Business leaders and technology experts from China and the US will converge in Seattle on Saturday for the one-day Seattle Biz-Tech Forum at the Hyatt Regency Bellevue Hotel.

Hosted by the Nan Hai Company, the Seattle Biz-Tech Summit is an interactive and engaging platform for public-private dialogue, as the Greater Seattle area has become a bigger business center of the West coast for foreign investments.

Nan Hai, a company founded in San Francisco in 1986, currently is headquartered in Millbrae with offices in Santa Clara, CA and Kirkland, WA.

The annual summit is in its second year. Last year, the Seattle Biz-Tech Summit attracted about 500 attendees, including a veritable A-list of companies from the US and China - Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Expedia, Boeing, Oracle, China Telecom, Lenovo, Baidu, ZTE, Tencent, Huawei and many others.

High-tech products, services and innovations were presented by keynote speakers, panels, and roundtable meetings, addressing clean energy technologies, in particular, and other trends such as cloud computing, big data, international trade, mobile computing and biotechnology.

This year, the summit will build on the pioneering success of last year's conference as it continues to bring together major business and technology organizations and leading companies from China and the US.

Billed as a one-of-a-kind international technology and business conference, the event highlights and promotes exchanges between investors, innovators and academia.

Under the theme of "Innovation, Investment, and Connection", the conference sessions will explore several highly relevant business and technology topics, including: cloud security issues, mobile internet, smart business solutions, e-commerce and digital markets, internet finance and more.

Summit participants will have the opportunity to interact with many high-profile industry executives, software developers, scientific researchers and prominent community leaders during informal receptions and break times, or at organized events during happy hours and lunch and dinner events.

Recently the Greater Seattle area has been gaining prominence as a hot spot for international business conferences and meetings and China has been one of the keywords.

In July, top business leaders from around the Pacific Rim gathered at Bell Harbor International Conference center in Seattle for the APEC China CEO Forum 2014, an initiative of the Beijing-based APEC China Business Council, produced this year in partnership with the National Center for APEC.

To promote business and economic communications between Chinese business leaders, officials and other stakeholders in China and the Asia-Pacific region, this year's forum engaged 250 private sector delegates from the APEC region, including APEC Business Advisory Council members from all 21 APEC Economies and a delegation of executives from China's newly established APEC China Business Council.

Then on Sept 4, the two-day Boao Seattle conference, the first of its kind, was hosted by the Boao Forum for Asia in North America.

The summit initiated by Nan Hai attractsBrad Owen, lieutenant governor of Washington, and Jim Reavis, co-founder and CEOatCloud Security Alliance,as keynote speakers.

Some of the panel speakers will includeformer US Congressman Don Bonker; David Nelson, chief strategist for cloud computing at Boeing; and Henry Liebman, CEO and chairman of American Life.

So far, about 600 participants have registered for the event.

lindadeng@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 09/26/2014 page2)