GeekWire

It's going to be a long time before robots replace sports mascots, but it might be better for one of our GeekWire colleagues when they do.

That's one of the more lighthearted takeaways from our return trip to Pittsburgh, where GeekWire co-founder John Cook somehow managed to make enemies with yet another pro sports mascot, but we also came away with some more fundamental insights into the state of robots, automation and artificial intelligence:

• Supply chain challenges and labor shortages are changing the national conversation about automation, and accelerating adoption of robotics especially in manufacturing and distribution.
• Amazon's ambitions for rapid delivery are boosting robotics and automation across the e-commerce industry by prompting competitors to follow suit with their own solutions to increase logistics efficiencies.
• Robotics startups and autonomous driving companies are finding success in business and enterprise markets, as evidenced by Aurora Innovation's work with Paccar and FedEx on a self-driving truck.
• Many consumer robotics companies are still trying to do too much in making multi-purpose robots, rather than focusing on doing one thing well, as illustrated by the initial reception to Amazon's Astro home robot.

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We're coming to you  from Pittsburgh, where GeekWire is reporting on the future of robotics, AI and automation this week in conjunction with the Cascadia Connect Robotics, Automation & AI conference, organized by Seattle-based Cascadia Capital, which is underwriting our independent coverage of this topic.

This week's podcast is with Matthew Johnson-Roberson, the director of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, which has been the source of numerous breakthroughs in robotics and automation since its founding in the late 1970s. Johnson-Roberson spent part of his childhood in Seattle, where he went to Garfield High School. He was a CMU computer science undergrad who went on to get his doctorate in robotics at the University of Sydney and worked at the University of Michigan before returning to CMU as the leader of the Robotics Institute earlier this year. 

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Innovation is alive and well in STEM classrooms across Washington state, inspiring students to seek opportunities in science, technology, engineering and math.

At the GeekWire Awards on May 12, we're celebrating the accomplishments of three STEM Educator of the Year honorees who are excelling in their jobs by embracing creative, rule-breaking teaching strategies in their classrooms. These educators are eschewing traditional grading structures, putting students in charge of teaching lessons and empowering them with real-life, project-based learning.

We recently sat down to chat with our honorees along with DreamBox Learning CEO and President Jessie Woolley-Wilson to learn more about their efforts to breakdown traditional barriers. DreamBox is the sponsor of this award, now in its second year.

The STEM Educator of the Year honorees are:

Johanna Brown, a teacher at Pullman High School who brought Advanced Placement chemistry and computer science to her Eastern Washington high school, led their Science Bowl team to championships and embraces a "gradeless" classroom.

Devina Khan, a computer science and information technology instructional designer at the West Valley Innovation Center who partnered with an international program to connect female students with STEM professionals, coached students to earn tech certifications and helped kids share their tech expertise with the broader community in ag-focused Yakima County.

Stephanie Winslow, a teacher at South Kitsap High School who was one of the first STEM-certified career and technical educators in Washington and teaches AP environmental science, astronomy and earth science classes. She is also an advisor for STEM Club.

The GeekWire Awards recognize the top innovators and companies in Pacific Northwest technology. Our STEM educator honorees and other award finalists were selected based on community nominations, along with input from GeekWire Awards judges.

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Does it seem like activity is picking up out there in the tech world? Big fundings may be happening less frequently (with notable exceptions such as Convoy) but the return of events and in-person meetings seems to have created a collective energy that's been missing for the past two years.

In that spirit, we've got a grab bag of topics on this week's show:

New era for Netflix: News that Netflix is exploring a lower-price tier, supported by advertising, has us thinking back to our recent episode with Anthony Skinner, tech chief of advertising measurement and analytics company iSpot, who foreshadowed this move.

We also marvel at the brief lifespan of CNN+, and lament all the streaming subscriptions on our monthly bills.

Amazon's next big business? Amazon's unveiling of a new program called "Buy with Prime" will let Prime members buy items on non-Amazon e-commerce sites, and it's a key step toward a standalone Amazon shipping business, perhaps meeting the qualities of a "dreamy" business that Jeff Bezos outlined in his 2014 letter to shareholders.

Paul Allen's legacy: The reported sale of late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s Flying Heritage Collection fits a pattern of his estate divesting some of his more fanciful projects, while sticking with his core investments in technology and science. It also hints at what's ahead for Living Computers Museum, the Seattle Seahawks, Cinerama, etc.

More topics: GeekWire's upcoming trip to Pittsburgh; the May 12 GeekWire Awards; our recent episode with Soviet-born Seattle tech CEO Sergei Dreizin; and an upcoming episode with Reggie Fils-Aimé, the former Nintendo of America president, about his new book.

With GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook; Audio editing and production by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

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Sergei Dreizin is co-founder and CEO of software engineering company Akvelon, based in Bellevue, Wash. Born and raised in Moscow, he moved to the U.S. in 1992, after the Soviet Union's collapse, getting his computer science degree from the University of Minnesota before going to work for Microsoft in the Seattle area.

But he maintained personal connections to Russia, and Akvelon established a large engineering operation in the country — numbering about 800 people, or more than half the company's workforce. Akvelon also has 300 people in Ukraine, with a large office in Kharkiv, a city near the Russian border that has come under heavy attack.

On March 11, Akvelon shut down its operations in Russia following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

But that was just the beginning of the story, as Dreizin explains on this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast in conversation with GeekWire co-founder John Cook. See GeekWire.com for written excerpts.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we explore the state of the art in robotics and artificial intelligence with Martial Hebert, dean of the Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science in Pittsburgh.

A veteran computer scientist in the field of computer vision, Hebert is the former director of CMU's prestigious Robotics Institute. A native of France, he also had the distinguished honor of being our first in-person podcast guest in two years, visiting the GeekWire offices during his recent trip to the Seattle area.

As you'll hear, our discussion doubled as a preview of a trip that GeekWire's news team will soon be making to Pittsburgh, revisiting the city that hosted our temporary GeekWire HQ2 in 2018, and reporting from Cascadia Connect Robotics, Automation & AI conference, with coverage supported by Cascadia Capital. More details soon.

Hosted by GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop. Edited and produced by Curt Milton, with music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

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What's the impact of the words we use? Augmented writing platform Textio uses machine learning and natural language processing to take the guesswork out of business communication, offering predictive analytics designed to help companies recruit a diverse workforce and build an inclusive culture. 

The 120-person Seattle-based tech company, led by CEO Kieran Snyder, has been going through a transformation of its own during the past two years, expanding its product lineup while taking its own workforce fully remote, and recruiting more people outside the Seattle area.

In the process, the company built its own in-house online tool for participatory time-boxed conversations, for team-building and collaboration among its employees. Dubbed "Umeo," it's not a product ... at least not yet. 

Snyder, who was named the CEO of the Year in the 2021 GeekWire Awards, joins us on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast for a conversation about the importance of language, Textio's evolution, the future of workplace technology, regional differences in business language, and her formative experience as a "Scrabble hustler" in college in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square.

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Most online publishers and advertisers are accustomed to real-time analytics, the ability to see how many people are viewing a website or app at any moment, where they're coming from, generally who they are, and what they're doing on the site.

But that concept was a novelty in TV advertising before a startup called iSpot.tv came along in 2012. The company, based in Bellevue, Wash., took the turnaround time for data about television ads from weeks and days to hours and minutes.

A decade later, iSpot is a key partner and resource for major media platforms and advertisers. With more than 300 employees, the company has been growing organically and through acquisitions, it's increasingly becoming an alternative to industry stalwart Nielsen as a standard for audience measurement.

Meanwhile, Nielsen announced this week that it will be acquired by a private equity firm for $16 billion.

In the most recent example of the shift, NBCUniversal announced a multi-year agreement with iSpot to provide real-time audience measurement across platforms, starting with the 2022 Olympic Winter Games and Super Bowl LVI, and most recently for NBCUniversal's "upfront" negotiations with advertisers for the 2022-23 television season.

The upfront news was announced iSpot tech chief Anthony Skinner during an NBCUniversal developers conference on the Saturday Night Live stage in March. He joins us on the GeekWire Podcast to talk about the underlying changes in how we're all watching TV and consuming content, and how analytics have evolved along the way.

The company is a finalist in the category of Next Tech Titan in the 2022 GeekWire Awards, and Skinner was featured in a 2019 GeekWire Geek of the Week profile.

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we talk about what could be an enduring era of remote work — for some people, at least — as enabled by new technology and illuminated by new data about migration within the United States.

• First up, GeekWire co-founder Todd Bishop reports on his experience testing the SpaceX Starlink satellite service in my hometown in rural Northern California, including efforts to use the service from multiple locations.
• Then GeekWire co-founder John Cook assesses a high-profile effort by his home state, Ohio, to attract workers from Seattle and other U.S. tech hubs.
• And to round things out, we discuss new estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau that show the population of King County, Wash., home to the tech hubs of Seattle and Bellevue, declining by more than 20,000 people last year, as other counties in the state saw an influx.

Finally, we give a sneak preview of the five finalists in one of the categories for the upcoming GeekWire Awards.

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Tony Hsieh was a legendary entrepreneur who built Zappos and sold the online shoe retailer to Amazon for $1.2 billion in 2009. He was known for unusual experiments in management and business structure, and for pursuing long-term passions over short-term profits, as described in his 2010 book, Delivering Happiness.

A new book, Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, tells the rest of the story of Hsieh's life, leading up to his tragic death from injuries sustained in a fire in New London, Conn., in November 2020. The book also goes behind-the-scenes of the company's relationship with Amazon.

Wall Street Journal reporter Kirsten Grind, who wrote the book with her colleague Katherine Sayre, joins me on the GeekWire Podcast to talk about what they discovered in writing the book, and what we can learn from Hsieh's life.

Kirsten Grind was previously based in the Seattle area as a reporter for the Puget Sound Business Journal. Her reporting on the collapse of Washington Mutual formed the basis for her first book, The Lost Bank.

Resources: National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255; Crisis Text Line: 741741

Happy at Any Cost: The Revolutionary Vision and Fatal Quest of Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh, by Kirsten Grind and Katherine Sayre, is published by Simon and Schuster, and available wherever books are sold.

Podcast edited by Curt Milton; Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

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