Trendsetting and trailblazing — these uber geeks keep us wired on all things tech.
With so many tech companies merging and purging and so many shifts in the industry, the 411 on the digital frontier is ever changing and can be difficult to keep up with. Enter John Cook and Todd Bishop, co-founders of the locally-based technology news site GeekWire — the bible for tech industry fanatics.
Cook, 39, and Bishop, 38, launched GeekWire in March 2011 with the mission to cover all tech-related stories from local to international levels. Describing their venture as not only an independent technology news site, but also an online community, Cook and Bishop hope to “[cover] the people, companies and innovations emerging from and impacting the Pacific Northwest.”
Their coverage is extensive, including everything from the ins-n-outs of all the latest news and gossip at the Meccas of the tech industry like Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Google, to the hottest start-ups around. GeekWire delivers pertinent knowledge and information to their loyal readers and keeps them in-the-know.
“I’ve covered the technology beat in Seattle for more than a decade, and love telling the stories of entrepreneurs and the people who are building the next crop of businesses in the Pacific Northwest,” Cook said.
Originally from Wooster, Ohio, Cook followed his older brother to Seattle in 1995, and now Cook and his family reside in Ballard. Cook has worked for the Eastside Journal and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and co-founded TechFlash.com, the Puget Sound Business Journal’s technology news site, before teaming up with Bishop on their latest endeavor.
Bishop hails from Orland, Calif., and settled in the Greenwood neighborhood with his family. He has more than eight years under his belt reporting on Seattle’s technology industry for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and has also written for such newspapers as the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Philadelphia Business Journal and the Puget Sound Business Journal.
Both Cook and Bishop have extensive experience as technology journalists. The two met during their time as reporters for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, where they covered technology for the business section of the newspaper.
As longtime reporters who’ve been dialed-in on the Emerald City technology scene for a combined two decades, and having grown up working for newspapers, their motivation behind creating GeekWire was simple. “After covering technology companies, entrepreneurs and startups for years, we decided it was long past time to take the entrepreneurial plunge ourselves,” they said.
What’s so special about GeekWire? Cook and Bishop emphasize, it’s community. “The heart of GeekWire is a large and thriving community of people who not only comment on posts but send us story ideas, contribute guest commentaries, tell us what we’re doing right and where we’re going wrong,” according to Bishop and Cook. “More than 800 people showed up at the GeekWire launch event [on June 22]. The success of GeekWire so far is a reflection of the strength of the Seattle tech community.”
Their favorite part about writing for a technology news site is the ability to inform their audience about all the relevant happenings in the tech world. According to Cook and Bishop, GeekWire is geared toward people involved in technology in the Pacific Northwest, and those interested in the technology, people, companies and trends that come out of this region.
“That means we’re writing not only for people who live and work here, but also for people around the globe,” Bishop said. “We like to say we cover the technology world with a Seattle lens.”
“As for the future, we have many ideas percolating to grow GeekWire as a business over time, but the great thing is that, by running our own startup, we have the flexibility to seize the opportunities as we see them, as we figure out what’s right for the business and also for the community that we serve,” Bishop said. With help from the entrepreneurial minds of their business partner, Jonathan Sposato, and GeekWire’s chief business officer, Rebecca Lovell, one can bet that there will be no shortage of activity on the GeekWire front in the near future.
If you can’t get enough of their frequent online postings, Cook and Bishop encourage you to tune into their weekend radio show (Saturdays at 7 a.m. and Sundays at 1 p.m.) on 97.3 KIRO-FM in Seattle to listen to them talk shop with guests about the latest tech news and trends.
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