SJL client, Wisconsin Technology Council names keynote speaker for June 4th conference. Siri architect to share insight and details behind its success
Chief architect of Apple's Siri to give Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Conference keynote speech
Shelley K. Mesch | Wisconsin State Journal
Brian Pinkerton, a 1986 UW-Madison graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, will digitally return to Madison as the keynote speaker at the Wisconsin Entrepreneurs’ Conference early next month.
The June 4 digital conference, held by the Wisconsin Technology Council, will feature several panel discussions and workshops, generally focused around the theme of helping businesses survive the COVID-19 pandemic.
For his keynote speech, Pinkerton, 56, said in an interview with the State Journal that he plans to address what he said should be one of the main focuses of technology — solving significant human problems.
Pinkerton, who grew up in Madison, has a long history of solving problems, particularly relating to web searches.
Pinkerton, who went on to receive a master’s and a doctoral degree from the University of Washington in computer science, created the search engine WebCrawler in 1994. It is now considered the oldest surviving search engine.
Currently chief architect of Siri, Apple’s virtual assistant on iPhones and other Apple devices, Pinkerton has also worked as the chief technology officer of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and as a vice president for search and general manager at A9.com, a branch of Amazon.
Q: How did you get into software engineering and computer science?
A: It was a little bit of a foregone conclusion because my dad was in the computer science department at (UW-Madison) ... I grew up in an environment full of computers. I worked on them in high school, just played around with them a lot. Then in college I majored in computer science at the University of Wisconsin and just kept going.
What is it that’s exciting for you about working on computers?
Apart from the fact that they’re predictable and logical and mostly do what you tell them to do? It’s not really working on computers so much as it is working on human problems and applying computing to human problems. Even when I think about taking a new job or something like that, the question is always like, “Is it an interesting sort of technical problem and things like that, but mostly is it an interesting human problem? One that I can relate to?”
What drew your attention to building search engines, such as WebCrawler and even your work with Amazon?
I’ve always loved learning through books and organizing information and going to the library, and unstructured information retrieval has always been almost like a little bit of a hobby of mine. You know, I sort of intuitively knew what I wanted.
I think the simplest way to put this is, as a reporter, you’ve probably used any number of proprietary database, search engine-type things where you go to the page and there’s 15 different fields and you don’t know what to put your keywords ... I had used a number of those and I wanted something a lot simpler. Just type and tell it what you want.
Throughout your career, what have been some of your toughest challenges and greatest accomplishments?
I think it might actually be learning to lead at scale. You go to school, at least somebody like me, goes to school to learn hot to be an engineer, and I learned at one of the best software engineering programs in the world at the University of Wisconsin ... It’s a huge advantage for me. It teaches you how to build software, like hands on a keyboard. What it doesn’t teach you how to do is, say you have 800 people working for you. Their hands are on the keyboards, yours are not. Now make something happen.
Can you tell me a bit about what you’ll say during your keynote speech?
I want to touch a little bit on this sort of human aspect of solving problems, right? Solving problems that matter to people. Because that’s often ignored when we talk about technology. Everybody thinks about technology as being kind of the magic bullet, but really, the first question is about solving a meaningful problem and a problem (that) means something to people. And then I think I’m going to talk, just sort of broadly speaking, about how AI (artificial intelligence) changes how we solve some of these problems.
What advice do you have for entrepreneurs in Madison, and how can they make themselves known without being in Silicon Valley?
I think COVID is the great leveler in this regard. It’s been amazing to me to see how quickly, even in headquarter-centric companies like Amazon and Apple, have adapted to remote working. I that that’s going to actually help a lot in this regard.
But my main advice is to do lots of networking. I think the quote, unquote “magic” of Silicon Valley isn’t actually magic, right? It’s that there is a sort of a community know-how around entrepreneurship and it’s just sort of happening all the time. You can plug into that from afar by either traveling occasionally or by just being involved online and raising your profile.
You mentioned COVID-19. What do you think might be some longer-term lessons from this pandemic?
It’s really hard to know. I mean, it’s going to fundamentally change society for a while. ... One of the things that I hope for is that it’s actually going to change the desirability of population centers. For a long time, we’ve had this phenomenon of Main Street USA moving to population centers for work, and so the density in places like New York and San Francisco has gone way up. Demands on housing are extreme, and the price of housing has gone way up. It’s really hard for people with ordinary jobs to live in those places. I see this as actually kind of leveling that a little bit and allowing people to work remotely.
To participate
What: Wisconsin Entrepreneurs' Conference, hosted by the Wisconsin Technology Council
When: Thursday, June 4 beginning at 8 a.m.
Cost: $109 for nonmembers
For more information and to register, visit wisconsintechnologycouncil.com
