Oct 03, 2000

Mainstar Software

Jocson

Janet Jocson has been promoted to Webmaster and Wendy Golden joins as technical support representative at Mainstar Software Corp., a Bellevue-based provider of storage and recovery solutions for computer systems. Jocson will maintain the company's Web site. Golden brings more than 25 years of technical support experience to assist Mainstar's customers in product installation and operation.

Oct 02, 2000

Eton Technical Institute

Eton Technical Institute, a secondary technical education institute in Everett, announced the move of its campus to a new, state-of-the-art facility adjacent to the Everett Mall. The new location occupies the sixth floor of the of the Everett Mall Office Park Building Three and was designed by Connell Design Group of Mountlake Terrace.

Sep 29, 2000

Whatcom County/EzGov

Whatcom County is offering online payment of property taxes for the area's 56,000 property owners. The service allows citizens to view property tax records, pay taxes and track payments. This is the first fully integrated online tax payment service in the state and is being made available to Whatcom County through a partnership with EzGov, an e-government software provider. The online property tax payment service works by allowing property owners to search for tax information by either street address or parcel number. The system is secure and reliable. Access to the service is through http://www.co.whatcom.wa.us/treasurer/home.htm.

RealNetworks

RealNetworks, a Seattle-based provider of media delivery on the Internet, named Randy Tinsley vice president of corporate development. Tinsley, formerly of Intel, Amazon and the Internet Capital Group, will head corporate development at RealNetworks, with responsibility for helping the company grow its current lines of businesses and expand into new areas through strategic partnerships, investments and acquisitions

Sep 28, 2000

Imagio|JWT

Yerabek

Matsumoto

Vincenzo

Imagio|JWT, a Seattle-based technology public relations and advertising firm, has hired four new employees. Chris Yerabek, IT manager, is responsible for maintaining the company's computer network and Web connectivity. Shanna Lisherness, assistant controller, is responsible for accounts receivable and payable. Mari Matsumoto, public relations administrative assistant, serves on the support staff for the agency's four public relations divisions. Carmine Vincenzo, facilities manager, will coordinate in-house facilities projects.

Viatru

Seattle-based Viatru announced a major expansion of its business strategy by launching a global initiative to give retailers access to socially responsible suppliers in developing communities, their products and their stories. Consumers will have access to information about suppliers that has never before been possible, through new "digital windows" that offer a glimpse into these communities. Formerly known as World2Market.com, Viatru will now focus solely on supporting mainstream retailers in their efforts to purchase and sell sustainably produced items from around the world.

WebHatch.com

WebHatch.com, a Tacoma-based Internet incubator company that invests in Internet e-commerce start-up opportunities along with organically growing in-house concepts for spin-off opportunities, has named Issa Traore as its chief technical officer. Traore will be responsible for directing the companies toward their technological objectives, such as information structures, software development and use, analyzing new technologies and competitive analyses to determine appropriate spending of the technical budgets.

QBeo

QBeo, a North Bend-based innovator of digital image enhancement technology, has received $1.5 million in private venture funding from AdAstra to fuel development of its consumer imaging technology for broadband cable. QBeo is adapting its digital imaging technology to high-speed broadband cable with a service called My Photo Gallery. The new service will integrate traditional and digital cameras, televisions and set-top boxes into one system that provides cable subscribers with image storage, editing and output capabilities.

O'Day merges into Firmani & Associates

Tracy O'Day, the solo Seattle public relations woman who specializes in commercial real estate and construction clients, has dropped the solo. She merged The O'Day Group into Mark Firmani's Belltown-based Firmani & Associates.

O'Day

The deal brings seven-year-old Firmani & Associates to 12 employees. Before adding O'Day's clients, Firmani mostly served high tech companies, law firms and some healthcare clients.

O'Day's client list includes CB Richard Ellis, Commercial Real Estate Women Northwest, Bentall US LLC, Harbor Properties and Kauri Investments. Also, Associated Builders and Contractors of Western Washington, Construction Associates Inc. and Donald B. Murphy Contractors Inc.

O'Day said that after 16 years of operating solo she welcomed the chance to spend more time on "client service, which is my love," and less on the administrative aspects of keeping the business going.

Mark Firmani said he looks for chances to grow his firm and saw adding "the high priestess of real estate and construction PR" as a good fit. "Mergers work well when the parties bring disparate talents, This is squarely one of those," he said.

O'Day cut her teeth on real estate PR working four years for developer Jack Benaroya before Benaroya's 1984 sale of his entire portfolio freed her to go out on her own.

Having Benaroya on her resume brought exposure, of course.

"Jack is a legend, so when I struck out on my own, all of the development community wanted to talk to me," she recalled. "Not that they wanted to hire me. They just wanted to know about Jack."

The Benaroya years showed her that commercial real estate marketing was more "diverse" than she had assumed.

"I worked on fundraising for the symphony to advertising for business parks," she said. To promote a collection of home furnishing tenants in what was then Benaroya's Parkway Plaza strip shopping center in Tukwila, O'Day had a house built in the plaza's parking lot so the public could see the stores' goods in a home-like setting.

For the developer Prescott's late-1980s topping out ceremony for the U.S. Bank Center high-rise in downtown Seattle, O'Day helped organize a black-tie affair with linens and fine crystal in the middle of a dirty construction site.

"It was a controversial site. To show that not everything is black and white, we made it a black-tie dinner," she said. The planning included rounding up every shoe-buffing machine they could find so the well-heeled attendees could buff off the construction dust as they left the site.

O'Day, an avid horse rider going back to her youth in Montana, has served a range of other types of clients and remembers Washington Mutual's Rodeo Grandmas as among the most fun.

"I didn't invent them, but I worked with them after they became famous with the WaMu ads. I booked them for all sorts of things like TV gigs. For a commercial, I got to ride with them. They were all professional cattlewomen. Loraine Pass, who was 85 then, could outride me." During shooting of the commercial, the Rodeo Grandmas herded cattle. O'Day and other riders would then herd the cattle back so the grandmas could do it again for the next take.