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Business leaders, students flock to AT&T Stadium for showcase of Texas’ massive economy

YTexas summit Friday brought together business leaders, students, robots and drones for a celebration of Texas’ future and companies that moved here.

ARLINGTON — The horns and drums of the Shelton School’s drum line and band rang throughout AT&T Stadium Friday morning, and the Dallas Cowboys’ mascot Rowdy pranced around the field throughout the day. Rapper SaulPaul took the stage for a halftime show, but this was no football game.

The YTexas Summit brought together executives, economic development leaders and students from across the state to Arlington for networking, panel discussions and live demonstrations showing off the innovations of Texas’ $2 trillion economy, the future of the Lone Star State and the many companies that have planted their flag here.

“The response is that [the attendees] have never been at an event like this before,” said Ed Curtis, CEO of YTexas. “We’ve been to conferences, but I think what’s unique about this event is that it’s all about bringing the state together, it’s getting people that are in Houston, Austin and Dallas to meet each other that would have never met each other before and create relationships.”

Attendees visit a drone technology exhibit during the 2022 YTexas Summit at AT&T Stadium in...
Attendees visit a drone technology exhibit during the 2022 YTexas Summit at AT&T Stadium in Arlington on Friday.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

More than 125 companies participated in the event. Organizers said Friday afternoon that more than 900 attended, in line with their most recent projections of 800 to 1,000 attendees. Earlier in the year, they had estimated 3,000 attendees but later changed their projections based on the number of on-field activations. The exhibits included a close look at technology from an autonomous Indy race car and drones and robots, including a manufacturing robot from OnRobot, a Danish robotics company that opened its U.S. headquarters in Irving in 2018.

Kristian Hulgard, general manager in the Americas for OnRobot, said the company wanted to spread the word to small- and medium-size companies looking to automate their manufacturing processes. The robot has built-in safety sensors and is designed to be easy for anyone to program.

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“We have higher demand, but we don’t have a higher supply, so we as a company, we are going in and trying to rethink the way that we deploy robots,” Hulgard said.

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Texas cities set up shop on the field to encourage investment in their communities. John Cowen, city commissioner for the city of Brownsville and chairman of the Greater Brownsville Incentives Corp., said he talked to companies from Texas and across the U.S., as well as students, about opportunities in the city.

Attendees visit various booths during the 2022 YTexas Summit.
Attendees visit various booths during the 2022 YTexas Summit.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)
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“I think historically, when Brownsville is in the news, it’s typically not for positive things,” Cowen said. “We historically are an underserved community, low-income, we produce a lot of talent that goes elsewhere to work and to live — Houston, Dallas, San Antonio — so we’re trying to stop that brain drain. I think with SpaceX there, it’s a real opportunity to showcase you can have a future in Brownsville.”

Even with the optimism surrounding the many businesses that have grown in Texas and that have moved to the state, there was still discussion about the challenges the state could face in continuing that momentum.

“Texas is without question the best place to do business,” said Brint Ryan, chairman and CEO of Dallas-based tax services and technology firm Ryan LLC, in a panel discussion on corporate incentives. “The thing we’re mostly worried about right now is not screwing it up.”

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Abby Mellott, market president and publisher of the Austin Business Journal (left), Brint...
Abby Mellott, market president and publisher of the Austin Business Journal (left), Brint Ryan, chairman and chief executive officer of Ryan LLC (center) and Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of Texas Association of Business, participated in a panel on corporate incentives.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

Ryan said the state needs to find an adequate replacement for Chapter 313, the property tax incentive that has attracted $217 billion in renewable energy and manufacturing projects to the state and is set to expire in December.

“We have to make a much more powerful case to our lawmakers, and they also need to understand that as great as all the different things that Texas has are, including the world’s best barbecue, if you don’t have something that reduces the high property taxes for capital-intensive investment, they’re just going to go to another state, and we don’t want to see that happen,” said Texas Association of Business CEO Glenn Hamer in the panel discussion.

The event was the organization’s first at AT&T Stadium. YTexas is an Austin-based business network that works to connect companies relocating and expanding in Texas.

“After COVID, we said, ‘Let’s go big,’ ” Curtis said. “ ‘If we’re gonna do this, let’s do it.’ ”

YTexas CEO Ed Curtis addresses attendees at the start of the 2022 YTexas Summit at AT&T...
YTexas CEO Ed Curtis addresses attendees at the start of the 2022 YTexas Summit at AT&T Stadium.(Elías Valverde II / Staff Photographer)

Curtis said he has been most impressed by the collaboration happening between the various groups that attended.

“You’ve got the city of Abilene in one [booth], and then you’ve got intelligent infrastructure and then you’ve got a STEM challenge,” Curtis said. “I just didn’t know what to expect. Put all these concepts in the same room, and you see what happens.”

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Curtis said people are already asking about next year’s event, which will be on Oct. 6, and that he’s already thinking about going even bigger by using the entire field plus the sidelines and expanding the use of rooms for panel discussions.

“I have access to the entire stadium, so we can fill up this place with a lot of things,” Curtis said. “I think it’ll be a multiyear plan, but the plan is really to create kind of like a South by Southwest for business here at AT&T Stadium.”