May’s Tech in Focus event on disruptive technologies was held on Wednesday, May 20^th at WTIA member company Blucora on the Eastside. The evening’s moderator, Brett Greene of New Tech Seattle, led panelists in a discussion about the cutting edge technologies they work with everyday.

Event panelists included Tom Driscoll, Founder and CTO of Echodyne, Jason Machacek, Business Development Manager of Stratos Product Development, Artur Seidel, President of Elektrobit Automotive Americas Inc., and Ed Windgate, CEO of MosaicTrack. Here’s what they had to say about the opportunities/obstacles they face as innovators in their field and what they see in the future:

Why do you do what you do/What is happening in your industry that makes you love what you do?

AS: My daughter is turning 16 this summer; working on fixtures that prevent her from getting into accidents I’m all for!

EW: Its been great using machine learning to help people who are having a hard time finding work or are unemployed and make the process even better.

Daily obstacles and opportunities?

EW: Finding people interested in and open to using new technology. How doe we implement new technologies when there is no road map to follow?

AS: We all know what we want the future to look like but the reality is that architectures only change at a certain pace, laws only change at a certain pace, people’s expectations only change at a certain pace…sometimes it’s a bit unsettling but we’d like things to go faster.

JM: Investing as much into creating awareness as creating the technology and making targeted campaigns that teach people how to integrate technology into their lives.

TD: It’s even less true that if you build it they will come. Customers are trying to compare products to existing things so there are a lot of hurdles to overcome and finding that balance is a real challenge.

Fears?

AS: You aren’t in control of your message; the media picks everything up. And data is not yet available; data has to become available, which will help.

TD: People have a fear of the unknown; maybe the best way to conquer it is to make it known.

Legal implications of technology shifting quickly?

JM: Laws will eventually follow where the market wants to go. At the end of the day, we built a system that is flexible enough to make things happen.

TD: Once we move past the divide of having an argument versus having a discussion, we can begin to progress.

Is there collaboration in your industry?

JM: You have to collaborate because resources are limited. You lean on other people who can help with your progress. When it comes to working locally, there are huge efficiencies here and finding local collaborators is crucial.

TD: The radar space is very fragmented so we’re forced to look for partners. We’ve been pleasantly surprised by what’s been available here in Seattle, being local is an incredible benefit.

Why Seattle?

JM: Seattle has a great start-up climate, incubators, workspaces, cloud development based experience, etc.

AS: We have the best software developers…we always compare ourselves to the Silicon Valley, but we have nothing to hid.

What can Seattle do better?

EW: We have a lot of untapped resources.

JM: Education. We are way behind compared to other areas and our investment in education is really poor…but we’re in a great position to grow.

TD: I think modesty has been a great differentiator (for Seattle). I think we should focus on the strengths that we have and keep doing what we’re doing.

Big thank you to our event sponsor, Deloitte; learn more about their upcoming Fast 500 Awards here! Thanks to Blucora for hosting, our panelists and attendees—stay tuned for more WTIA events coming up in June!