The iTech Summit brought business leaders, tech professionals and investors to The Coeur d'Alene Resort on Wednesday to explore how they can adapt and innovate by using the latest technologies.

"Adaptability is very important," said John Shovic, director of the Center for Intelligent Industrial Robotics at the University of Idaho.

Shovic said the university is changing its curriculum to ensure students are graduating with the skills they'll need to adapt to the world of automation and AI.  

"There's a wide gap in the adoption of AI tools, and we are producing critical-thinking students that know how to use them better than anybody else," he said.

The Idaho Technology Council partnered with the Coeur d'Alene Regional Chamber for the iTECH Summit Inland Northwest.

The day included a visit to Hagadone Technology, which hosted an Executive Fireside Chat at its Coeur d'Alene headquarters, moderated by Jake Nicklay, director of sales at Hagadone Technologies. 

An executive panel explored how AI, technology, and evolving workforce expectations are reshaping leadership, hiring, and operations across the Inland Northwest.  

The event marked ITC's first program in North Idaho under the theme, "Tech Powered. Community Led."

Diane Temple, ITC president and CEO, said the summit was designed to "make space for real conversations about the future of work, the companies and ideas being built here, and the partnerships required to turn innovation into lasting regional opportunity."

A discussion panel, AI Innovators You Should Know, led the conversation. The group included Garret Atkin, co-founder of TAO.com; Sam Jankovich, CEO of GuideTime; Jen Richey, COO and co-founder of Haiven, Inc.; Joni Kindwall-Moore, CEO of The Ryzosphere; and Shovic. Mark Olson moderated it. 

The main topic was how they use AI to drive innovation in their organization. 

Jankovich uses AI to partner with hospitality providers nationwide to give people outdoor experiences. 

"We're really trying to simplify that on the front end for the customer, so we've created an AI agent we call Scout that we've integrated into our search capability," Jankovich said. "We tell it exactly what they're planning, where they want to go, what activity types they're looking to, and within a matter of a couple of minutes Scout will get them to the right destination at the right time and book that experience." 

Ritchie works with social, chat and gaming platforms. She said gaming is a $235 billion industry — larger than movies, music, and sports combined. 

"Unfortunately, a lot of the good guys have pulled out of that space, and it has turned into a dark place, especially for kids who are gaming, " she said. "Predators take chats there to groom, sex-store, and engage in human trafficking. "But we are using AI to watch for communications within our chats in three primary veins: criminal, culture, and crisis." 

Ritchie said Haiven is on a mission to prevent criminals from accessing gaming and chat sites. 

"When our AIs flag something in our chats, we work with several partners to hand that off to law enforcement to get the bad guys and protect the player," she said. "We're also partnering with people to intervene with kids expressing isolation, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation in chat and game rooms." 

Kindwall-Moore works in the food and ag industry. She described what they do as a "connective infrastructure for the food and ag system."

"We make invisible value visible and tradable. The industry has a lot of value, but we often can't see it, can't connect with it," Kindwall-Moore said. 

Kindwall-Moore said she's passionate about rural economies and keeping America's farmers and ranchers farming.  

"It is actually a crisis point that we get really serious about how we innovate value upstream, so we keep the next generation able to be on our land and protect our national food security, which is a big deal," she said. 

Kindwall-Moore said they are empowering that movement using AI to create opportunities.

"So, we can actually keep our food system secure and lead the world in innovation in food and agriculture," she said.