Forbes has chosen Philadelphia as the permanent home of its Under 30 Summit – a gathering of young entrepreneurs that organizers hope will become the nation’s most elite networking event for the next generation of business and political leaders, a report said.
The announcement Monday was timed to coincide with the release of the magazine’s annual “Forbes 30 Under 30” list, a who’s who tally of 600 entrepreneurs and leaders under age 30 that seeks to be as buzzy as its annual billionaires’ list, The Inquirer said.
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Attendees of the summit will be culled mostly from the past four years of the list, which has become one of the magazine’s most popular franchises. The fourth annual “30 Under 30” list launches on Jan 5, Forbes said
Forbes’ Under 30 Summit made a four-day debut in October, and Forbes officials toyed with the idea of moving the fledgling confab to a different city each year. The decision to stay in Philadelphia was made after several months of negotiations between Mayor Michael Nutter and top Forbes officials, the report said.
So many of the summit’s invitation-only attendees had such good things to say about the October event, said Forbes editor Randall Lane, that it was hard to imagine going anywhere else. He chose Philadelphia in the first place because of its fast-growing population of twentysomethings, its proximity to New York and Washington, and its emerging image as hip, young, and moving on up, The Inquirer said.
Also key, Lane said, was what Nutter promised: No explicit financial support but introductions to local corporations, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit institutions that might sponsor the event as it grows beyond the 2, 000 who attended last fall, according to the report.
The October conference featured talks and appearances by big names from business and the political realm, including former America Online chairman Steve Case, Spanx founder-billionaire Sara Blakely, onetime White House intern-turned-scandal-figure Monica Lewinsky, and teenage Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai, the Inquirer said.
Its media presence on the Web was huge. Some events were streamed over the Internet. Others were packaged and distributed on Twitter by Forbes’ social media staff. Even a specially designed mobile-phone app was introduced to attendees, who used it to blast out their comings and goings and to see what everyone else was up to. “It reached 750 million people over social media, ” Lane said.
The next summit, on October 4-7, will take place, as did the first, at the Convention Center, The Inquirer said.
This year’s Summit will be expanded to include a full day of service on the concluding day: 100 participants will speak at Philadelphia schools, and others will tour local nonprofits, health care innovators and tech incubators, with the goal of spurring collaboration, according to Forbes.
