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If you need any proof that Santa Monica is becoming a national hub for high-brow techies, just take a look at yet another exclusive tech event being hosted there: the OASIS summit, slated for March 5 and 6.
The invite-only event will be hosting over 1,000 media and tech executives gathering to exchange ideas surrounding enterprise, software and Big Data just to name a few. Grown out of the popularity of decade-old Montgomery Technology Conference and hosted by tech investor James Montgomery, OASIS will be featuring about 150 company presentations and over 1,200 one-on-one meetings this year.
“Primarily, this is an incredible, insider conference with very experienced, very valuated companies,” representative Ross Johnson said.
Speakers at the event will include: bestselling author Deepak Chopra, tech legend Paul Maritz, serial entrepreneur Ashish Thakkar, Brazilian mining billionaire Bernardo Paz and executives from the University of Southern California and Lucasfilm.
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OASIS is straying from the usual conference mold with its speakers this year, Johnson said: “As opposed to going to your usual business leaders, we are going to thought leaders."
The conference is also breaking ground this year by including a business plan competition between early-stage companies for the first time. The competition, dubbed Money Ball, will give companies the opportunity to seek financing in a live “Shark Tank”-like environment, with the audience (hopefully) investing in the winning company via a crowdsourcing platform.
Digging into the panel sessions, attendees should expect discussions on ad tech, enterprise, digital payments and digital entertainment (so, pretty much, all things LA!). Johnson said these panelists will include senior executives from Facebook, Citrix and Google as well as leading investors in the fields. A digital payments panel, for example, will be moderated by Quentin Hardy of the New York Times and will focus on the future of Bitcoin from the perspectives of leading entrepreneurs and investors.
It's not just the high-profile panelists that keep attendees coming back each year, it is mostly the environment that Montgomery & Co's conferences provide: an opportunity to connect with thought leaders in an unprecedented setting.
"It’s very hard to recreate the atmosphere here and the intimate setting," Johnson said.
