Slack developer and former BCU graduate to receive special award
THE co-founder of $3 billion US app Slack and the first person ever hired to work for Flickr has been selected to receive an honorary award by Birmingham City University.
Cal Henderson has enjoyed a stellar career since graduating from BCU in 2002 with a degree in Software Engineering. His career has included working with Yahoo! And Flickr before launching business communications app Slack, which has more than one million active users and has been valued at nearly $3 billion.
Henderson, now Chief Technology Officer at Slack, is returning to Birmingham from San Francisco to receive an award as one of BCU’s Alumni of the Year.
Speaking ahead of the award, Henderson said: “I’m very honoured. I’ve lived in San Francisco for over 10 years now and, being immersed in the industry here, it’s quite meaningful to receive recognition back home. When I was a kid and thought I could one day work at Microsoft – it never occurred to me that I could build a company that might become the next Microsoft.
“Silicon Valley is a long way from Birmingham, and a university education opens up a world of possibilities.”
From a young age Henderson had his sights set on becoming a computer programmer, he had developed an interest in programming back when as a five-year-old child and saw his cousin using a computer.
“My first computer was a ZX Spectrum +3, which I got a couple of years later. From the day I got it, I knew I wanted to be a programmer. At that time, home computers all came with programming languages built in, so you could write your own programs. I immediately started tinkering,” he said.
Slack’s business communications platform aims to enhance team interaction, creating a single, organised and searchable archive of information pulled from email, messaging and popular services such as Twitter and Dropbox.
Henderson, who became Flickr’s first ever staff recruit back in 2003 after helping to inspire the image sharing service, is also author of best-selling book, Building Scalable Websites. He is currently working on a second edition. In his spare time, he continues to publish articles on web application development and contributes to open source projects. He is colour blind and has worked on applications to make the web more accessible for people with the condition.
He will receive his Alumni of the Year Award at the BCU’s graduation ceremony on September 3, which takes place at the Symphony Hall in Birmingham. His award will be presented alongside students graduating from the university’s Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment.
