First-ever AZ Tech Week to highlight ASU student, faculty innovations
During AZ Tech Week, visitors to the ASU Mix Center in downtown Mesa will get to learn how students are using high-resolution LED wall and floor Planar screens in game design. Photo by Laura Segall/ASU
Arizona State University students will get to showcase their technology projects at the first-ever AZ Tech Week gathering of successful founders and potential funders.
The conference, which runs from April 6–12, will include more than 300 events all around the state with the goal of connecting the tech community and raising funding for ventures.
The time is right to launch an event like this because the Arizona technology environment is booming, according to Katie Sieker, senior vice president of venture partnerships for the Arizona Commerce Authority, which is sponsoring the week.
“Our ecosystem has drastically grown and changed over the last decade, and so we are poised to be able to support this. I think a lot of people don't understand how much momentum is going on in our state,” she said.
“So we thought, let's show people what's going on.”
Events include a digital skills workshop in Superior, an immersive aviation experience in Prescott and a stargazing event at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory in Tucson. There are several mixers, meetups and roundtables in the various locations.
ASU’s Endless Games and Learning Lab, part of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts, will highlight students’ work at the Epic Games Industry Day at noon on April 10 at the Media and Immersive eXperience, or MIX, Center in downtown Mesa.
The two-year-old lab’s mission is to globally scale personalized education through games, which it accomplishes through researching what people learn while playing popular games, teaching game-making skills and quantifying how those skills translate into careers.
The lab also is tasked with creating a robust gaming ecosystem in the state, according to Bola Akinrolabu, program assistant director for the Endless Games and Learning Lab.
“What we mean by that is the academic part, the incubators, investors, resources and the people,” he said, adding that there are few gaming companies in Arizona.
“We see people coming to ASU learn these skills, get these degrees and then going to other states to find work.”
The lab’s AZ Tech Week event will invite Epic Games to see what ASU students are creating with the gaming company’s tools, like the Unreal Engine, as well as to showcase what the lab’s partners, including Phoenix-based Rainbow Studios and independent developers, are doing with Epic. The goal is to attract an Arizona presence by Epic, developer of the “Gears of War” and “Infinity Blade” games, Akinrolabu said.
Besides the Endless Games and Learning Lab’s session, ASU students will be highlighted in other events as well:
A “Refurb-a-thon” will have students recycle used computers to pass along to people in need from 1 to 4 p.m. April 6 in Tempe.
An ASU DevSpace Demo Day pitch competition, in which students compete for a $10,000 prize, will run from noon to 2:30 p.m. April 10 at the Engineering Center on the Tempe campus.
A TEDxASU talk on April 12 will feature Kentarou Siejak, a second-year W. P. Carey School of Business student, entrepreneur, author and film producer who works on projects to make technology more human-centered.
Other ASU-related events include:
“Health Tech Reimagined,” an overview of the new School of Technology for Public Health at ASU, at 8 a.m. April 6 in Scottsdale.
A showcase of two ASU units -— the Technology Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Management Lab and the Social Innovation Lab — at 5 p.m. April 9.
A drone exhibition by the ASU Drone Studio, in the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, from 2 to 5 p.m. April 8 on the Tempe campus.
Sieker said that the week’s events should appeal to all Arizonans, not just those involved in technology.
“In order to have a successful tech ecosystem, there are many different critical parts. One is capital, one is customers, one is our co-working spaces and offices, but then there are the really important pillars like community and culture and access to art and food,” she said.
“So when we tell the story of Arizona, it is inclusive of all of that.”
Some of those events include:
A hands-on demo in which participants will test We Produce Culture, a prototype that maps cultural routes on the Valley Metro Light Rail from 2 to 5 p.m. April 11 in downtown Phoenix.
A casual one-hour hike with tech founders, AI enthusiasts and business leaders at the 40th Street Trailhead at South Mountain Regional Park, Phoenix, followed by coffee, donuts and networking, starting at 8:30 a.m. April 11.
A community conversation honoring the Granite Mountain Hotshots and describing how Prescott endured one of the worst tragedies in modern firefighting history and emerged stronger, at 6 p.m. April 9 in Prescott.
To attend any of the AZ Tech Week events, download the Partiful app and apply for all the desired sessions. Event details will be revealed upon acceptance by the host.
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