Topia CEO in the TNT
Do you remember that little discussion we had about rethinking downtown Tacoma from the beginning of October? It started from a 10 word tweet and resulted in nearly 20,000 words in the comments. Well, the author of that original tweet, Janine Terrano, the CEO of Topia Technology, was featured in The News Tribune yesterday.
What do they talk about? What does every business person talk about in this town? Recruiting talent. Parking. Russell. The image of Tacoma. Sound familiar?
Link to The News Tribune
Previously on Exit133: Rethinking Downtown Tacoma
Filed under: General
4 comments
R RR Anderson December 9, 2009
Fascinating. some good points, others not so good. More ‘green space’ and ‘free parking’ are red herrings.
Also, a tip for competing with google/microsoft/amazon: stop building things in .net! open source forever!!!
J jamie from thriceallamerican December 9, 2009
Topia proper actually is primarily a Java + open source house, RR, it’s just BIS that builds .NET stuff…
N Nick December 9, 2009
She was very insightful in terms of Tacoma’s perception vs. reality. As a transplant from the SF Bay Area, I have to agree that most of our region has a very distorted/biased view towards Tacoma.
Unfortunately, perception has a very real effect on whether or not people choose to live, work, or do business here. I think perception will catch up with reality eventually, but there are things that can be done to speed that process up.
A Andrew December 15, 2009
Maybe their employees should take a one ride train or bus from Seattle instead of driving 40 minutes in traffic then switching to Link. Buses run from Seattle ever 15 min during the peak to Downtown Tacoma. Equal time for the commute or faster, cheaper for the company because they don’t have to pay for parking, and the taxpayers then don’t have to pay for more parking garages, a win/win.