MEETING NOTES

Rotarian Pete Owsianowski introduced our program speaker, Kevin Smith, CEO of Union Station Technology Center.  Son of a journeyman entrepreneur, Kevin learned early to believe that he could do whatever he had a vision about and was willing to achieve.  His dad started Deluxe Sheet Metal in their garage.  Kevin grew up in the South Bend/Granger area, graduated from Clay High School and the University of Notre Dame.  He is a “serial entrepreneur” with the core belief that technology is not a product but a tool.  The tool of technology is to be used to solve real business problems and to integrate with other talents and capabilities, like architecture, to create buildings like the new Deluxe Sheet Metal building.  Technology ensures that the beautiful design is done in a practical, sustainable, innovative way to give its occupants a wonderful environment in which to work.  Kevin’s vision for the 30-year Union Station renovation has been realized to a great extent.  The current data center housed in the Union Station building requires 80 megawatts (vs. about 20 for the whole city of South Bend) to keep its private and public cloud storage going strong. They are out of space, which is why Kevin has purchased both the building next door and the Studebaker building. The next chapter of his plan to renovate the vacant Studebaker manufacturing facility includes the goal of making this data center even more efficient than Google’s best data center.  In order to achieve this, Kevin is working with an architectural firm from Chicago that uses parametric modeling in their process.  It has taken three years, money from the city of South Bend, and Kevin’s own money to address and mitigate the environmental contamination issues at the site.  In the spring, the site will be ready for building. 

Another inspiration, INFOCUS, started with Kevin finding a way to hire 7 fellows from Notre Dame and secure $3 million of Lily Foundation funding to create and commercialize new technology here in this community.  They will have 120 interns by year’s end.  Kevin’s challenge to Rotary members is this:  Is South Bend ready to truly live up to its naming in Forbes’ Smart Cities expose as one of the Top Ten Tech cities in the world?  What will the city and businesses of South Bend do to weave this thread of technology in such a way as to create a community fabric?