GeekWire

Our guest on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast is Mark Nelson, who was named Tableau Software president and CEO in March.

He filled a vacancy created when his predecessor, Adam Selipsky, was named CEO of Amazon Web Services, taking over for Andy Jassy, who is succeeding Jeff Bezos as Amazon CEO. We get to know Nelson on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast, talking about his background and leadership approach, life inside Salesforce, his goals as the new leader of Tableau, and the company's future in the Seattle region.

Salesforce bought Tableau for more than $15 billion in 2019, its largest acquisition at the time. Now, with Salesforce close to completing its acquisition of workplace collaboration company Slack for $27.7 billion, investors are looking to Tableau's performance inside Salesforce for clues about Slack's fate.

We talk about Tableau's results, ask Nelson what advice he'd give Slack CEO Stewart Butterfield about working with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

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The pandemic had a seismic impact on in-person meetings and events, requiring organizers and attendees to adjust to a whole new reality.

The aftermath could prove even trickier, creating a hybrid audience, with some people attending virtually and others in the flesh. 

That's one takeaway from our conversation with Allie Magyar, the CEO of Hubb, a Vancouver, Wash.-based company that makes technology for virtual and in-person events. A veteran of the events industry, Magyar has run some of the world's biggest tech conferences, including Microsoft's Ignite, for which she was the lead planner.

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Amazon's agreement to acquire MGM for $8.45 billion has all the makings of a great script, combining a Hollywood icon with an Internet powerhouse.

But will this unlikely pairing be a giant blockbuster or a massive flop?

Joining us to assess the situation on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast is Sam Blake, a reporter who covers entertainment and media for dot.LA, the technology news site for Southern California.

Here's how he put the news in perspective in his coverage this week: "Ninety-six years after Metro Pictures, Goldwyn Pictures and Louis B. Mayer Pictures merged to form MGM Studios, the Hollywood mainstay best known for its roaring lion mascot is set to join a trillion-dollar business empire best known for selling household items over the internet."

MGM would provide Amazon with more than 4,000 films and 17,000 TV shows that have collectively won more than 180 Academy Awards and 100 Emmys. The film library includes the James Bond and Rocky franchises, as well as television shows such as “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “Fargo,” and reality shows such as “Shark Tank” and “Survivor.”

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The 2021 virtual GeekWire Awards were held this week, recognizing the top companies, innovators, entrepreneurs and technologies in the Pacific Northwest, as nominated and chosen by the GeekWire community — along with  celebrity cameos.

On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we’re featuring highlights from a behind-the-scenes conversation with former Docker and Concur CEO Steve Singh, managing director of Madrona Venture Group, which was hosted for finalists in advance of the awards by GeekWire co-founder John Cook.

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The pandemic upended education in extraordinary ways, and shed new light on the social, economic and racial disparities in schools and communities across the country. But how can teachers, students, parents, schools and the system as a whole apply lessons learned from the past 18 months to ultimately end up in a better place?

On this special episode of the GeekWire Podcast, we look ahead with a group of remarkable educators who focus on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) from different perspectives. They are our STEM Educators of the Year for 2021, presented by DreamBox Learning, as part of our upcoming 2021 GeekWire Awards celebration:

• Lauren Bricker, a former Lakeside School teacher now on the faculty of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington.
• Cathi Rodgveller, CEO and founder of IGNITE Worldwide, which works with school districts to promote STEM education and career advancement for girls and non-binary youth.
• Kim Williams, science department head, science club faculty advisor at Cougar Mountain Middle School.

Joining GeekWire's John Cook to guide the discussion is Jessie Woolley-Wilson, CEO of DreamBox Learning and a former GeekWire Awards CEO of the Year honoree.

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Reports of the death of coastal cities are greatly overblown.

At least that’s the view of renowned urbanist and author Richard Florida who spoke earlier this week with GeekWire contributing editor Monica Nickelsburg about the future of cities as part of the annual Crosscut Festival.

“I am just amazed at the amount of gloom and doom pessimism,” said Florida, adding that any out-of-city migration appears to be temporary and is really only happening with small subsets of people. “Net-net, it doesn’t look like we’ve had a great urban exodus.”

That’s just one of the fascinating observations from Florida, author of the Rise of the Creative Class and a professor at University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management. In the interview, Florida talks about the impact of falling birth rates on cities; why Miami appears ready to emerge as a significant tech hub; and how central business districts will need to change to embrace a post-pandemic world.

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This week's show is a special presentation of GeekWire's newest podcast, Day 2, about everything Amazon, analyzing the company's record quarterly results and looking ahead to what's next. To hear more episodes, subscribe to Day 2 in any podcast app.

Year-over-year quarterly growth of 44% would be significant for any company, but when the numbers were already this big, it starts to qualify as astonishing.

Amazon's sales of $108.5 billion in the first quarter compared with $75.5 billion a year earlier, setting a new record for the Seattle-based e-commerce giant and providing a glimpse of its strong position as the world emerges from the pandemic. Amazon is easing its spending on COVID-19 initiatives, but consumers' online purchasing habits appear to have permanently changed.

The result: its profits more than tripled, to $8.1 billion, from $2.5 billion a year earlier.

The impact of that structural shift on Amazon's bottom line is the big takeaway from its first-quarter results, released Thursday afternoon.

We break down the quarter on this episode of Day 2, GeekWire's podcast about everything Amazon, with GeekWire co-founders Todd Bishop and John Cook, and former third-party seller Jason Boyce, co-author of "The Amazon Jungle" and founder and CEO of e-commerce agency Avenue7Media. 

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Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week:

• Washington state is poised to make a significant change in how its citizens gain access to the internet. Gov. Jay Inslee has indicated he’ll sign two pieces of legislation that, for the first time, will allow municipalities to set up their own direct-to-consumer broadband services. We discuss why this is a big deal and how it might work in one county.
• Washington state legislators appear to be on track to pass a new capital gains tax for the state that would be collected on large sales of stocks, among other holdings. But tech industry leaders warn it might harm the startup scene. What's behind the move and who might it help ... and who might it hurt?
• Amazon weighed in on a proposed European super league of soccer and said it didn’t like the idea. Did Amazon’s opposition help scuttle the plan?

With GeekWire’s John Cook and Mike Lewis. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

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It's one of the hottest topics in tech, but despite broad agreement about the importance of online privacy, the United States has yet to pass comprehensive, modern, federal legislation that addresses the issue. U.S. Rep Suzan DelBene, a Democrat from Washington state, wants to change that.

"Technology has created incredible new opportunities, but our laws have not kept up," she says. "So it is incumbent on Congress to make sure that our laws keep up, that we protect people's rights in our changing world, and privacy is a important place to start."

DelBene is seeking to address the issue with a new attempt to pass federal privacy legislation, the Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act. It comes as more states propose and pass their own privacy laws. DelBene warns that this emerging "patchwork" of state laws threatens to deepen the country’s privacy predicament, creating confusing for consumers and businesses, and diminishing the influence of the country on the issue by presenting a divided front on the international stage. 

A former Microsoft executive and startup leader, DelBene joins us to discuss the issue on on this episode of the GeekWire Podcast.

Read one-page summary of the bill here. 

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This week on the GeekWire Podcast, we're presenting a special episode of Day 2, our new podcast about Amazon. Subscribe to Day 2 in any podcast app and see geekwire.com/day2 for show notes and more episodes.

In a public defeat for organized labor, a sizable majority of Amazon warehouse employees voted against unionization in Bessemer, Ala. in an election overseen by federal authorities Friday. But the process put a harsh spotlight on labor practices in the tech giant's fulfillment centers, and the company's anti-union tactics. In the larger scheme of things, was this really a win for Amazon?

On this episode GeekWire reporter Mike Lewis and e-commerce consultant Jason Boyce talk with Margaret O’Mara, a historian, author and University of Washington professor who specializes in the history of tech and politics.

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