Kalob Hagen wants to teach you how to build an app, and he wants to do it in a single day.

A local entrepreneur, Hagen has spent the past several years helping businesses navigate website and social media challenges through his business, Luigi Solutions. This weekend, he’ll host an app-building workshop at Hotel Indigo in Traverse City – an eight-hour experience he says will be legible for anyone “even if you’ve never written a line of code.”

Hagen got the idea from the Michigan DevFest 2025 AI Hackathon, which drew tech professionals, startup founders, and computer science students to Wayne State University in Detroit for a shot at a $1,000 grand prize. The contest tasked developers with finding new ways of leveraging IBM’s AI tools to address economic challenges in Michigan. Hagen was one of the competition’s 200 participants, and the experience struck a chord.

“It was super energizing,” he says. “There are hundreds of people there, all in this big, giant room, and you just sit there from 9 to 5 – other than a lunch break – just building software.”

Hagen spent hackathon day developing an restaurant app that “simulates IBM’s Watson and Orchestrate tools” to streamline inventory management. After realizing that most of his clients for Luigi Solutions were restaurants, Hagen launched a side venture called Luigi Appetizer that specializes in tech solutions for food service businesses. 

“In working with restaurants, I did a lot of market research, and I found out that most restaurants in northern Michigan at least have an Excel sheet [for tracking inventory],” Hagen tells The Ticker. “With the tool I built, a restaurant could upload their sales history, inventory, and menu items, and then the part that simulates IBM's technology takes that data and can make an accurate estimate of how many days the restaurant has until they run out of each specific food item. Ideally, the app is hooked up to their vendor, it makes a recommended order list, and all the restaurant has to do is review the list and click an order button.”

While Hagen says he may try commercializing that tool in the future, his main takeaway from the IBM hackathon was that Traverse City needed a similar event. His version, an all-in-one-day app building workshop, will take place this Saturday, January 17, from 9am to 5pm. A $500 cash prize will go to whoever builds the best app.

“I figured there would be a lot of interest locally in an event that said, ‘You can build an app in a day with no experience.’ And a lot of people were interested,” Hagen says. “We sold out every single seat, at $379 apiece, and then added five more due to demand.”

The event will follow a “classroom-style” format. Hagen will kick things off by giving attendees a primer on how to use the software tools he’s chosen. From there, participants will have the majority of the day to develop their apps, with Hagen and a few other instructors circulating to lend assistance.

“What I’ve been telling people is that, if you can follow instructions, you can do it,” Hagen says.

Of the 25 seats in the workshop, 20 are paid, with Hagen setting aside the other five as free “scholarship” seats for local students. Two of those will be filled by students from Northwestern Michigan College, and the other three went to high schoolers from the engineering academy at the Northwest Education Services Career Tech Center. Hagen himself is an alumnus of the latter, and was able to visit last week to speak to students.

“Especially with college being so expensive, I think it’s important that young people have opportunities like this, to learn and feel empowered," Hagen says.

If all goes well, Hagen plans to make the workshops a regular occurrence, similar to TCNewTech’s quarterly pitch nights. He says he’s even had talks with 20Fathoms – which manages TCNewTech – about possibly sponsoring future workshops.

“This first workshop came together so fast, so it’s been a little stressful,” Hagen laughs. “But once we get a good foundation down, I think it’ll become easier and be something that we can do over and over again.”

Pictured: Hagen (left) and his in-progress IBM app build (right)