GeekWire

Workplace chat and collaboration technology company Slack is going public on Thursday, with implications for a wide variety of companies in the Seattle region and beyond. Microsoft is Slack’s primary competitor with its Teams service, and Slack is a big Amazon Web Services customer. And many companies that sell technologies to businesses will be watching Slack’s stock market debut closely to assess their own potential in the public markets. So how does Slack work behind the scenes? On this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re featuring a conversation with a co-founder of Slack, Cal Henderson, the company’s chief technology officer, recorded during the recent GeekWire Cloud Summit.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Salesforce surprised the tech world this week with its agreement to acquire Tableau Software for $15.7 billion -- but maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise after the Seattle-based data visualization company was listed among the cloud giant's acquisition targets in a leaked internal slide deck a while back. With Salesforce co-CEO Marc Benioff declaring Seattle the new HQ2 for the San Francisco company, GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop tell the story behind this record-setting deal and consider the implications for the West Coast tech 'megalopolis.'   Plus, a Seattle startup entrepreneur unveils a smart new tool for finding candidates with views similar to your own, a Pioneer Square Labs spinout wants to help podcasters raise money from their most passionate listeners, and we debate the merits of dogs in the workplace after several Seattle tech companies rank high a list of pooch-friendly places to work.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The past decade has been a period of incredible growth for the technology industry in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. One of the primary engines of that growth is the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering in Seattle. Computer scientist Hank Levy has been a quiet force behind the program as its leader for the past 13 years. During his tenure, the program positioned itself as one of the top 5 computer science programs in the country, after MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon in the minds of many in the industry. It grew its faculty by 30 positions, or 70 percent; doubled its space with the addition of the Bill &  Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering; tripled its undergraduate enrollment and doubled its graduate enrollment; and developing strengths in areas such as robotics, data science, security, sensors and machine learning. Levy will step down as Allen School director effective July 1 but will remain involved with the program. Speaking with GeekWire this week, in advance of the Allen School commencement Friday evening, Levy reflected on the huge changes during his tenure, the transformation of technology during his career, and the challenges still facing the UW and the tech industry.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In the 13 years since Maria Klawe took over as president of Harvey Mudd College, she has surprised skeptics and achieved a milestone that has confounded most institutions of higher education. Today, 50 percent of Harvey Mudd graduates with degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are women, and students of color are on the rise at the elite technical college. The shift is no accident; Klawe made diversity her top priority when she took the helm at Harvey Mudd, in Claremont, Calif. And while she's made strides, she's also faced big challenges during what she describes as the most difficult years of her professional career. Klawe is a noted computer scientist and academic and a former Microsoft board member. Before becoming the first woman to lead Harvey Mudd, she served as dean of engineering at Princeton University and dean of science at the University of British Columbia. Klawe will share insights from her journey as a leader in computer science and champion for diversity when delivering the 2019 commencement address for the University of Washington's Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering this Friday, June 14. We caught up with Klawe for a preview of her remarks and a broader discussion of the opportunities and challenges facing the technology industry. Listen to the podcast below, subscribe to the GeekWire Podcast in your favorite podcast app, and continue reading for highlights from the conversation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amazon gave a detailed look at its new warehouse robots and delivery drones, discussed its plans for a satellite constellation, and talked about the future of artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation during a multi-day conference in Las Vegas this week. GeekWire's aerospace and science editor Alan Boyle was in Las Vegas to cover it all, and he joins us with a recap and analysis.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chad Robins is a Cornell grad and Wharton School MBA who was working in real estate finance a decade ago when he was approached with a business idea by his brother, Harlan Robins, head of the Computational Biology Program at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. As Chad Robins recalled, "When he called me up in 2009 and said, 'Hey I want to start a business, I've figured out how to sequence T-cells at a high throughput,' I was like, 'Yes, I'm in!' and then I went to Wikipedia and I'm like, 'What the hell is he talking about?' I don't know the difference between a T-cell receptor and a T-bone steak." A decade later, the company they created, Adaptive Biotechnologies, is using the genetic code of the immune system to change the diagnosis and treatment of disease. It’s valued at more than $1 billion. It has partnerships with industry giants Microsoft and Genentech, and this week it filed raise $230 million in an initial public offering. On this episode of the GeekWire podcast, we’ll get the inside story of Adaptive Biotechnologies and share what we learned in its IPO filing. Correction 6/3: Chad Robins and Harlan Robins hold about the same amount of equity in the company, which wasn’t apparent from the IPO filing because some of the stock is held in trusts. We've update the audio to remove this portion of our discussion.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Are we living in a simulation? Is there an afterlife? And if not, what would it take to create one? Drawing inspiration from Seattle's tech industry and the emerging field of virtual reality, best-selling science-fiction author Neal Stephenson knits together ideas as old as the Bible and as up-to-date as Elon Musk's musings in an epic 880-page novel titled "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell," due out June 4. GeekWire's Alan Boyle read the book and interviewed Stephenson, and joins us to share highlights.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The peak home-buying season is upon us, but buyers and sellers taking a fresh look at the market will see a much different landscape for real estate technology than they did just a year or two ago -- and it's only the beginning of the changes to come. It's an exciting time in the real estate tech business, and anything can happen. On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we assess the changes so far and debate what could happen next: Could Zillow end up buying Redfin or another brokerage to bolster its new model? Will the notion of one-click homebuying ever truly take hold? How will traditional brokerages play a role in the future? And will any of these changes actually address the fundamental problem of housing affordability? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amazon's annual meeting has become a spectacle over the years, despite the company's best efforts to stick to business. Todd Bishop and Monica Nickelsburg explain what happened at this year's event, earlier this week in Seattle. Plus, the latest on T-Mobile and Sprint, why a former Facebook exec is floating Microsoft's Brad Smith as a replacement for Mark Zuckerberg, and how Rover capitalized on the Game of Thrones finale.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

John Rossman helped to launch and build the Amazon Marketplace business before leading the company's Enterprise Services business during his tenure at the company. In his new book, "Think Like Amazon: 50 1/2 Ideas to Become a Digital Leader," he helps other business leaders and managers understand, learn from and adopt elements of Amazon's approach. He sat down with us this week to talk about some of the ideas that define the company, and what they say about its future.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.