Marijuana, hemp side by side at MJBizConNEXT & Hemp Industry Daily Conference in New Orleans

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Marijuana, Marijuana, hemp side by side at MJBizConNEXT & Hemp Industry Daily Conference in New Orleans

The cannabis industry is in New Orleans this week for MJBizConNEXT with attendees having the option to specifically focus on either marijuana or hemp – or both, for that matter.

That’s because, for the first time, Marijuana Business Daily is hosting side-by-side conferences for both varieties of the cannabis sativa plant, Wednesday-Friday at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center: MJBizConNext and The Hemp Industry Daily Conference.

The staging of the two conferences concurrently reflects the evolution of the whole cannabis plant as something with both distinct and shared interest for the roughly 4,000 attendees and 300 exhibitors from 19 countries expected to attend.

“As the industry looks forward to the future and what’s coming next, it’s clear that the medical marijuana and adult-use industries are intersecting with the quickly evolving hemp industry,” said Cassandra Farrington, CEO of MJBizDaily.

“We are excited to host the entrepreneurs, investors and executives from these distinct and unique industries in an environment tailored to each group’s education needs, in a space that also provides an excellent platform for shared exploration of future business opportunities.”

With a few exceptions – most notably, a joint conference keynote speech Wednesday by former Mike’s Hard Lemonade executive Anat Baron – Hemp Industry Daily will be staging its own conference with approximately 1,000 attendees expected. (For more on The Hemp Industry Daily Conference, click here.)

If your focus is more on the marijuana side, either as someone who works in a related business or who is involved more on the investment side of this potentially lucrative industry, a wide-ranging series of tracks and sessions are designed to answer your questions and stimulate new perspectives.

Tracks include:

  • “Level Up: Next Steps for Your Business,” a series of six sessions featuring panels titled “Raising Expansion Capital,” “Creating Strategic Partnerships” and “Moving Forward: Changing Company Ownership.”
  • “Money Matters,” a series of three top-level panel discussions on consolidation in the North American cannabis industry with sessions such as “Sizing Up U.S.-based MSOs” and “Tracking the Metrics that Matter as M&A Explodes in Cannabis.”
  • “On The Horizon: Emerging Markets and Trends,” a series that stretches over two days. It looks at the future of this ever-changing industry with panels focused on international developments and those in different U.S. regions.

Speakers on Wednesday’s first full day include:

  • Nancy Whiteman, founder and CEO of Wana Brands.
  • Nicholas Vita, CEO of New York-based cannabis company Columbia Care, which recently started trading on the NEO Exchange in Canada.
  • Cowen Managing Director and Senior Research Analyst Vivien Azer.
  • JJ O’Brien, vice president at San Francisco-based vape company Pax Labs.

In addition to a continuation of tracks, Thursday and Friday will offer live sessions on the 41,000-square-foot exhibitor floor. Feature speakers will discuss a variety of environmental and social impacts of marijuana, including presentations such as “Seeing the ROI in Community Outreach and Reaching Underserved Market Segments.”

All of this likely will whet attendees’ whistles for MJBizDaily‘s other upcoming events in Toronto and Bogota as well as MJBizCon in Las Vegas in December.

For information about any of these events, click here.

Nick Thomas can be reached at nickt@mjbizdaily.com