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The Sundance booth at the Silicon Slopes Summit in Salt Lake City on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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The Brigham Young University booth at the Silicon Slopes Summit in Salt Lake City on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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The Utah Valley University booth at the Silicon Slopes Summit in Salt Lake City on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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The Ancestry booth at the Silicon Slopes Summit in Salt Lake City on Friday, Sept. 30, 2022.

Ashtyn Asay, Daily Herald

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Utah County companies flooded the sixth annual Silicon Slopes Summit on Thursday and Friday, bringing new energy to Utah’s big city.

The Silicon Slopes Summit is one of Utah’s biggest conventions and brings together tech companies and businesses from all over the U.S. for two days of panels and networking.

This year’s notable speakers included Gov. Spencer Cox, the CEOs of G2, Lucid, Earnest, and other businesses along with Brigham Young University sports icons Steve Young and Jimmer Fredette.

Utah County was well represented at the summit with BYU, Utah Valley University, Sundance Resort, Ancestry, LiveView Technologies, Neighbor.com and others interacting with attendees. Panel speakers focused on topics like building community, developing company ethos, the future of technology and company growth.

Neighbor.com is a Provo-based company that connects people in need of storage space with those in their community with space to share. Joseph Woodbury, CEO of Neighbor.com, co-founded the website with Colton Gardner in 2017 when the two were still students at BYU.

While the company now has users nationwide, Neighbor.com saw small beginnings right along the Wasatch Front.

“There was a time where we didn’t even have users outside Utah County, and even in Utah County those users weren’t close together,” Woodbury said.

Woodbury spoke on a panel entitled “The Future of Work: Remote/Hybrid/Office,” alongside Davis Smith, founder and CEO of Cotopaxi, Jeremy Andrus, CEO of Traeger Grills, and Cydni Tetro, CEO of Brandless.

Neighbor.com has recruited team members from over 20 states in the U.S. with the stipulation that all of the company’s employees work in office. According to Woodbury, this is an intentional part of creating a positive company culture.

“We have a big team, and I think as you grow you have to get more intentional about culture,” he said. “When you’re ten people you know everybody, but there reached a point where you have to create opportunity to know people.”

Woodbury has watched the Silicon Slopes Summit grow from a small event into the behemoth it is today and appreciates how it has brought various members of Utah’s tech industry together.

“It’s been interesting to watch the evolution of Silicon Slopes, it’s gone from originally being based around a few companies that everyone knew, to now it’s become this massive almost networking event,” he said.”Anything that builds community is good, we don’t have enough community. That’s a big part of our mission, is bringing community.”

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