Innovation Around Us

Innovation Collective seeks to boost renown as a tech hub. By Jani Gonzalez

Coeur d’Alene is known for its tourism and year-round outdoor activities, but a tech hub? That’s exactly what Ryan Arnold and Nick Smoot of the Innovation Collective want you and tech companies to consider.

The two longtime friends saw the potential to boost Coeur d’Alene’s economy and prevent the “brain drain” of valuable employees from the area.

“We want Coeur d’Alene to be a hub. We want to show off our assets. We have a good airport, beautiful and low cost of living and a lot of financial and mental capital. There’s a lot of brilliant people in town that are retired executives that have done fabulous things,” Nick said.

With this in mind, he and Ryan began the Innovation Collective, an open group of local entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts that have come together under the course of one year. The group started a series of monthly events called the Fireside Chats where the public heard local business leaders discuss their work. Then came Coffee and Concepts which are bi-monthly meetings at Java on Sherman for anyone interested in discussing the latest technology and collaborating. The big ticket items coming up on the group’s agenda are the Sanders Gathering conference and the Think Big Festival in August.

Sander’s Gathering will be a closed meeting of forty-five technology experts. Some of the attendees are speakers at the Think Big Festival that same week, such as Brad Templeton, formerly a member of Google’s self-driving car team, and Dragomir N. Nenchev from Tokyo City University, an expert on robotics for medical rehabilitation.

“The idea for the festival is to focus on robotics. The goal is to gather people coming to our events and show them there is a spot where we meet once a year. Our hope is to have a vibrant technology community investing in new ideas and companies selling at Bay Area prices,” Nick said.

Another big item on their list of goals for the year is the robot ordinances that the group has proposed to city council. The lofty task is the first in the nation according to Nick. The idea isn’t to regulate the use of robots but to set a precedence on how robots and citizens can interact as a selling point to companies looking for cities to perform research and development.

“We want to protect the rights of citizens as Coeur d’Alene attracts robotics research and development on the roads … and also protect robots from human interruption with testing on public property,” Nick explained to city council in July.

Robots are already at the robotics team at Coeur d’Alene high schools. Also, a computer numerical controlled (CNC) cutting machine was created at the Gizmo community makerspace in the city, he said.

Lastly on their agenda is obtaining a building where the Innovation Collective will meet and hold classes.

“The Innovation Collective won’t replace the university or the chamber but will fill the gaps in between,” he said.

For more information, visit innovatecda.com or thinkbigfestival.com.

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