Greater San Marcos Partnership hosts 2022 Innovation Summit

AUSTIN — The Texas Innovation Corridor has become a magnet for growth and innovation, Greater San Marcos Partnership President Jason Giulietti exclaimed during the 2022 Innovation Summit.

GSMP hosted the annual summit which highlighted innovation in Hays and Caldwell counties on Thursday at the JW Marriott Austin.

“Like Silicon Valley or the Research Triangle, our region, otherwise known as the Texas Innovation Corridor, has become a magnet for innovation and disruption of bringing business, entrepreneurship and innovation to our region,” Giulietti said. “The Texas Innovation as a region supports a tremounds amount of diverse industries evidenced by the [Hill Country Studios] announcement earlier this year, precious metal labs, Fortune 500 operations, large-scale manufacturers, bio and life science in our region and so many more. That diversity speaks volumes of what we’re seeing take place in the investment and growth happening right here in our region.”

GSMP’s annual event featured a keynote address by Markus Hogue, who oversees geospatial information and drones at the University of Texas at Austin, followed by a panel disc ussion between Zach Price, chief experience officer of Hill Country Studios; Au s t i n Hickman, CTO and lab manager of PGM of Texas; and Ryan Lom mel, senior vice president of One Support, with Giu lietti moderating the conversation.

The event wrapped up with the eighth annual presentation of the Dick Burdick award, which is given to a local company for “its ability to find creative solutions to complex problems through innovative methods, ideas, products, and practices,” according to GSMP.

During his keynote speech, Hogue discussed how drones and new technologies can benefit the growing Texas Innovation Corridor.

“What we’re doing on the campus [at UT] can translate to what is going on in this Texas corridor of innovation, which is huge. I mean, $2 billion last year,” Hogue said. “So the stuff you’ll see today is the research we’re working on, the lessons learned and some of the other things going on to try and explain how we’re moving forward.”

Hogue spoke about how UT departments are using drones and new technology throughout his address. He also said partnering with UT, as well as Texas State University, can help move innovation forward in the region.

“Whether we like it or not, things are going to keep moving forward one way or the other,” Hogue said. “We can either be on that cutting edge and moving forward. Or, we can be could be on the backside of that innovation … We don’t want to be caught off guard and kind of playing catch up. This is the innovation corridor. This area is moving forward. Texas State does great with their research. UT is moving forward as well. Come to us and partner with us on projects. See how we can work together.”

Above, Markus Hogue, who oversees geospatial information and drones at the University of Texas at Austin, speaks at Thursday’s 2022 Invoation Summit. Daily Record photo by Lance Winter

During the panel discussion, each company executive discussed the innovation happening within their businesses.

“Recently, there’s been a bad rap about auto catalyst theft,” said Hickman, whose company PGM of Texas is a leader in catalytic converter recycling. “We’ve worked really closely with legislation, lawmakers, congressmen, anything to try to help develop the laws, the rules for recycling these items, the implementation of making it a very responsible way of recycling. What we do seems like a salvageyard- type thing, but it is very important to the day-to-day infrastructure of the world. You know, precious metals are in everything from chemo research, chemo medicine to national defense items. We’re recycling, not just the catalysts, we’re recycling the precious metals to bring it back into the circular economy so that we don’t have to outsource.”

Lommel, whose company, OneSupport, provides business process outsourcing and contact center solutions, said telecommunications and the telecom industry is constantly evolving.

“On the technology side, the more recent innovation was born of a lot of the things we had to do to customize to take care and build a contact center on a cloud based platform,” Lommel said. “It’s allowed us to plug into our clients, businesses … So what we’ve been able to do is build some systems that make it very, very easy for people to plug in their legacy systems and still get that cutting-edge cloud innovation.”

Price, whose company Hill Country Studios LLC is set to develop a film studio in San Marcos, said advances in pre- and post-production methods were a driving force behind bringing a film studio to the area.

“I think something new seemingly comes out everyday for [this technology], and I see things on YouTube, all sorts of stuff young guys are making great strides in this technology,” Price said. “So, we’re really excited.”

Giulietti followed up by asking why each company chose to locate their businesses in the Texas Innovation Corridor.

“I grew up in Texas. I grew up in Houston. Texas boy, most of our crew are Texas boys, and that was really important,” Price said. “I had been living in Texas my whole life, and seemingly I had to go away to Los Angeles, Georgia, New York to go work … First, we were really set on Texas. We wanted to do business in Texas. It’s a great place to do business.

“... Our CTO Blake, he’s actually an alum of Texas State and kind of pointed us in the direction of San Marcos,” Price added. “We went out, visited San Marcos and I fell in love with the place.”

Lommel cited the availability of a young workforce as a reason why One Support chose to put its headquarters in San Marcos.

“We actually had a location in Austin as well and we found that as Austin has grown, and continued to grow, it really did change a little bit,” Lommel said. “Where in San Marcos, we were, especially with Texas State, we were really able to keep that energy and keep that positivity.”

Hickman said PGM of Texas began business in between Austin and Dripping Springs but chose to move to San Marcos to allow easier access to its business.

“One of our biggest expenses is freight,” Hickman said. “Being in shipping lanes made a big difference. So, we started looking in the [Interstate] 35 area when we were moving. Something a lot of people won’t talk about but being in the opportunity zone to be able to develop, you do get the tax breaks, you do get the money back in the pocket to help add more people, to add more jobs that we can continue to bring … Being in the area that we are, we can still grab from Texas State. We can grab from UTSA. There’s so many labor pools that are in that area that help continue to grow the infrastructure around there to add to that workforce or even add to development.”

Thursday’s summit ended with BVRT Utility Holdings Company receiving this year’s Dick Burdick award. BVRT has developed water utility systems for areas of Hays and Caldwell counties, including Plum Creek Utility and the County Line Special Utility District.

“Water is critical for us, for our current state and our future,” Giulietti said. “BVRT and its subsidiary companies focus on creating the most environmentally beneficial means of sustaining the water cycle, including water production, treatments and reuse.”

“What an honor to receive this award for innovation,” said Mia Natalino, BVRT Vice President and General Manager, and VP of Regulatory Affairs. “It’s really exciting to be a part of anything innovation in this area.”