UNIVERSITY NEWS LAST UPDATED : 22 JULY 2019
Cal Henderson, Chief Technology Officer at Slack, will be awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University in recognition of his contribution to the technology field.
Henderson co-founded the software company in 2013, with three colleagues with their creation going on to be a major hit with users.
Slack is a collaboration hub for teams at work, which brings together the people you need, the information you share, and the tools you use.
Boasting more than 10 million users, the company recently made its debut on the New York Stock Exchange earning an estimated valuation of over $17 billion.
Henderson, who graduated from the University in 2002 with a degree in Software Engineering, will collect the accolade on Friday 26 July during in a special ceremony held at Birmingham’s Symphony Hall.
p>Henderson has enjoyed an illustrious career in the tech industry since graduating from the University.
In 2003 he became the first person ever employed by online photo sharing site, Flickr, and played a major part to play in its inception.
He build and led the engineering team at Flickr, through its acquisition by Yahoo!.
Henderson authored the best-selling O’Reilly Media book “Building Scalable Websites”, and was a pioneer in the use of web APIs, creating the basis for oAuth and oEmbed, now used by leading platforms including YouTube and Twitter.
He was named as Birmingham City University’s Alumni of the Year in 2016 in recognition of his achievements, and will now be recognised with the University’s highest honorary accolade.
The Honorary Doctorate will be awarded at the ceremony which will also see students graduate from the University’s Faculty of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment.