GeekWire’s Cloud Summit brings together engineers, developers, technical leaders and business decision-makers for a deep dive on the future of cloud technologies.

There were several themes running through the sessions of our third annual GeekWire Cloud Summit Wednesday, but one thing is clear: data is the lifeblood of the cloud, from machine-learning algorithms to managing infrastructure at scale to the connected farms of the future.

Hundreds of cloud developers, operations experts, startup founders, and venture capitalists joined us at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue to hear from some of the leaders that are pushing cloud computing into the next decade and learn how to take advantage of emerging cloud technologies right now.

Keep reading for key takeaways, links to coverage of the event, and photos.

Things got started quickly with Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, who ran through a lot of the work that Microsoft is doing with machine learning and edge computing to better position itself to meet the demands of customers who are just now moving their operations into the cloud.

Microsoft’s Gretchen O’Hara also announced on stage that it is expanding its Women in Cloud startup accelerator to Chicago, New York, and eight new countries after funding 30 startups out of the Seattle edition of the accelerator.

#GoodNews “Universities are turning out graduating classes (in tech/computer science) with 50% women. Strides in education have been phenomenal.” Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec #gwcloud pic.twitter.com/lZBUiwpijh — Donna Manders (@SmokeFreeLife) June 5, 2019

Amazon Web Services’ Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec artfully described this coming “data explosion” as a transformative opportunity for cloud customers to rethink how they build and manage their applications, especially now that cloud users can scale computing and storage at different paces depending on their needs.

A panel of Seattle-area CEOs debated whether or not artificial intelligence is really applicable to small and medium-size companies that don’t gather data on the level of a giant like AWS, Microsoft, or Google. “I can count on maybe one hand the number of companies that have enough data to genuinely do AI,” said Kristina Bergman, CEO of Integris Software, referring to the aforementioned companies and a few others.

Technical tracks throughout the day centered on DevOps, artificial intelligence, Cloud Migration, and business issues. Tara Hernandez of Google helped attendees understand how to implement DevOps thinking inside a technology organization without driving everyone crazy, and Thom McCann and Gopala Gaddipati of T-Mobile outlined how the wireless carrier built its multicloud architecture in just a few years after starting its migration path.

Whoa! Thanks for the college flash back. Do modern CS programs even cover this still? #GWCloud pic.twitter.com/AZsUfYl9Hr — JD Wallace (@jdwallace) June 5, 2019

A hot topic in today's sessions – much discussion around how talent and recruitment differs in Silicon Valley vs Seattle/Bellevue. #GWCloud https://t.co/GLAZVDJngU — Janet Knight (@MrsJanetLyn) June 5, 2019

We were also thrilled to have Guillaume Wiatr of Metahelm back doing his thing, visualizing the thoughts and insights that our speakers brought to the event in a series of fun and compelling images.

Three venture capitalists (and one iconoclast angel investor) discussed the ongoing question of how the Seattle area tech scene stacks up against the Bay Area, with Sudip Chakrabarti of Madrona Venture Group, a recent arrival to Seattle, opining that the local scene could use a few more “startup whisperers” to help fledgling companies get off the ground.

Cal Henderson, co-founder and CTO of soon-to-be-public Slack, recounted the tale of how Slack evolved from a chat system designed for a video game into a workplace collaboration tool used by a healthy chunk of tech workers. Like a lot of fast-growing tech startups, Slack used the cloud to help scale its application on the back of AWS and to a lesser extent, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, he said.

Happy to hear @iamcal talking about importance of accessibility in software development @geekwire Cloud Summit. Applications should be accessible for all or else they are not worth making. Thanks @SlackHQ for prioritizing inclusive technology. #GWCloud #Accessibility pic.twitter.com/snyC1Km2mS — Anya Krupp (@anya_krupp) June 5, 2019

And we closed out the day with a birthday party: Kubernetes, the open-source container orchestration project that opens up some very interesting possibilities for cloud customers, is five years old today. Co-creators Joe Beda, Brendan Burns, and Craig McLuckie all worked together at Google to create the slimmed-down version of Google’s internal infrastructure management tools, and they shared a variety of thoughts on the future of Kubernetes, open-source software development, and the best rejected names for Kubernetes.

A big thanks to F5, which served as the 2019 GeekWire Cloud Summit title sponsor. Also, thanks to gold, silver and supporting sponsors: Vulcan, City of Bellevue, Algorithmia, OpenSquare, Wave Business, First Tech Federal Credit Union, Bellevue College, MongoDB, and Kazuhm.

We’ll see you all in a few weeks for our next event, the Playbook, scheduled for June 26th.