A tech conference for artificial intelligence industry leaders is putting down roots in Greater Washington, raising the hopes of tourism boosters that it will bring travel dollars to the region for years to come.
Voice Summit AI, sponsored by Amazon.com Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AMZN) Alexa and Google’s Google Assistant, hosted a modest number of in-person attendees — around 300 — at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel in Potomac Yard Dec. 7-8, with many others attending virtually. But the conference has attracted thousands of people in the past, and Pete Erickson, CEO of conference organizer Modev, expects many more will travel to next year's event, which could mean big business for Arlington.
Modev, an Arlington company founded in 2008 that produces other events and the Voice Talks monthly talk show, launched this summit focused on voice, AI and ambient computing in New York in 2018 before moving it to New Jersey in 2019. It attracted 7,000 attendees over those first two years, Erickson says, before taking a two-year hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Erickson declined to share the terms of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Amazon’s sponsorships for the conference.
Conference organizer: Big tech companies made Arlington a good fit
Modev chose Arlington, and specifically the Potomac Yard neighborhood, due to the proximity to the airport, as well as the ample restaurants and hotels in the area, he said. The fact that it's within spitting distance of both Amazon's second headquarters and the future Virginia Tech Innovation Campus in Alexandria also doesn't hurt.
“We saw a perfect opportunity with the infrastructure that’s here to host an event that could take place across multiple venues,” he said. “We had seen Arlington has a big opportunity, and HQ2 certainly helped play a role in that. I think certainly because of the investments going on in this neighborhood, especially from the investments through Virginia Tech, we just see it as a good footprint to grow a larger event that could take place over several days.”
Key speakers at this year’s conference were Jeff Blankenburg, the principal technical evangelist for Amazon Alexa; Rebecca Nathenson, Google Assistant’s director of product management; and Rich Stern, CEO of TuneIn, among others.
The conference required all in-person participants — which included travelers from the West Coast, Asia and Europe — to be vaccinated and masked indoors. Most of them stayed at the Renaissance, which is owned by the Blackstone Group and operated by Marriott International Inc., which declined to comment on the conference.
“As we gain national attention as a major innovation hub, we are pleased to welcome the participants of VOICE 2021 to Arlington,” Telly Tucker, Arlington Economic Development’s director, said in a statement. “VOICE will continue to bring awareness of Arlington’s tech community to the forefront, especially as we continue to grow and attract companies in the AI, big data and machine learning fields.”
Bigger conferences, bigger economic impact
Next year's conference is planned for the Hyatt Regency Crystal City from October 10-13, 2022 and Erickson projects between 4,000 and 5,000 in-person attendees and 150 business partners, he said. Arlington travel and tourism officials expect that could bring an economic impact of about $5 million to the county, according to the Arlington Convention and Visitors Service.
“What I think others will start to recognize is this area has a confluence of really successful things to run a conference, and that is access to transportation, affordability, access to lodging, and also access to tourist destinations that are interesting,” Erickson said. “We would love to see more conferences come to this area and follow our lead.”
Arlington travel and tourism officials certainly hope so. “This year’s conference — in hybrid form — gives us a promising outlook to the future of our meetings industry,” Portia Conerly, director of sales for Arlington Convention and Visitors Service, said in an emailed statement. “The full conference, expected to begin in 2022 in Arlington, is anticipated to bring more than 5,000 attendees and exhibitors in the tech industry, leading to economic impact of about $5M over the three-day event.”
Erickson expects even more growth in the next five years, with the goal of making the capacity jump to a 25,000-person event. He said Modev will continue to work with the National Landing Business Improvement District, which covers Pentagon City, Crystal City and Potomac Yard in Arlington, and Arlington Economic Development to broaden his vision of an international conference that brings people from all over the world to Northern Virginia.
“We believe we have a great opportunity in front of us, and it’s not going to be possible without a lot of partnerships,” he said. “We hope that this is a long-term tenancy for us, that this is something people can count on.”
