Updated: One Redmond targets interactive media and commercial space enterprise sectors

Unfortunately,  Redmond growth will be further stimulated creating all sorts of untended consequences....severe traffic among them.  

Your greatest strengths are often also weaknesses. The economic health of a region obeys the same rules. 

During the feasibility process leading up to the OneRedmond 2.0 Campaign, we clearly heard that there existed concerns about the narrowness of Redmond's economic base. While software, and Microsoft specifically, have been our economic engine over the past three decades, business leaders felt there was a role for business recruitment in other technology sectors to help diversify the base of employers.

OneRedmond has been on the road over the last three months executing on our recruitment strategy to brand Redmond and the Eastside as the location for interactive media and commercial space enterprises. OneRedmond has exhibited (and practiced the 'grip and grin') at the DICE and Game Developers Conference (GDC) interactive media events, as well as the 33rd Space Symposium. As a result, we have started conversations with a number of firms concerning setting up new outposts in the region.

OneRedmond targeted these sectors for two reasons. First, both are strong and growing in the region. There are over 400 companies in the interactive media sector in the region, and perhaps two dozen in the space sector. Their visibility is partially shrouded by the dominance of our other tech and aerospace employers. Second, site location decisions are driven by access to talent. Redmond and the Eastside have arguably the strongest technical talent pool in the nation with an ICT labor force of over 91,000 and over 136,000 aerospace workers. This concentration of talent and diversified employer base has produced a virtuous cycle that is attracting, annually, over 75,000 new migrants to the region building the talent pool for new recruits and incumbents alike.

As they say in investing: stocks, like trees, do not grow to the sky. OneRedmond's business recruitment efforts are a way of hedging our economic portfolio and an important component of the OneRedmond 2.0 work plan.

-- One Redmond