If the crusade to get more young men of color into engineering careers was just a matter of dazzling them with gadgetry, the Brothers in Technology Conference lit up all those buttons.

Considering the virtual reality room at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and the 3D printing lab, the movie trailers, digital music-making and the robots (even a robotic dog), it was quite a hands-on show, agreed students like Grandview Middle School 8th Grader Stephon Moore.

But the heart of the B.I.T. Conference, judging from Moore’s reaction, had something much bigger inside.

A student experiences flying at UMKC’s virtual reality lab.

Because when the day was done, the student was thinking of that producer, and that creative entrepreneur, and that chief product officer and the other successful men — Black like Moore — who put on the conference’s demonstrations.

“You heard them explain how they did it,” Moore said, “and how they had to keep going at it,.” In put in his head the real idea that “I can be a movie producer, or a music producer.”

This was the third edition of the conference, created by Urban TEC Executive Director Ina P. Montgomery, and this time LINC collaborated with Ruskin High School in the Hickman Mills School District and Grandview Middle School to send several dozen youth to the event.

LINC and Urban TEC have been partners for many years bringing STEAM programming — science, technology, engineering, arts and math — to the students in LINC’s Caring Communities sites and their families. And the conference added an important layer, Montgomery said.

Montgomery, an entrepreneur in STEAM fields, had often been asked to participate in STEAM conferences for girls, she said.

“And I kept saying, What about the boys? Especially urban boys. They need a similar experience where they can get their hands on technology and plant that seed to pursue a STEAM career.”

National statistics are alarming. Montgomery cites a report by the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility that found that Black professionals are severely underrepresented in tech jobs and college programs.

“To me that’s an emergency,” she said. “That’s a crisis.”

A UMKC sandbox projects colored contour lines as students create mountains and valleys.

What’s encouraging, she said, is that several Black Kansas City men, successful in the STEAM world, have committed to helping her in her quest, stepping in to be the motivational presenters at each of her conferences.

They do it for teenagers like Ruskin High School freshman J.J. Hardy, who came away from the day thrilled by the way the different workshops “let us use our imagination.”

“It opened my creative side,” he said. “I’m thinking I want to be an engineer and be in college doing engineering so I can learn to build stuff and break it down and build it back.”

And these speakers, he noted, were teaching them how to interact, how to do business, how to use “critical thinking.”

No doubt, that’s why Lenton Bailey, University Health’s Director of Public Safety, was here.

In his workshop, he put the students to work in teams imagining how they’d build and market wearable devices to help people enhance or improve their lives.

Students present their ideas for wearable devices in class with University Health’s Lenton Bailey.

“It’s an opportunity to give back to the young men, especially those of color,” Bailey said. “Hopefully this will inspire them and let them know that their ceiling isn’t limited.”

What he saw in the youth was a lot of enthusiasm and creativity, and other presenters saw it too.

“I was one of those kids,” said music producer Joseph “Jo Blaq” Macklin. “I was looking in and trying to find a way to be in the arts I love.”

But the resources he felt he needed were in Los Angeles, and he found success there.

Then Kansas City called him back.

“It was on my heart,” he said. “I can’t keep giving my resources to LA when there are kids like me in Kansas City that want to do this as well.”

He had the students in his workshop stacking music tracks on beats and rap tracks on his array of audio-engineering equipment.

“I see a lot of creative kids,” he said. “Their imaginations are wild. I’m trying to give them the opportunity to say, ‘Hey, this is what I want to do and I have the resources and I have the mentors to help me get where I want to get.”

Grandview Middle School 8th Grader Dixson Alvarado got the message from Macklin and many of the other presenters, like creative director Rich Chungong, Storytailor Chief Product Officer Herston Fails and the producer/writer team of Corey McCartney and Khalid Abdulqaadir.

“What I learned is to never give up,” Alvarado said. “Because that’s one of the first things you have to have on your mind. That’s the mindset.”

L. George Walker of the Black Family Technology Awareness Association watches as a student controls a robot.

Many of the presenters preached resilience and persistence, like Andrew Eanes, the Senior Client Solutions Manager at J.E. Dunn Construction Company, who told of his path among engineering companies as the only Black man he could see.

Chungong told the students how, when he was in school, he was not encouraged to go into engineering. He made his success as a creative director, and now he is constantly looking to hire people who can write computer code.

“Do you know what their starting salary is?” he asked the students. “One-hundred-thousand dollars a year,” he answered, and the teens gasped a collective “whoa!”

“But you guys are ahead on this,” he told them. “You have people here trying to get you the opportunity. Have a great time and get curious about this stuff.”

The message seemed resounding.

Ruskin Freshman Kayyin Jackson said he saw in the different speakers “different parts of creativity and knowledge and how to interact with people” to help grow and succeed.

The Storytailor robot, brought to the conference by Storytailor’s Herston Fails goes for a walk.

“It was honestly a surreal experience,” Ruskin classmate Alan Gomez said. He wants to be a professional baseball player, but the idea of being a “sports engineer” is enticing, creating sports gear and safety equipment.

Just being on UMKC’s expansive campus was inspiring, said Grandview Middle School 8th Grader Jaylen Johnson. That, combined with all the stories from the presenters telling of “how they do the things they do” has him thinking big.

“It’s made me feel like anything’s possible if you put time into it and keep doing it,” he said. “There is a lot for me in the future and I can accomplish things if I put my mind to it.”

By Joe Robertson/LINC Writer

Brothers in Technology inspires teens to see their future selves unlimited