Techweek Thursday: Jobs fair, expo and more than you can get done

Techweek in Kansas City revs up Thursday with two big events open to the public – a hiring fair and the expo.

These come on top the Big Data Summit’s second-day schedule and in addition to multiple Techweek sessions on the Internet of things, drones, smart cities technologies, venture capital, mobile banking and other topics.

Add in a keynote speech from Square co-founder Jim McKelvey, plus “chats” with dating app Tinder’s founder Jonathan Badeen and community-investment site Neighborly’s Jase Wilson, and it becomes clear that Techweek attendees have lots of choices.

Tesla, the electronic car maker, will be doing test drives, too.

This is when Kansas City starts to show off its tech cred, as visitors hear about what this area’s doing with Google Fiber and Cisco’s Smart Cities initiative and listen to Mayor Sly James put a Kansas City focus on all of it.

Techweek’s expo fills the big hall at Union Station, populated with booths from Sprint, Cerner and other big area companies as well as many of the startups that vied for – and didn’t make – the finals in the LaunchKC competition.

LaunchKC has named 20 finalists and will award 10 of them investment grants of $50,000 each on Friday. Out of nearly 500 applicants for the competition, about 70 will be at the expo, Techweek organizers said.

The expo begins at 10:30 a. m. Central and runs through 5:30 p. m. on Thursday and Friday. Attendance is open to the public but requires registration to get a free expo pass from Techweek. Passes can be picked up at the door, and requested at the door if you have time to wait.

Attendee passes, which provide access to non-public sessions, also are available online and at the door, but the price tag has gone up as Techweek’s website has been promising all week would happen. The $80 tab rose to $125 on Wednesday.

The free expo pass also includes access to the Techweek hiring fair that brings 30 companies to KCLive at the Power & Light District in downtown Kansas City.

Tech jobs form the focus of the hiring fair, which runs from 3 p. m. to 7 p. m.

The Kansas City area currently has 33,841 computer-related jobs and needs to fill 2,395 more, according to the Mid-America Regional Council. Its data shows software developers, network engineers, project managers and software engineers among the most widely available postings.

Ryan Weber, president of KCnext, also will be there promoting a new tech job posting site called Chute. KCnext worked with large area tech employers to design a job posting board that promotes living in the Kansas City area as a way to help draw technical skills to the region.

Watch for the parachutes dropping from the top of KCnext, part of Chute’s kickoff.

This story was originally published September 16, 2015 at 5:54 PM with the headline "Techweek Thursday: Jobs fair, expo and more than you can get done."