A Seattle adventure

Earlier this month, my Changing Media Business Models took a class trip to Seattle. Its purpose was to meet entrepreneurs and watch how large news organizations & corporations are innovating to the changing media consumption landscape. The northwest is full of innovators with expertise to share, and checking out what the city has to offer was an added bonus.  

Check out some of the highlights of the city from a tourist's perspective:

The view of the skyline from Bellevue, a beautiful, rising suburb where Microsoft has some HQ offices

The Space Needle by our hotel 

Walking down the coast by the Puget Sound

Some beautiful sunsets!

The Museum of Space & Flight, as Boeing has headquarters & a large presence in Seattle

Stopping by the theater where prom was held in 10 Things I Hate About You, my favorite movie (still). 

Pike's Place Market

Stopping by and walking around the University of Washington campus...

...and seeing how its bar scene compares to the one at Mizzou! And how the Capitol Hill area is.

The educational part 

For our media visits, we started off at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a Hearst-owned publication that went online only in 2009, laying off more than 150 employees. It was depressing to see its empty newsroom and hear that they only have 12 employees, and have cut the profession of copy editing. The Seattle Times turned around our hopelessness for the future of in-depth reporting and working journalists by explaining their online processes. They even have an internal research arm with an impressive portfolio.

Our class at The Seattle Times

Two individuals we met with were Tom, a hyper-local Seattle bike blogger, and Kris, a woman who our professor refers to as the Seattle tri-fecta. She’s held high-level positions at Starbucks, Microsoft and currently at Amazon on the Kindle team. Both gave us career advice, with Tom providing insights on how to monetize (or fail with) your entrepreneurial ideas, and Kris explaining how to establish yourself at a large company.

Meeting with Tom, a bike blogger, at Odd Fellows Coffee Lounge  

MSN News directors at Microsoft explained how they launched an online news site formatted like Windows 8, and explained the strategy that went behind their decisions. GeekWire founders told us about their business model and how they capitalized on their personal brands to grow an online audience. It was awesome to see both of these companies making use of niche interests and acknowledging people and how they use media today. 

A Microsoft cube upon entering the office

Our trip ended in an unfortunate way with a 14-hour travel day after a cancelled flight, but when your university is paying for your trip, you can't really complain about that. Our class really had the opportunity to bond at the airport and there is a unique class dynamic when we meet because we all know each other so well. Together, we convinced the airport to give us $10 dinner vouchers after our miserable experience.

My classmates at the Denver airport as we were stuck with a 6-hour layover and a cancelled flight, without our professor

Rating the city
Overall, Seattle was a beautiful city but I'm not sure if I could live there in my 20s. There were some awesome things about it, like the coast, greenery, phenomenal coffee and intelligent collection and caliber of people.

Every restaurant also had a trash, recycle and compost bucket, reflecting the environmental people there.

The cost of living was more expensive than I expected it to be, and although there is a monorail, the main, 'hopping' areas of the city are each about 3 miles apart from each other, making it difficult to go out without a car. Therefore, on my city-scale, it ranked as more of a place to raise a family and afford as a 30-something than somewhere to drop all of your things and move there now. I'm happy I had the opportunity to check it out from both a lifestyle and business perspective. I should start a city-ranking criteria after all my US-traveling the past two years!