GBTA Announces Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone as Featured Speaker at 2014 GBTA Convention

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Jul 01, 2014, 09:01 ET

ALEXANDRIA, Va., July 1, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA)—the voice of the global business travel industry—today announced Biz Stone, co-founder and co-inventor of Twitter, will be a featured speaker at the GBTA Convention 2014, July 26-30, in Los Angeles.

"We are pleased to welcome Biz Stone as a featured speaker for this year's Convention," said Michael W. McCormick executive director and COO of GBTA. "Business travel is an ever-evolving and constantly changing profession at the very forefront of our global economy, and has entered into an exciting new era of rapid innovation and transformation. An incredible innovator and entrepreneur, Biz will provide his unique perspective on the power of technology to connect people and create positive change; he'll also share his unique prescription for meaningful success in business."

Biz Stone has been named Nerd of the Year by GQ, one of the TIME magazine's Most Influential People, Entrepreneur of the Decade by Inc. Magazine, one of Vanity Fair's Top Ten Most Influential People of the Information Age. He was honored with the International Center for Journalists' Innovation Award. Stone is best known for developing collaborative systems freely accessed by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

As a progenitor of early social media, Biz became an Internet entrepreneur working at Xanga and Google before co-inventing and co-founding Twitter. After stepping away from his day-to-day role at Twitter Inc., Biz helped incubate Medium, a new, web-based publishing platform. In April of 2013, Biz announced he will serve as the co-founder and CEO of his latest startup, Jelly, a mobile application.

An adamant believer that when we help others, we also help ourselves, Stone supports a new way of doing business with a higher level of ambition, and a better, more altruistic way to measure success. Beyond immediate needs, Stone advocates selflessness; insisting we follow this path in order to deliver deeper meaning in our work.

Along with his wife, Livia, Stone was named a Huffington Post Game Changer for their work and impact in the field of public service. The couple founded the Livia and Biz Stone Foundation dedicated to supporting a variety of causes including education, public health, environmentalism, and animal welfare. The foundation works closely with the non-profit organizations the National Advisory Council for Donors Choose, PRBO Conservation Science and Farm Sanctuary.

The 2014 Convention theme, Business in Motion, aptly describes how the event will unfold as nearly 7,000 attendees from all facets of the business travel industry come together for five days of continuous motion at the business travel event of the year. GBTA will broadcast LIVE from the LA Convention Center, bringing you world-class featured speakers, more than 80 industry-leading education sessions, the largest business travel expo floor, a wide selection of professional development opportunities and much more providing attendees the opportunity to build their careers and get business done.

Attendee registration is still available. For the agenda and a list of the many exciting programs and featured speakers, please visit gbta.org/convention.

Media registration is complimentary and available online.

About GBTA Convention
The GBTA Convention, with nearly 7,000 attendees, is the largest, most comprehensive annual gathering of business travel and meetings managers, meeting planners, procurement professionals and suppliers anywhere in the world. The Business Travel Event of the Year ® features: more than 80 industry-leading education sessions organized into 20+ specialized tracks geared to specific levels of experience and a variety of disciplines; a 400+ company Exposition showcasing market choices not available at other industry gatherings; sessions featuring world-renowned speakers and industry leaders; a wide selection of professional development opportunities; and, much more. For more information on the GBTA Convention, visit gbta.org/convention.

About the Global Business Travel Association
The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) is the world's premier business travel and meetings trade organization headquartered in the Washington, D.C. area with operations on six continents. GBTA's 7,000-plus members manage more than $345 billion of global business travel and meetings expenditures annually. GBTA and the GBTA Foundation deliver world-class education, events, research, advocacy and media to a growing global network of more than 28,000 travel professionals and 125,000 active contacts. To learn how business travel drives business growth, visit www.gbta.org.

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SOURCE Global Business Travel Association