High Tech Demos Storm TEXAS

by TODD STOLARSKI | Oct 27, 2015

Between Houston and Austin rests the city of Bryan, beside College Station, deep in the heart of Texas. Last Thursday, BuiltWorlds, along with JBKnowledge and the BE&K Building Group, jointly held Demo Night: South at BinarySpace, not far from the campus of the nation's largest engineering school, Texas A&M University.

Each Demo Night, BW brings along only the most cutting edge tech making waves in the built space to the stage, and this was no exception. Before the evening’s festivities began at BinarySpace, Jeremy Foster, Chief Marketing Officer at San Diego-based NoteVault, leaned in to mention his excitement on tonight’s technologies on display “I’m always curious about where these new ideas come from. I’m looking forward to coming across a few gems tonight”. Suffice to say, something in his eye knew that he was going to walk away from that night with a handful of precious jewels.

Taking the stage that night were astounding presenters from five revolutionary companies which captivated our crowd of industry professionals and students, alike.

Hard Hat Hub, a mobile-based platform which connects built environment professionals to employers. Andy Jansen, Co-founder;
Assemble Systems, a web-based collaborative model data management solution. Tim Kelly, Business Development Manager;
Beartek Gloves, innovative protective gloves that allow remote access and control of target devices. Brian Smith, Chief Strategy Officer;
ProNova, Proton therapy solutions through superconducting magnetic technology, John Patterson, Vice President, Amence development;
NoteVault, multi-lingual project management software. Jeremy Foster, chief marketing officer;

As the lights dimmed, Chuck Fell, former national president of the night’s sponsor, the Mechanical Contractors Association of America, welcomed our crowd to a night of innovation in action. By day, Fell is president of CFI Mechanical located in Houston,TX.

As Mr. Fell handed the reins over to Brian Smith of Beartek Gloves, the words of Dr. Eric Jing Du, Assistant Professor at Texas A&M University's College of Architecture in the Department of Construction Science, rang even more true than they did even twenty minutes prior. Dr Ju said he was present at Binary Space that night because technology is “the next wave to improve the safety and productivity of our industry”. The Beartek gloves provide the synthesis of technology and safety. While the glove has been predominantly used in motorsports up until this point, the company has been branching out into areas across the built environment.

The future of computing is augmented reality according to @JamesMBenham of @JBKnowledge. #BWTechTX pic.twitter.com/KRKfXjIGgl
— BuiltWorlds (@builtworlds) October 23, 2015

As each of the presentations went on last Thursday at BinarySpace, it became abundantly clear that our built environment is leading the way in terms of leading tech and not behind the curve as some people may think. From mobile job seeking platforms and instant cloud-based project management to BIM solutions and wearable safety, it was all there. It wasn’t simply on stage with the presenters either.

Partner JBKnowledge turned all of the night's banners, logos and even staff t-shirts into Augmented Reality targets that could be scanned with their SmartReality app to produce AR visualizations. JBKnowledge also had Virtual Reality headsets and demos available for attendees to get lost, and found inside of. This provided a perfect vision of the future for Brian Smith, of Beartek Gloves. "The remote control gloves are just an extension of that. Without having to touch the display to maniupluate the device in VR, now you can just use the touch-point glove".

As NoteVault’s Jeremy Foster said on-stage, “I’m looking forward to what pulls all of these innovative technologies together.” We don’t have it now, but through the innovation and collaboration that comes from an event like Demo Night: South, we are that much closer.

Demo Night mastermind BuiltWorlds Co-Founder, Matt Abeles, felt awesome after the event. "It's so exciting to showcase all this tech to an audience outside of our Chicago home base. As BW extends our reach, I can't wait to take out road show to more cities and universities." Abeles added: "None of tonight could've been done without the help and warm hospitality of our host James Benham. We look forward to collaborating further in 2016."

That spirit of collaboration was nearly palpable throughout the evening; connecting those dots where they were not previously on the page. Under an expansive Texas sky that evening, which held more stars than once could count, it was evident that a few of those stars remained under the BinarySpace roof in the Lone Star State.