Giant joysticks and 'Shelbot' highlight Techweek expo

Piet van Weel traveled through four time zones and crossed 3,200 miles from his home in Anchorage, Alaska, to reach Union Station on Thursday morning.

After all, it’s Techweek in Kansas City.

Although he traveled farther, Weel came here for the same reason that drew many others — to explore, to find out what’s new.

Even if it isn’t clear how, Techweek discoveries may help Weel in the future as a television station’s information technology manager.

“It lets me see the new technologies ... to be able to take that back to Alaska and use it there,” Weel said.

Techweek’s expo showcased lots of cool and new technologies. Interactive displays and product pitches from small and big companies alike turned Union Station’s great marble hall into a clamorous marketplace of ideas.

It also capped a busy daylong schedule that included hot-topic tech talks, speeches from tech leaders and a 30-company job fair at KC Live in the Power & Light District.

Square co-founder Jim McKelvey, a keynote speaker for the day, took time out to talk with The Star about his newest enterprise, LaunchCode. It is a nonprofit based in St. Louis that is expanding to Kansas City with $150,000 in backing from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

LaunchCode, McKelvey said, takes an apprenticeship approach to filling vacant tech jobs. Too few people have the skills now to fill the jobs.

“If you take the people who have the capacity to acquire those skills ... and just need a path to acquiring them, then I would think we could probably meet the needs,” McKelvey said.

And that’s LaunchCode’s mission.

At Union Station, passers-by were stopped by two giant red joysticks for playing a big-screen video game at Garmin’s booth. The Olathe-based company hoped the oversized fun would draw people in to hear its message.

“We have a lot of cool products, and we’re hiring,” said Adam Reetz, a innovation engineer leader at Garmin.

It seems odd that a household name like Garmin — best known for its personal navigation devices popular in cars — needs more attention.

“People don’t understand all the things we make,” Reetz said. “We release at least 50 new products a year.”

The company is becoming better known for its fitness devices, such as the vivofit, and the outdoor gear, marine devices and aviation equipment it makes.

Techweek’s expo also was about helping startup companies like acre designs get attention and make contacts. The Kansas City area company competed for one of the $50,000 investment grants in the LaunchKC event set for Friday, but it did not make the finals.

The company is using crowdfunding to build a prototype house that uses no outside energy.

Architect Jennifer Dickson and industrial designer Andrew Bennett Dickson began from scratch to reinvent how to build a house more efficiently, but at the same cost as traditional housing. It’s a complete do-over of the normal “stick-frame” construction.

“We’re fixing so many things that are broken (in traditional housing), we have to touch everything from the beginning,” Jennifer Dickson said.

Debbie McGaughy and more than a dozen coworkers from American Family Insurance in St. Joseph came to Techweek Thursday. They were looking for ideas to help them support the software and apps that agents in the field use.

The “Shelbot” caught McGaughy’s eye. It essentially is a mobile, interactive video screen called Beam from a California company called Suitable Technologies, which has a Kansas City office.

Fans of “The Big Bang Theory” comedy might remember the episode when Sheldon Cooper sent one into the world so he could interact from home.

Two models are available: the home version for about $2,000 and the “pro” that appeared on television for $16,000.

The expo continues at 10:30 a.m Friday.

This story was originally published September 17, 2015 at 5:56 PM with the headline "Giant joysticks and 'Shelbot' highlight Techweek expo."