WA's high-tech industry is the Adrian to our Rocky.

When it comes to our economic engines, we just can't help but shout out our love for our state's high-tech industry like Rocky after laying the hurt on Apollo.

The truth is, diversifying our state's industrial base and encouraging the growth of highly sought-after businesses of the future, while providing the skilled workforce necessary for such growth have been priorities of the HDC for over two decades now, getting us in fighting shape. Just like chasing chickens around and running up stairs helped Rocky. Yeah, just like that.

Anyway, to the point of this post, which is: Can I get a high-tech five?


Reps. Ross Hunter, Zack Hudgins, and Jamie Pedersen were on hand at Google’s event Tuesday to celebrate not only the company’s success here, but our state’s collective awesomeness as a computing powerhouse.

The Seattle PI story states:

Google on Tuesday estimated that its online advertising injected more than $2.8 billion worth of business into the Washington state economy during 2009…That put Washington, despite being the 14th-most populous state in the country, at No. 7 among the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

"This is a tech state. There are a lot more dot-coms here than other places," Hunter said. "I'm excited that Washington has more companies than just Microsoft."

Many of those were started by former employees of Microsoft, which as we all know has spawned a tech ecosystem in Washington since it moved here in 1979. It's an "anchor" institution for the Seattle area, said Rep. Zack Hudgins, D-Tukwila, who spoke at the Google event.

Hudgins also is a former program manager at Microsoft and project manager at Amazon. After the event, he and state Rep. Jamie Pederson, D-Seattle, spoke with seattlepi.com about the tech climate in Washington and its roots in Redmond.

"You get to a critical mass, then people who move here because they were hired by Microsoft can stay here if they want to do something else than Microsoft," Pederson said. "It's almost like an exponential expansion."

And, lest anyone still buys into the talking points stating Washington isn’t a good place to do business, here’s one more non-partisan report recently released – this one by the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council – which lists Washington’s tax system the 5th best for entrepreneurship and small business.

(So how many times do we have to say it?)