B.I.G* Summit 2012 to Highlight Crowdfunding, Mobile Trends

Leslie Hielema, President of Orlando, Inc., talks about the 2012 B.I.G* Summit to be held Thursday, November 8 at Full Sail University. The one-day conference brings together 500 business, community leaders, and entrepreneurs to discuss trends and best practices in entrepreneurship.

Featured speakers for the event include: Jessica Jackley is a Founder of Kiva, the world's first peer to peer microlending website. Kiva lets users lend as little as $25 to poor entrepreneurs around the world, providing affordable capital for them to start or expand microenterprises. Named one of the top ideas of 2006 by The New York Times Magazine, and praised by Oprah, Bill Clinton and countless others, Kiva is one of the fastest-growing social benefit websites in history.

Since its founding in 2005, it has loaned nearly $300 million from lenders to entrepreneurs across 206 countries. By 2012, total loans on Kiva to the world's working poor are expected to reach $1 billion.

The afternoon keynote is Jeremy Gutsche an innovation expert and the award-winning author of Exploiting Chaos and the founder of TrendHunter.com, the world's largest, most popular collection of cutting edge trends, attracting close to a billion views. Jeremy's broad appeal ranges from The Economist and CNN to Entertainment Tonight and The New York Times.

He has been described as "a new breed of trend spotter" by The Guardian, an "Oracle" by the Globe and Mail, an "intellectual can of Red Bull" by Association Week and "on the forefront of cool" by MTV.

Another aspect of the conference is the annual B.I.G* Award. Entrepreneurs have the chance to win $60,000 in in-kind services and prizes by submitting a video about the journey of the company. Those interested in submitting a video can learn more here.

The conference is nearly sold-out. Tickets are available on the conference website.