No, BRE is not a French cheese.

Here we are.  February.  The longest 28 days of the year that are usually too cold and dark with just a hint of soon-to-come longer days of light.   Also, its the month of coming to terms with your new year’s resolutions that did not even last a month.  (My chocolate...

Time to start a resolution.

January!! It’s the time for the thousands of years old tradition of making resolutions for the coming year. It’s the time of reflections and promises. And, for me, it’s the time to promise eating fewer chocolate chip cookies—oops, already broken—and for some, it’s a...

Happy sales to you…

Welcome to the holiday issue.  For many economic development professionals, especially those working with entrepreneurs and local expansion of products and services, this time of year provides for an absolute no-nonsense metric:  Sales over the course of a few short...

GEW – I’ll give it a week.

November is important to people in many different ways.  This year it caps one of the most gorgeous autumns in recent memory but there are also public and private events and celebrations of traditions that include family and friends, from football and parades to...

There’s a trick to getting the treats.

October is here! The month that children get to celebrate Halloween by dressing up in scary costumes and extorting candy from their community neighborhoods. Kids and dentists love it. I have often said that economic development is like Halloween. When kids hear that...

Getting schooled on educational pathways.

I have always hated September. Most people love September because fall is in the air, baseball playoffs are exciting, football season begins (Go Hawks!) and Bumbershoot and other end-of-summer events entertain almost everybody. But I hated September as a young kid...

A declaration of Independents.

July is my favorite month of the year and not just because it’s the month that I was born (It’s the 22nd in case you were wondering).  It’s also my favorite because it is the month we celebrate our nation’s creation of the Declaration of Independence.  It is this...

It’s doesn’t have to be a complete disaster.

It’s been exactly a year since an oversized truck knocked out a section of the Skagit River Bridge, an event nobody, of course, saw coming. During that year there have been other “disasters” both large and small in Washington that have affected the livability and...