Tech Connections- Miami: What the Future Holds for the Next Tech Hub of the Americas

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Miami: What the Future Holds for the Next Tech Hub of the Americas

  

                              Susan Amat Venture Hive 534x640                                  matt-haggman cropped                                    JuanPabloCappello GreenbergTraurig cropped
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FRIDAY, December 13th 2013
8-9:30 a.m. 
Coral Gables Hyatt Regency
 
The movement to transform Miami into a true tech hub for the Americas is gathering steam as entities  
such as the Technology Foundation of the Americas, Endeavor Miami, Venture Hive, The Lab, the Knight Foundation, the media and others work to create an eco-sphere for technology.
The potential is enormous.  
Think about South Florida’s reign as a key import-export hub trading more than $125 billion with the world, and its role as home to thousands of multinational HQ firms who’ve chosen our city as their HQ for Latin America.
It might not happen overnight, but it will happen, especially with the talent that we have here in South Florida working together.    
Please join WorldCity for the next Tech Connections on December 13, and a great panel of leading figures – each a catalyst driving interest and awareness for this movement, who will share their thoughts on what’s working and what needs to be done. Our panelists will be:  
Dr. Susan Amat, from Venture Hive, Matt Haggman from the Knight Foundation and Juan Pablo Cappello from Greenberg Traurig.
Each will share their perspective on the myriad of companies, start-ups, accelerators and programs that are growing and expanding in Miami, how the momentum will only continue to increase, and what we can do to be a part of it all. 

   Tech Connections Sponsors:

  Combined Sponsor New Celistics Vertical 11-20-13  Untitled5

COST & REGISTRATION:
General Admission- $75
Students- $50
Members and Sponsors of
Global Connections- FREE
 
 
 
 
 
More about our panelists: 
Susan Amat, Ph.D. is a serial entrepreneur who started her first business at age 15.  Her current endeavor is as creator and founder of Miami’s Venture Hive Accelerator for entrepreneurs, which she developed with support from the Miami Downtown Development Authority (DDA) and Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez. 
Previously Susan was the co-founder of The Launch Pad at the University of Miami, an education based program to support innovation and entrepreneurship, which has now been replicated nationally as Blackstone LaunchPad.
Susan also serves as Chair of Startup Florida (Startup America Partnership) and is the Chair of the STEM Board for Miami-Dade Country Public Schools. In March, 2012, she was honored at the White House as a Champion of Change for her work mentoring entrepreneurs.
She was educated at the University of Miami, where she earned a doctorate in Strategic Entrepreneurship, an MBA with highest honors in Marketing, Management and Computer Information Systems, and an B.A. in Liberal Arts, Music Media and Industry, and Psychology.

Matt Haggman is the Miami Program Director for the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, where he leads Knight’s communities program in South Florida.
An award-winning journalist, Matt previously worked for nearly a decade reporting on issues of local and national importance, which often facilitated real change, at The Miami Herald, and before that at the Daily Business Review. 
While at the Miami Herald, Matt was co-author of a multipart series detailing how state regulators looked the other away as Florida became the country’s most mortgage fraud-ridden state. In the wake of the series, Florida’s top banking regulator was replaced and a number of consumer protection reforms were passed in the Florida Legislature.
His reporting also highlighted questionable spending practices and self-dealing by local Miami-Dade politicians, triggering a reshuffling of elected leadership that included the first defeat of an incumbent county commissioner in 16 years and a voter recall of both the county mayor and a veteran county commissioner.
His work at the Daily Business Review in Miami included a series of stories highlighting flaws in touchscreen voting machines in Florida, which were later scrapped by state election officials.  
Matt has won numerous awards for his work, including the Gerald Loeb award, the highest honor in business journalism. In each of his last two years at The Miami Herald, he won the President’s Award, which honors the best work in the McClatchy newspaper chain. In his last full year as a journalist, the Miami New Times named Matt in its annual “Best of Miami” awards as the Best Miami Herald Reporter.  
He earned a bachelor of arts from Tulane University and a law degree from Vermont Law School. 

Juan Pablo Cappello is a Principal Shareholder in the Latin American Group of Greenberg Traurig, the international law firm.
Previously he was a partner in and a director of Patagon.com which was sold to Banco Santander for a transaction value of over US$750 million.  Juan Pablo is also a well-known entrepreneur and deeply involved in supporting venture capital in Latin America.
He co-founded both www.idea.me, the first Latin America crowdfunding site and Sauber Energy, a green energy company in Chile that resolves the problem of “harmonics” in the electrical grid. In addition he has been a serial “seed investor” supporting many projects including Senzari (an international music site like Pandora), Urbita (a regional travel site), and LinkedStore (an Argentina site that supports SMEs).
Juan Pablo serves on the Knight Foundation Advisory Committee, as well as the advisory board of the Institute of Global International Effectiveness at the Kelly School of Management, Indiana University.  He is also a GAB member of Endeavor.org and a member of the Legal Committee of the Latin American Venture Capital Association.

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For information on becoming a sponsor or a member, please contact Sari Govantes,  WorldCity’s Business Liaison, at sgovantes@45.56.65.150 or by calling 305-441-2244.
Tech Connections is one of six event series that WorldCity has created to connect and engage the multinational business community in Miami. Initiated in early 2013, the goal of this event series is to support the Technology Foundation of the Americas — hosting the May, 2014 mega-event, eMerge Americas — in making Miami the tech capital of the Americas, in much the same way it is the import-export trade capital of the Americas and the capital for multinationals doing business in the region. Think of eMerge Americas as a Technology Art Basel in the making.
We want to help build this technology community and invite you to be part of it.

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