About 1,200 people are expected to attend the 12th Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit[1] taking place Oct. 27 and 28 at multiple venues along Dickson Street in Fayetteville.
Event director Ashlee Dunahoo said the venues include the Walton Arts Center, TheatreSquared and the Ramble. The welcome event will take place at George’s Majestic Lounge.
Dunahoo is responsible for events and logistics at the Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce[2]. She joined the chamber in December after working at technology company Dropbox, where she helped scale its events. The chamber is hosting the tech summit this year in collaboration with Startup Junkie[3].
The summit was previously hosted at the Rogers Convention Center.
Dunahoo highlighted multiple factors in moving the summit to Fayetteville, including space constraints and that the summit’s “heart was historically always to be a regional pull.” She said the summit has had chairs and teams from other cities, and organizers made a “strategic move” to host the event in Fayetteville.
“We’re doing it at the Walton Arts Center, and they are so pumped,” she said. “It’s a beautiful space. They’ve got a lot of great energy, a strong tech department. So they’re heavily leaning into some of the fun features that we can do.
“Then, we’re partnering with the downtown entity of Fayetteville as well as the chamber there and taking over a little bit of Dickson Street and the Ramble for some of our live demos and beta testing.”
Launch local, scale global is the theme of the 2025 summit, with a focus on helping existing and up-and-coming technology companies “understand what the table stakes are,” Dunahoo said.
She said that the nature of technology is one of change and innovation, and that over the past five to seven years, artificial intelligence (AI) and its integration into the workplace have significantly altered how businesses operate. Walmart and Onyx Coffee Lab are businesses that originated in this area but have since expanded globally. She said several area businesses have scaled to a global impact.
“What does that look like?” she said. “How do we stay true to form of your existing values and the nature of who you are but staying cutting-edge of technology, staying cutting-edge of all the things that come into play as a business?”
The summit’s international partners are coming from Canada, the United Kingdom, and Korea, and “we’re going to leverage different technologies, different best practices, introduce new relationships to expand brands, doing some industry match-making of sorts, just helping people,” Dunahoo said. “The goal is to have a connection of a shared mindset within the tech world, but also…we’re trying to lean a little heavier into some of the in-person connections that happen.”
The summit includes four tracks: health tech, innovation and entrepreneurship, retail and consumer packaged goods, and international connections. The breakout sessions for each track will take place at TheatreSquared and be repeated both days of the event, allowing attendees to attend a variety of sessions and panel discussions.
“Of course, it will probably be slightly different content because a huge part of the panels is Q&A and discussion,” she said. “That way people can pick two different items they want to go to.”
The keynote addresses, one for each track, will be at the Walton Arts Center. The keynote speakers who have been confirmed include Dave Glick, senior vice president of Enterprise Business Services at Walmart, and Mark Hardy, senior vice president and head of Walmart Data Ventures. Dunahoo said the last keynote will comprise a panel of chief information security officers, including Mike Calvi of Arvest Bank, Tim Malone of J.B. Hunt Transport Services, and Brook Ellis of Walton Enterprises. Cybersecurity executive Sajan Gautam will be the moderator. The other two keynote speakers have yet to be announced.
The summit will also include a pitch contest and demos from winners of Samsung Electronics America’s 15th annual Samsung Solve for Tomorrow competition that challenges students to turn science, technology, engineering and math concepts into real-world solutions. A team of Bentonville West High School students won $100,000 in Samsung technology and classroom supplies for their school. The students developed an AI-powered mobile app that screens for oral cancer.
The summit’s exhibit hall will be at the Walton Arts Center. The awards party will happen at TheatreSquared. Food trucks for lunch, afternoon programs and live music will be available at the Ramble.
On the side of the summit, we’re “also trying to join all of the tech forces of Northwest Arkansas,” Dunahoo said. “You have Latinas in Tech. You have Women in Tech. You have Startup Junkie. You have ARise. You have all the accelerator programs. You have all these different entities… Something we’re doing through this event is creating space for all these entities to have some real buy-in, not just attend, like actually be a part of it.”
From this, the aim is to form a Northwest Arkansas technology council and bring together the entities for smaller, quarterly events. Dunahoo said she’s most excited about seeing this start at the Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit.
Related
References
- ^ Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit (business.greaterbentonville.com)
- ^ Bentonville Area Chamber of Commerce (bentonvillearea.com)
- ^ Startup Junkie (startupjunkie.org)