St. Louis’ third annual TechWeek kicks off Monday morning with more than 30 free events focused on different innovation sectors, including prominent ones like artificial intelligence, AgTech and geospatial.
The event organized by the region’s tech council, TechSTL, is an opportunity to showcase local tech firms and talent and make connections with those outside the region, too, said TechSTL Executive Director Emily Hemingway.
“The best companies here in St. Louis, unfortunately, can’t just be dependent on St. Louis-based projects,” she said. “Especially in this industry, they’ve got to constantly be building new partnerships and opening conversations with other leading companies across the world.”
Entering the third year, Hemingway said TechWeek and its programming have matured to provide more targeted training opportunities and professional development for those who attend. She said part of that comes from the organization soliciting speakers and presentation topics on Sessionize, a conference speaker listing platform.
“The past two years, it was really based upon my ability to source speakers and gauge what are the topics that are meaningful, and that was very limiting,” Hemingway said.
Higher-profile speakers include VJ Jangamashetti, a cloud consulting architect for Google, and David Karandish, the founder and CEO of Capacity, a growing local company that uses artificial intelligence to help companies better manage calls for support.
“TechWeek definitely grew up this year. It’s now a more legitimate brand,” Hemingway said. “We have more out-of-town speakers, more technical speakers. There’s a lot more higher-quality training that we’re able to offer this year.”
It meant the organization had to streamline its top priorities for the event, with the chief goal of elevating the local tech talent, Hemingway said.
“One of the biggest challenges that the St. Louis community has in general is that we don’t look first at the quality leaders and innovators that call St. Louis home,” she said. “Especially enterprise level companies or large agencies downplay the value of expertise in their own backyard.”
Hemingway said she expects the week’s events to draw a combined 10,000 people, with some attendees likely going to multiple sessions. The increased number of presenters from beyond St. Louis means TechWeek is drawing 30% of its registrations for events from outside the region compared to 20% last year, she added.
Explore St. Louis President and CEO Brad Dean called the event a win-win for the region.
“Staging a dynamic series of events focused on networking and education in technology not only empowers local entrepreneurs, it also stirs economic activity and positions our region as a forward-thinking hub where ideas, people, and possibilities converge,” he said.
Hemingway admits there were some planning hiccups, particularly when TechWeek’s first-day AI summit was oversubscribed with more than 400 people on the waiting list. The event shifted from World Wide Technology headquarters to the convention center downtown to accommodate the interest, she said.
“TechWeek is a free and public event. The quality of the content available in this AI summit was intentionally built for the members of the community who really would benefit from learning those things,” Hemingway said. “Trying to move venues a week before the event is logistically a huge challenge.”
However, the move means over 800 people can now access the session compared to a few hundred previously.
