WTIA Launches Survey on Impact of Financial Crisis

It’s what everyone is talking about: the global financial crisis, and its impact on business and markets. But more specifically, what is its impact on local-area tech businesses and innovation, and how will people respond to it? Here at Xconomy, we’ve posed those important questions to some of our distinguished network of Xconomists—leaders in technology, business, and science who serve an advisory role for us—and we’ve published their thoughts here.

So it is with great interest that we note that the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) is launching a survey of its own today, with Xconomy as its exclusive media partner. According to Ken Myer, the president and CEO of the WTIA (and an Xconomist), the goal of the survey is to get feedback from members of the technology community on the following broad questions:

—What is their view of the financial crisis?

—How has their been business affected, or how do they anticipate their business to be affected by it?

The survey, which consists of about 10 specific questions, is going out to the roughly 10,000 people in the Washington technology industry who receive the WTIA’s monthly e-mail newsletter. The link to the survey is here:
http://wtia.informz.net/survistapro/s.asp?id=409

The plan is to keep the survey open to responders through October 17. Then, a summary of the results will be available to the public the week of October 27.

Because Xconomy is the WTIA’s partner for this survey, we’ll have early access to the results—and will be able to report on the important trends and figures that it reveals. So I urge our readers, wherever you are located, to take part in the survey—and to watch this space for analysis.

Author: Gregory T. Huang

Greg is a veteran journalist who has covered a wide range of science, technology, and business. As former editor in chief, he overaw daily news, features, and events across Xconomy's national network. Before joining Xconomy, he was a features editor at New Scientist magazine, where he edited and wrote articles on physics, technology, and neuroscience. Previously he was senior writer at Technology Review, where he reported on emerging technologies, R&D, and advances in computing, robotics, and applied physics. His writing has also appeared in Wired, Nature, and The Atlantic Monthly’s website. He was named a New York Times professional fellow in 2003. Greg is the co-author of Guanxi (Simon & Schuster, 2006), about Microsoft in China and the global competition for talent and technology. Before becoming a journalist, he did research at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He has published 20 papers in scientific journals and conferences and spoken on innovation at Adobe, Amazon, eBay, Google, HP, Microsoft, Yahoo, and other organizations. He has a Master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT, and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.