New West Summit Nov 20-21 San Francisco, CA
On November 20 and 21, 2015, the New West Summit http://www.newwestsummit.com/ will take place in downtown San Francisco at the Parc 55 hotel.
The conference is the first of its kind to bring together business, technology, and media for the legal cannabis market to take a serious look at what’s going on now and what’s coming up. The business track contains sessions about investment in the cannabis business, entrepreneurial opportunities, and venture capital funding. The media track is about how the internet and broader media are enabling the cannabis business through social media, marketing, activism, branding, and editorial trends.
The technology track (which I’m looking forward to immensely) is all about consumer and B2B uses of technology. There are sessions about the use of technology is extraction, cultivation, vaporizers, and IT aspects such as point-of-sale systems, content management systems, and auditing systems. I think this is where the growth in the cannabis industry will really come from as it progresses.
On Friday night, Pato Banton http://patobanton.com/ will be performing in a pretty small venue for conference attendees. It should be a special show.
I sat down with the conference organizer, Jim McAlpine, to talk about the conference.
Jim became active in the cannabis space about a year ago when he organized 420games.org to put on events for sporty cannabis users. He has twenty years of experience as a technology entrepreneur and he saw a big hole in terms of the show in the cannabis industry and how they lacked a focus on business and technology. He said, “I looked over the last year of activity, at Tech Crunch Disrupt” and at innovative technologies across the board and saw that cannabis related business was starting to get attention. I wanted to do something that would take it to the next step.”
Jim wants to normalize the cannabis industry, to bring together cannabis people and technology people in a business setting where they can showcase the products that will drive the industry forward. “The New West Summit” sets the foundation for how the industry moves forward and puts us in a position to be at the forefront in terms of integrating technology and as a way of looking at the investment opportunities.”
I got excited talking to Jim about the role that technology can play in helping to grow the cannabis business. He feels that New West Summit is an opportunity to bring together different people and businesses to learn. He feels that “technology can be the rock that David used to slay Goliath”, in that the cannabis business is currently about small businesses but is being threatened by huge corporations. Technology can be the method that keeps the playing field even and prevents massive multi-national corporations from driving the little guy out of business.
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