[Irfaan]

Alright - how do we go about this, then? Is there anyone driving anything like this already, or are we just waiting for some one to step in and just do this?

This sounds valuable enough that I'd be willing to plunk down some of my company's time to make this happen. That said, I suspect we'd be a rather poor choice to drive this as we're running pretty independent of the rest of the Seattle startup scene.

Given our community, though, there's gotta be someone whose a decent fit for this.

Anyone?

[Mongoose]

Redfin's a good example. They're at every UW CSE career fair and Glenn Kelman (Redfin's CEO) gives talks on campus every now and then.

My original comment was a bit too focused on the companies' side of things. I think the main issue is a lack of awareness on the part of students. In my experience (as a current undergrad at UW), students simply don't know about the local startup scene and thus don't take the steps to capitalize on it. Given the decent number of organizations and meetups in the area that would provide good avenues for students to get involved (Seattle Tech Startups, Startup Weekend, Hops & Chops, TechCafe, etc), it's more a matter of connecting the dots than developing new social structures.

[dbalatero]

I'm a UW CSE graduate (Mar 2009), and technical co-founder at MediaPiston. I can give good insight on recruiting at UW CSE - what works, what doesn't. Email me at (my HN username) at gmail.