Eastside Economic Forecast

The Bellevue Chamber of Commerce presented the Eastside Economic Forecast Breakfast November 15th at the Meydenbauer Center. The breakfast was well-attended with several hundred present.

Chris Falco, the Chairman of the Bellevue Chamber led off, followed by presentations by:

• Joseph Quinlan -Chief Market Strategist of Bank of America Capital Management
• Kristina Erickson Hudson- Business Development Manager for the Interactive Media and Technology cluster at enterpriseSeattle
• Glen Hiemstra – Noted futurist and author, website link here.

I’ll refer you to a blog I came across that already provides an excellent summary of the overall event – Dean Dretske’s Blog.

The panel is quite optimistic about the prospects for economic growth on the Eastside and Puget Sound in general.  The Bellevue Chamber of Commerce summarizes the situation nicely in a comprehensive report downloadable here.

Regarding Kristina’s presentation about Interactive Media companies, “WOW”.  This sector of our economy is absolutely flourishing.  To cite a few statistics from her presentation:

• 150+ companies engaged in the industry locally
• 15,000 jobs, growing at 33 percent annually since 2004$77,700 average annual salary
• $4.2B revenue in 2006
• $4.9B forecasted for 2007. With the success of Microsoft’s Halo 3 game, there should be no problem beating the forecast.

Clearly, this is an industry to watch and know about for anyone doing business in Seattle. So, that’s why you might be interested in attending next week’s MIT Enterprise Forum event.  The December 5 dinner event at the Bellevue Hyatt Hotel will bring 4 of the biggest players in the area (Microsoft, Digipen, ArenaNet, and Sandlot Games) together for some entertaining and insightful discussions.

I will be attending this session as well, and have some more information about the event here.  I hope to see you there.

Photo courtesy of Doug’s World blog.