Baucus brings Who's Who of business world to Butte

Montana’s senior U.S. senator is bringing an impressive list of top business leaders to his sixth Montana economic development summit and is urging people to sign up before space runs out at the free two-day event.

“For two days we’ll transform Butte, Mont., into the capital of the international business world,” Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., said in a release announcing speakers and panelists at the Sept. 16-17 event.

Along with speakers from some of the biggest and most powerful groups in industry, Baucus has lined up panel discussions — again with a wide spread of top-level representatives of industry and government — on a variety of topics.

Panel discussions will range from the economic impacts of oil extraction from the Bakken formation to wind energy to advanced biofuels, from hiring and retaining employees to using retirement plans and benefit packages to corporate responsibility; from value-added agriculture to tourism to exporting products.

The agenda for the summit, Monday and Tuesday Sept. 16-17, is filled with speakers including heads and officers of some of the biggest names and business. That includes Boeing Chief executive officer Jim McNerney; FedEx founder, chair and CEO Fred Smith; Google chair Eric Schmidt; ConocoPhillips chair and CEO Ryan Lance; Oracle Chair Safra Catz; Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandburg; Delta Airlines CEO Richard Anderson; Ford Motor Co. president and CEO Alan Mulally; PayPal founder and founder and CEO of Spacex and Tesla Motors Elon Musk; and businessman, former ambassador to China, former governor of Utah and 2012 presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr.

“Folks in Washington talk a lot of talk about creating jobs,” Baucus said. “We’re bringing the biggest names in business together with main-street entrepreneurs who walk the walk every day with dynamic panels designed specifically to meet the needs of Montana’s economy.”

The summit has an extensive Web and mobile app presence, with the full agenda and registration available at http://montanajobssummit.com.

The free mobile app, hosted by Bizzaboo, includes interactive maps of the Montana Tech Campus, agenda updates and new networking tools to allow Montana businesses to make lasting connections before, during and after the summit, Baucus’ release said. The app is available for both iOS and Android users.

The release said people can use the app to:

• Plan who to meet: Join the community, find out who's attending and pinpoint potential connections.

• Socialize: Communicate directly with fellow attendees and add them to your social networks.

• Stay up to date: Browse the agenda, see sponsors, follow event Tweets and more.

The app is available at the economic development summit website or at http://www.bizzabo.com/download/. Once downloaded, search for: MTJobs and click “JOIN.”

The website also has links to the summit’s Facebook page, Twitter site, YouTube clips, information about the trade show and Montana manufacturing showcase at the summit, and a page for people registered for the summit to register for the Google sessions to get their businesses online.