives rolled out on our behalf!

It was interesting to see the video on the same day that I read I moved to San Francisco right when the startup craze began — here’s what it’s been like. Everyone in Seattle should read this article. It’s a cautionary tale of where Seattle could end up as rents and traffic soar and “regular” people can’t afford to live in the city. Rents went up 20% last year and housing rates jumped 10.7%.

The upside from Silicon Valley’s lack of growth planning is seeing how easily the cultural gifts that make our city vibrant could be lost if we aren’t thoughtful about how we grow and expand. Reflecting on what didn’t work well for San Francisco gives us the opportunity now to make sure our planning and actions circumvent the same pitfalls, while honoring the best things about living and working in Seattle.

As Gary Vee says in a way only he can, entrepreneurs don’t cry about what isn’t working, they adjust and make great things happen.

We each have an opportunity to be warriors for protecting and evolving the amazing Seattle culture on display in the We Make Seattle video. I believe that standing up for our creative/artful/civilized/humanitarian community is what we need to do for the people of Seattle. It would be a shame to lose our unique personality. We have to avoid the negative outcomes Silicon Valley residents are faced with, as we actively celebrate and support the communities that have made Northwest culture so great.

Our tech community has a plethora of valuable resources – and we’re using them to build a future Seattle that we’ll love even more than the one we share today – but it’s going to take the whole village to succeed. Finger pointing will get us no where. Working together to harness the energy of people power will be vital to our success.