In his closing remarks at the eMerge Americas technology conference last year, keynote speaker Armando Christian Pérez, aka Pitbull, said, “Get ready for this thing to grow bigger.” It turns out he was right.

Funded in part by Knight Foundation, the inaugural eMerge Americas attracted more than 6,000 attendees and over 400 companies. A year later, the second eMerge Americas, scheduled for May 1 through 5 at Miami Beach Convention Center and other venues around South Florida, has grown bigger — organizers expect more than 10,000 attendees and “hundreds of top companies” — as well as deeper and broader. In addition, Knight Foundation has extended its support for three more years to the tune of $1.5 million and the list of speakers and participating countries has grown impressively.

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“eMerge Americas tech and innovation event returns to showcase Miami’s entrepreneurial spirit”  by Xavier Gonzalez in Knight Blog, 5/7/2014

The main events on this year’s agenda include a Startup Showcase, in which entrepreneurs compete for funding from well-known investors; Women, Innovation & Technology (WIT), a one-day summit showcasing top female professionals from different industries; eGov: Government Innovation Summit, which will feature government officials discussing the uses of innovative technology for sustainable development; and pavilions from different nations.

But perhaps the most dramatic development in eMarge’s rapid growth is the conference’s partnership with NBC Universal News Group and Telemundo. The on-air and digital powerhouses will cover the event live on several platforms, including leading shows such as “Fast Money,” with Melissa Lee, “Meet the Press,” with Chuck Todd, and “Enfoque,” with Jose Diaz-Balart.

“This [partnership] puts us in a totally different place,” said Manuel D. Medina, managing partner of Medina Capital and founder of eMerge Americas. He initially proposed broadcasting live from the conference to Lee, the “Fast Money” host, observing that NBC already broadcasts live from the economic summit in Davos, Switzerland, and from Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders’ meeting. But, he says, “never thinking that it was going to be for this year. I was thinking about 2016. Lo and behold, the thing caught fire.”

For Matt Haggman, Knight Foundation’s Miami program director and a speaker at this year’s conference, eMerge is a key component of Knight’s strategy in Miami. “While we have invested in a range of events that run through the year, we wanted that one event, that singular landmark multi-day event, that attracts people not only from across the region but from around the world and helps change perceptions. It’s sort of the Austin-SXSW effect.”

Having NBC Universal “share the stories of what’s happening in Miami at eMerge is priceless,” he adds. “It helps the understanding of Miami as a global city, and a global city that is thinking about, and building, big innovative ideas, a big city that is home to high-impact entrepreneurs. Those story lines, those ways to think about Miami, that’s the opportunity that eMerge provides. And the perception of Miami is changing rapidly. There’s a lot of work to be done but it’s changing very, very fast.”

That’s the biggest change, says Medina.

“Young entrepreneurs in Latin America, whether they are in Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia or Chile, once dreamed of Silicon Valley. Talk to those young entrepreneurs now and their idea is to come to Miami. That is exactly what eMerge was intended to do. That has been the No. 1 impact, that change in perception.”

In fact, Medina spoke recently about how as founder of global technology leader Terremark, based in downtown Miami and acquired by Verizon in 2011, “one thing that always frustrated me was that Miami, from the technology point of view, didn’t get any respect. It just didn’t.”

He also noted that while attending business and technology conferences “there was no platform for me to talk about Latin America, Europe and North America.” 

It all led to the founding of eMerge. His vision did not draw from a technology conference, however, but an art fair.

“Before Art Basel, Miami was not an art capital in this country,” he says. “If you were a talented artist you had to be in New York, in Paris, in Cartagena, somewhere hip — but not in Miami. And now, think of what Art Basel has done. Today, if you are a young, talented artist you want to be in Miami. Look at the impact it’s had. So I felt that  [a technology conference] was going to be a lot bigger [than Art Basel] because technology affects everybody. That was the whole idea. That’s how it started.”

Still, for the Cuban-born, Miami-raised entrepreneur, one of the key objectives of eMerge Americas is to bring the South Florida community together.

“There are four major areas we are trying to influence with eMerge: The first one is education. Bringing all these universities together [and] it’s having an impact. Last year only University of Miami and Florida International University participated…. This year Florida Atlantic University, Barry University, NOVA … they are all in. Having them change the curriculum and offer more technology classes, that is a very good impact. No. 2 is to continue getting attention on the need for more accelerators and incubators of ideas and startups — what Knight Foundation is doing, what The Launch Pad is doing, what Venture Hive is doing. No. 3 is begin attracting more capital, more funding sources and, lastly, of course, you want to create more of an employment base. It’s circular: You got the ideas, you cultivate them, you fund them and, eventually, you create employment. We didn’t expect [eMerge Americas] to take off so quickly, and I think it has impacted all those areas already.”

Fernando González is a Miami-based arts and culture writer.