BARCELONA - President Obama will travel to San Francisco today to meet with top tech executives, including Apple's Steve Jobs, Google's Eric Schmidt, and Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, according to ABC News.
Sources tell ABC that Jobs, Schmidt, and Zuckerberg will be among several tech execs with whom the president will meet. GE CEO Jeffrey Immelt, who was recently named chairman of the new White House Council on Jobs and Competititveness, will also be there, ABC said.
According to the official White House schedule, President Obama is scheduled to arrive in San Francisco at 5:45pm local time tonight. He will then meet "with business leaders in technology and innovation" at an undisclosed private residence.
Obama delivered a very tech-heavy State of the Union address last month, during which he said the first step toward economic recovery is to out-innovate, out-educate and out-build the rest of the world. That speech included a pledge to provide 98 percent of Americans with access to next-generation wireless technology in the next five years; he unveiled a plan intended to make that a reality earlier this month.
Apple's Jobs took a medical leave of absence from Apple last month, though he said he would continue as CEO and be involved in all the major strategic decisions at Apple.
Google's Schmidt, meanwhile, was here in Barcelona Tuesday to deliver a keynote at Mobile World Congress, and traveled to Berlin yesterday to unveil Google One Pass, a service on which publishers can sell their content, at their own prices.
Though Zuckerberg was not at MWC, Facebook has had a secondhand presence at the show, with HTC and INQ both unveiling two "Facebook phones." The HTC phones - the ChaCha and the Salsa - have dedicated Facebook buttons that will take you directly to the social-networking site, while the INQ devices - the INQ Cloud Touch and INQ Cloud Q - have Facebook integrated into every application on the phone.