Portland Mayor Kicks off TechCrawl, Praises City for Tech Diversity Push

GeekWire | John Cook | August 20
http://www.geekwire.com/2015/portland-mayor-kicks-off-techcrawl-praises-city-for-tech-diversity-push/
“Hundreds of engineers, entrepreneurs, designers and other technology professionals gathered in the hot sun Wednesday evening for the fourth annual Portland TechCrawl, the kickoff event of the two-day TechFestNW conference. Portland Mayor Charlie Hales celebrated at the first stop, addressing the crowd in front of the Block 300 Building, home to fast-growing Portland companies such as Puppet Labs and CrowdCompass.”

Twitter Opens up Its Mobile Ad Network, Introduces Video

Wall Street Journal | Adam Najberg | August 20
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/08/20/twitter-opens-up-its-mobile-ad-network-introduces-video/?mod=ST1
“Twitter is making its mobile ad network available to a wider group of marketers and introducing new ad formats including video, the company said Thursday. The social network last year began letting a select group of clients buy ad campaigns that would run on its own service and across third-party apps in its MoPub mobile advertising exchange. Now, the company says it’s allowing all advertisers with dedicated account managers at Twitter to extend their campaigns outside of the social network if they wish. It’s also renaming the product the ‘Twitter Audience Platform.’”

Booming Tech Industry Drives Seattle Unemployment Rate to Pre-Recession Levels

Puget Sound Business Journal | Greg Lamm | August 19
http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/blog/techflash/2015/08/booming-tech-industry-drives-seattle-unemployment.html
“The Seattle area’s unemployment rate improved to 3.7 percent in July, bolstered by the continued mad scramble among tech companies to hire new workers. The region’s unemployment rate last month was a slight improvement from the 3.8 percent the region had in June, according to the monthly jobless report released Wednesday by the state Employment Security Department. July’s preliminary jobless rate of 3.7 percent for Seattle-Bellevue-Everett is the third straight month the region’s unemployment rate has been below 4 percent. It is the first time the region’s rate has been below 4 percent for three consecutive months since 2008 before the recession hit.”

How the Tech Industry Is Greening Its Data Centers

CIO | Jen A. Miller | August 19
http://www.cio.com/article/2972935/data-center/how-the-tech-industry-is-greening-its-data-centers.html
“According to the National Resources Defense Council, data centers are one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of electricity in the United States. In 2013, U.S. data centers used 91 billion kilowatt-hours of energy, enough to power New York City households twice. The NRDC expects that demand to grow to 140 billion kilowatt-hours by 2020. While companies like Amazon have been a target of campaigns from nonprofits like Green America, the NRDC says that larger server farms operated by well-known Internet companies are paragons of ultra-efficiency.”

Mayor Murray: Seattle Is Meeting Growth’s Challenges

The Seattle Times | Ed Murray | August 18
http://www.seattletimes.com/opinion/mayor-murray-seattle-is-meeting-growths-challenges/
“SEATTLE is growing. We are the nation’s third-fastest growing city. Over the next 20 years, 120,000 more people are going to live here. We are beyond the debate about whether we should have growth — it’s already happening. Instead, we must devote our energies to how we shape that growth. Families across our city remain concerned about whether they will be able to afford rising rents, whether they will be able to get where they need to go and if their kids will have access to quality education. To address these concerns, we must be smart and forward-looking.”