TechWag

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Ed Lazowska of the University of Washington Computer Science department has a lot to say, and most of the time is great to listen to him, or read his pages out on the UofW web site. But when it comes to Seattle, he thinks we still have a long way to go when it comes to getting things done, and that we are not being better than Boston or Austin when it comes to technology.

99 times out of 100 I would agree with him, but this time, there are some holes here. We have a robust and great startup community, we even had our first awards ceremony to go along with that last week. The state wide broad band issue aside, the leadership issue aside, there are some things that make Seattle, the Seattle technology and the Seattle startup scene just as good as Boston, just as good as Silicon Valley, and just as good as Austin. This is not some just wanton statement on my part, I have been talking to, and supporting startups for the last two years, since techwag was born. Being an active member of the community, there are some things I have noticed about why we are just as good as our competition.

1. We do have bloggers, and while somewhat nationally or internationally known, if a startup wants to build buzz and wants to start local, there are at least four big time bloggers, techflash, Seattle 2.0, myself (I get 10K folks a month), Xconomy, that do many posts per month, and have traffic worth writing home about.

2. We have great VC’s and Angel companies locally, and if you know how to use angel soft, make a pitch, and get your head in the door, you might want to check out the Alliance of Angels, Madrona, and a whole host of other VC’s in the area.

3. There are some great organizations, Seattle 2.0, Lunch 2.0 Seattle, NEN the Northwest Entrepreneur Network, and others to help you along your way. There is also the MIT Venture Lab that can provide networking support, plus many events throughout the month to help the entrepreneur burn off steam, meet new people, and get in the loop.

4. Add to that the number of folks who blog and run companies, the main line list can be found right here. There are a lot of ways that the Seattle area has leadership in this, we talk, we e-mail each other, we do tons of cool stuff online.

5. We are also home to Microsoft, Google has an office here, Sony, Nintendo, consultant companies, we have a huge health care hub, we have hundreds of game studios, and we have some of the coolest people to help you find your way through the maze. But what directly does this have to do with leadership? Leadership is one of those odd critters, there are as many definitions of leadership, or I’ll know it when I see it, as there are people. We all respond differently, and politics here can be interesting to say the very least.

The area’s flag ship in leadership along with technology transfer, government grants for research, and an incubator for sharp students, for good or bad is the University of Washington. There are also established learning centers like CityU of Seattle, Seattle Pacific University and the Community colleges should be helping drive innovation. That means, in terms of leadership we have to be there as well. Our colleges have to make a commitment to the local population and show value and relevance. Leadership will help that, and beyond broadband, beyond spinning off startups, beyond helping your students get to the pitch and getting money from a VC, what other kinds of leadership do we need?

We need to be part of the community, we need to be there, show value, be part of the conversation, be part of the group, team, board, and otherwise provide good support for companies and employees in the region. While we still have to take care of our educational duties, we also need to make sure that we are taking care of all the other things that go along with that. We have excellent leadership in the city from Andy Sack, to Marcello Calbucci, Bryan Starbuck, Dave Schappell, and others who all form a backbone of leadership for startups. Colleges should be right on in there as well providing what we can to help them out, from on the spot support, to longer term support.

Leadership is there, but if there is a great solution, or we can spend time approaching a problem and coming up with a solution to the issues that we need to solve, count me in. Ed give me a shout, I’ll help you out as much as I can.