Why West Seattle’s Hotwire Coffee is doubling as a TV studio today

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Hotwire Online Coffeehouse (WSB sponsor) proprietor Lora Lewis is pulling an all-nighter right now – not because she, oh, say, drank too much of her own product, but because she’s got a shop full of special guests:

Those are a few members of the video crew that chose Hotwire as the backdrop for what’s known as a “satellite media tour” – here’s the uplink truck parked in the Hotwire courtyard to facilitate the “satellite” part of the phrase:

So what’s the occasion? On behalf of Norton from Symantec, Los Angeles-based “Internet safety advocate” Marian Merritt will be doing three dozen live interviews with TV stations around the country – including Q13 here in Seattle – to talk about the “Top 10 Riskiest Online Cities” list the company just released. Just so happens, Seattle tops the list. So why do the interviews from Hotwire? A producer explained, “We found them online!” (Of course.) Anyway, they’ve got interviews booked starting at 3:10 am our time and continuing up till 9 am, overlapping with Hotwire operating hours (which start at 6:30 am) – so when you drop by for coffee this morning (maybe a Peeps beverage?) don’t mind the TV crew. And be kind to Lora; she’s been at the shop just after midnight, when the crew needed to start setting up – even on the patio:

(next photo added 9:40 am – the producer with the info sheet as they prepared for the Q13 interview)

P.S. As of this writing, we can’t find Symantec’s “riskiest cities” list online … but the producer gave us a printout, so read on if you’re interested (PLUS, added 11:36 am, our video interview with Lora as this all wrapped up):

The media-info printout lists the top 50 – ending with Detroit. We’ll just transcribe the top 20 “cybercrime cities” here:

1. Seattle
2. Boston
3. Washington, D.C.
4. San Francisco
5. Raleigh, N.C.
6. Atlanta
7. Minneapolis
8. Denver
9. Austin, TX
10. Portland
11. Honolulu
12. Charlotte, N.C.
13. Las Vegas
14. San Diego
15. Colorado Springs
16. Sacramento
17. Pittsburgh
18. Oakland
19. Nashville
20. San Jose

According to the printout, “To develop these rankings, researchers at Sperling’s BestPlaces analyzed data for each city including the number of cyberattacks and potential infections (data provided by Symantec Security Response), level of Internet access, expenditures on computer hardware and software, wireless hotspots, broadband connectivity, Internet usage and online purchases.”

ADDED 11:36 AM: We dropped by in the final hour of the “satellite media tour” to ask Lora how it went:

cjboffoli March 22, 2010 (8:45 am)

Those satellite press tours are never much fun for the subject being interviewed as they’re answering the same questions over and over for each market. Movie stars promoting their films HATE doing them because they are so tedious. They’re also tough on the crews that have to stand there and hear the same spiel. Much more efficient than flying around to do interviews in person though.

WSB March 22, 2010 (8:51 am)

I was surprised to hear they’d booked 36 spots – I executive-produced morning news for several years and tried to avoid booking people speaking on behalf of a company (unless MAYBE it was someone humongously famous) – but these days, staffs are down while most morning shows have been expanded to five or even six hours, and that is a TON of time to fill! – TR

PeterT March 22, 2010 (9:22 am)

If I’m reading it right, and the constituent data is based on ‘private users’ and not adding in ‘corporate users’, I think it can also be defined as Seattle being the most ‘wired’ city in the US; in other words, more people here have the means (PCs, mobile devices), and the connectivity ability (wired or wireless, fixed or mobile) to access the internet than anywhere else….

WSB March 22, 2010 (9:43 am)

That’s pretty much how I read it too. You could be the car-theft capital because you have more cars than anywhere else, etc. … Meantime, in the hours since we dropped by Hotwire at 2 am, the official news release on this has gone out and been picked up many a place:
http://news.google.com/news/search?pz=1&cf=all&ned=us&hl=en&q=cybercrime+symantec&cf=all&scoring=n

clark5080 March 22, 2010 (12:27 pm)

So Q 13 was used as a big commercial for Norton. I only saw one of the interviews and I thought it was an independent person not an infomercial. Not to many people think Norton is very good any more.
Jim

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