Will Cuba become a future Silicon Beach?

Will Cuba become a future Silicon Beach?
BY DAVID SAITO-CHUNG

It might be forever before North America's next technology hotbed lands
somewhere off the beaches of Cuba. But at least one event organizer is
seeking to be on the inside track in helping turn such a dream into reality.

Techweek, which puts together networking events for tech startups and
investors, traveled to Havana last week for its first event in Cuba.
After more than 50 years of contentious relations, the U.S. restored
full diplomacy with the communist country in July.

Megan Scharf, media director for Techweek, says the three-day event
attracted 60 executives and scholars, including Linda Darragh of the
Kellogg Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative at Northwestern
University, Matt McGraw of the mobile supply chain company DSI, and
Howard Tullman, managing partner of Chicago High Tech Investment Partners.

Chicago-based Techweek bills itself as "a traveling celebration of
innovation, creativity, risks, rewards,exciting meetups and other cool
stuff." It typically hosts a seven-day series at events, including a
two-day conference and expo, in various cities.

"We are looking to inspire creative Cuban entrepreneurs and business
owners and give them a platform to discuss technologies and practices
that might help kick-start their endeavors in Cuba and perhaps the
United States," Scharf told IBD via email.

At the very least, Cuba may become a lucrative arena for companies that
serve to build bridges of commerce and information exchange between the
two countries. The Techweek Cuba event itself costs participants $4,000
a head, but that included a charter flight to Havana and back.

Commercial flights to Havana from the U.S. are slated to begin this month.

A Techweek event in Los Angeles last month attracted not only tiny
startups, but also exhibitors from IBM (NYSE:IBM) 's Bluemix project
team and from Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN). Both of these tech giants are
eager to offer Web, cloud and software development services to ambitious
coders and app developers.

Source: Will Cuba become a future Silicon Beach? Techweek says yes -
Investors.com -
http://news.investors.com/technology-click/120815-784246-technology-investing-in-cuba-emerges.htm