An organizer of Birmingham’s Sloss Tech conference said this year’s three-day event, which ended Friday, had the most registrants in its 10-year history.
Seventeen hundred people registered for the technology conference, up from 1,000 the previous year, said Deon Gordon, CEO of TechBirmingham, which, along with Telegraph Creative, launched Sloss Tech in 2015.
“It was not just exciting; It was affirming,” Gordon said after the conference’s closing remarks Friday. “And I say that because we had a lot of people from outside the Birmingham region, from other metros in the state, and seeing it in person made it real. And I think it gave them a sense of what is possible when we all come together around a shared vision and execute against it.”
The conference included eight venues, with the main stage hosted by The Lyric Theatre. Keynote speakers of the event included:
- Zack Kass, an AI futurist and former head of Go-To-Market at Open AI.
- Rashaun Williams, a venture capitalist, guest judge on ABC’s Shark Tank and Atlanta Falcons limited partner.
- Johnny Cupcakes, brand loyalty expert and CEO of the T-shirt brand that bears his name.
- Dr. Ruha Benjamin, professor of African American Studies at Princeton University and author of the books “Viral Justice” and “Race After Technology.”
Gordon said Sloss Tech organizers were particularly proud of additions to this year’s event such as shuttle services and a pitch competition with a $50,000 prize provided by the Regions Foundation.
Gordon also said the expansion of venue spaces allowed organizers to offer a developer and engineering track at the event, something for which attendees had been asking for years.
This year, about one-fourth of Sloss Tech’s registrants came from outside the metro area, with nearly 15% coming from another state, according to Gordon. All those people were eating at restaurants, shopping at businesses and staying at local hotels when they weren’t in the conference, he said.
“It’s not just about having tech founders and startups and venture capitalists and programmers here,” Gordon said. “It’s also about partnering with the Birmingham Business Alliance, partnering with REV Birmingham, because we have ground floor retail that is vacant and people who are interested in real estate will be passing by. We need to have opportunities for those individuals to engage with nonprofits like REV so that they can then get plugged into the system and figure out how they go about acquiring properties and moving their businesses here or starting businesses here. We have tech in the name, but this is truly a community and cultural event.”
