List: The 25 people who did big stuff this year in Seattle tech and beyond

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After considerable discussion, careful deliberation and more than a few debates at the neighborhood bar, the GeekWire team has finished compiling our Newsmakers of 2011 — a list of the people we’ve covered who, in our estimation, made the biggest impact on the technology community and did the coolest stuff within their respective fields over… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg pushes the potential of the social infrastructure

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Now that everybody is connected, things are about to get really interesting. That was the message from Mark Zuckerberg this year, through his words and actions. The Facebook CEO sees the new “social infrastructure” transforming businesses including television, movies, books and music before moving on to traditional sectors such as health care and finance. “When… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Neil Roseman helps bring Zynga to Seattle

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One of the biggest stories in Seattle tech in 2011 was the arrival of the Silicon Valley tech titans. It seemed that nearly every other month a new company was establishing an engineering center in rain-soaked Seattle, picking off talented managers and engineers and altering the tech recruiting landscape in the process. Zynga, the fast-growing… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Mariachi and margaritas mark wild year for Double Down’s Walcott, Enell

DoubleDown's Walcott and Greg Enell

Executives at Double Down Interactive hired a mariachi band to entertain staffers at a company meeting in September — a special treat for hitting one million daily active users on Facebook. And then — amid the tortilla chips and margaritas — the fun really started. CEO and co-founder Greg Enell — along with execs Glenn Walcott… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Smilebox CEO Andrew Wright builds big business on life’s little moments

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It’s that time of year when folks start thinking about connecting with family and friends through holiday cards. And Smilebox CEO Andrew Wright has certainly seen his fair share of interactive creations over the years. Since its launch in 2006, the Smilebox software has been downloaded by more than 15 million people and over 180… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Google engineer Steve Yegge, the accidental newsmaker

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We’re just a few days from finishing the rollout of our 2011 GeekWire Newsmakers, a roster of people who made an impact on the tech industry over the past year. Today’s honoree, Steve Yegge, is unusual because he probably never would have expected to make the list. Not that the Google engineer isn’t doing important… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: F5′s John McAdam quietly creates a billion dollar business

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F5 Networks CEO John McAdam helped guide the company to more than $1 billion in revenue in 2011 Over the past decade, John McAdam has led F5 Networks on one of the more impressive growth paths in the Seattle tech industry. When the former IBM and Sequent Computer executive arrived at the helm in 2000,… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Z2Live CEO David Bluhm builds a mobile games powerhouse

Z2Live co-founder David Bluhm poses in front of Sgt. Ramsey, one of the main characters in Battle Nations. Photo: Annie Laurie Malarkey

Z2Live CEO David Bluhm — a veteran Seattle entrepreneur and gaming executive — likes to say that his company batted three for three in 2011. And it’s hard to argue with those metrics. The maker of MetalStorm, TradeNations and Battle Nations saw each of its titles soar to success this year. “We took all three… Read More…

Newsmakers 2011: Yoky Matsuoka links humans to devices, from thermostats to robots

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Yoky Matsuoka has long been interested in the frontiers of human interaction with machines, exploring new ways for the nervous system to work in conjunction with robotics and other mechanical devices. In 2011 the University of Washington associate professor pushed that work forward on two fronts — inside the research lab, and inside a thermostat…. Read More…