Techweek Los Angeles Wraps Up 2014 Event Spotlighting Innovation and Technology
Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) December 10, 2014 -- Techweek, the nation’s leading technology conference and festival showcasing and enabling innovation ecosystems, successfully concluded its second annual Techweek Los Angeles event on November 23, 2014. With notable growth from its inaugural year in 2013, Techweek L.A. had more than 4,000 attendees pass through its doors to celebrate the city’s technology community.
Techweek Los Angeles, presented by American Airlines, brought entrepreneurs, innovators and thought leaders together to engage and collaborate, sparking new ideas and inspiring action. The conference was the first technology event of its kind ever held on the Santa Monica Pier. Under Techweek’s big tent, unique intersections in technology were explored, including those in the fields of big data, finance, entertainment, fashion, social impact and more. Highlights from this year’s event include:
- High-Profile Speakers: Techweek L.A. gathered the foremost leaders and influencers in technology for dozens of sessions, where topics such as social innovation and impact, fashion tech, entrepreneurship, inclusion in tech, eco-tech (and everything in between) were discussed. Notable names included: Susan Paley (Former CEO, Beats By Dr. Dre), Chris DeWolfe (CEO, Social Gaming Network; Co-Founder, Myspace), Jane Poynter (CEO, World View Enterprises, Inc.), Scott Painter (CEO, TrueCar), Poornima Vijayashanker (Founder, Femgineer; Founding Engineer, Mint.com), Elliot Kotek (Co-Founder & Editor-In-Chief, Not Impossible Now), and Laura Goldberg (CMO, LegalZoom).
- Startup LAUNCH Competition: More than 80 of L.A.’s most promising young entrepreneurs and their pre-qualified startups competed for cash and sponsor-donated gifts valued at $50,000. Participants were judged by a panel of top tech and business leaders, which included: Alyse Killeen (March Capital Partners), Cody Simms, (Managing Director, Techstars Los Angeles), Richard Wolpert (Managing Director, Amplify LA) and Kyle Mickaelian (Director, Cloud Services North America, Interoute). This year’s L.A. winner is Quicklegal – a unique app that connects users with any type of lawyer they need. Once the app is downloaded, users select the category and location of required legal advice, enter billing information and are instantly connected to a live attorney that specializes in the requested area of law via video chat, audio call or private message.
- FashionTECH Runway Show: The Techweek L.A. runway was filled with the latest styles and showcased new wearable technologies. The show, styled by Giftbar, featured influential tech leaders, including Brent Payne, (CEO, Loud Interactive), Mia Goldwyn (Chief Content Officer, StyleHaul), Alex Friedman (President, Ruckus Marketing), Kayley Melissa (YouTube personality/influencer), Matthew Moisan (Partner, Moisan Legal) and Vanessa Del Muro (Global Head of Talent, StyleHaul), who showed off fashions supplied by: Trumaker, Muse, Vrai & Oro, and more.
- Hiring Fair: The Hiring Fair was all about matching talented people with the right jobs at interesting and innovative L.A.-area companies. Top businesses, including DirecTV, TrueCar and Cornerstone OnDemand, were in attendance to recruit and hire talented new employees for exciting roles in technology.
- Hackathon: The Techweek L.A. Hackathon, presented by General Assembly and also in partnership with Rackspace, Sinch, ChallengePost, F6S and Uber, was a 24-hour marathon filled with innovation and development. Judged by Shrav Mehta (Developer Evangelist, Hired.com), Justin Brezhnev (Hackathon Hacking, Major League Hacking), Blake Haggerty (Developer Attractor, Rackspace), Justin Stofle (Director of Engineering, Scopely) and Philip Woods (Director of Engineering, Tradesy), participants raced against the clock to develop solutions that solve real problems in tangible ways. This year’s Techweek L.A. first place winner was Adoptable, created by Artyon Keydunov and David Lai, which uses modern advances in online dating to help match orphaned animals with adoptive “parents.”
“In our second year, we were proud to fulfill our mission and unite the local tech community together under a proverbial (and literal) big tent on the Santa Monica Pier,” said Iain Shovlin, Chairman of Techweek. “We brought together more entrepreneurs, leaders and innovators to celebrate the unique Los Angeles tech ecosystem than ever before, and look forward to what next year will bring.”
Top sponsors of Techweek Los Angeles 2014 include: American Airlines, FameBit, Media Temple, ezVerify, Bannerman, Cornerstone OnDemand, Interoute, IDA Ireland, Rackspace, Giftbar and Dell.
Next up for Techweek is the Detroit event, set to take place on April 13 – 19, 2015. For more information or to purchase tickets, please visit http://www.techweek.com/detroit.
ABOUT TECHWEEK
Techweek is a 7-day technology conference and festival that celebrates and enables innovation ecosystems in five cities across the country: Chicago, Detroit, New York, Los Angeles, and Miami. With Techweek as a conduit, a spotlight is able to shine on each individual technology community, providing entrepreneurs, innovators, influencers, and visionaries to share ideas, sparking game-changing conversations and inspiring action.
Past speakers at Techweek include Jonah Peretti (Founder & CEO, BuzzFeed), Karen Sumberg (Diversity Pod Leader, Google), Travis Kalanick (CEO, Uber), Reshma Saujani (Founder & CEO, Girls Who Code), Dan Gilbert (Founder, Quicken Loans), Alexis Ohanian (Co-founder, Reddit), Rahm Emanuel (Mayor, Chicago), and Kathryn Minshew (Founder, The Muse). Techweek has garnered more than 200 sponsors including Microsoft, Yelp, Motorola, Groupon, Redbox, Wordpress, American Airlines and more.
Sara Martinez Davine, Techweek, http://www.techweek.com, +1 312.376.8793, [email protected]
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