It was an eye-opening, humbling, and re-energizing few days for Brett Greene and Red Russak at the first-ever White House Tech Meetup this past weekend.
The New Tech Seattle Meetup founders spent the past few days in Washington D.C. representing Seattle at the White House, which hosted 50 other Meetup organizers from around the country as part of an event that government officials organized to spur collaboration on challenging tech-related projects.
Greene and Russak, who launched New Tech Seattle two years ago to highlight emerging startups and bring together the entrepreneurial community, came away from the White House event with several new connections and ideas after spending time with likeminded technology-related Meetup organizers and people like U.S. CTO Megan Smith and Meetup founder Scott Heiferman.
“They gave us the opportunity to meet other people like us from other cities and share what’s working and what’s not,” Russak said. “They essentially created a community for community people.”
Guests ranged from the City of Atlanta’s CIO to a Native American woman from Alaska who’s trying to organize tech events in her hometown. Attendees discussed a host of topics — from education to entrepreneurship to social issues — that all focused on how technology can help communities around the nation create opportunities and impact positive change.
The experience helped Greene realize the purpose of events like New Tech Seattle.
“For me, the biggest takeaway was that Meetups aren’t just events,” he explained. “What they do is put people together that don’t just help each other, but they encourage people to go out and help others, too.”
Greene and Russak were also reminded of how far ahead the Seattle tech community is compared to other cities in the U.S.
“Seattle has made the tech community a priority,” Greene said. “That was really evident when people came up to us and asked about our event and our city.”
The Seattleites were picked from a group of more than 30,000 tech Meetup organizers in the U.S that help run more than 11,000 Meetups. They noted that after just two years, New Tech Seattle is already in the top one percent of all Meetups as far as community size.
“That speaks louder than words for Seattle,” Russak said.
Greene and Russak will share more from their White House experience at tonight’s New Tech Seattle event at the University of Washington.
