socalTECH.com, the most trusted news site covering the business and technology industries for over 10 years, will honor the socalTECH 50 – the most influential visionaries, entrepreneurs and creatives from San Diego to Santa Barbara. This is our second year of creating our list of the top 50 people to watch in Southern California’s technology industry, and it was NOT an easy task.

As we found last year, it’s a tough, unforgiving task to narrow down a list of the folks in Southern California’s technology industry to just fifty to watch. There were many, many people who are not on the list who indeed deserve to be on this list — in fact, we had so many names from readers and our nominating committee, we were forced into the difficult task of trimming back many deserving names. This year was particularly difficult, due to an explosion of startup activity in the region, which is now drawing entrepreneurs from around the world attracted by the rich environment for technology and media startups here.

The socalTECH 50 is aimed at identifying and highlighting the top 50 people in the technology industry, who are most likely to create the next big thing, produce the next big exit or to influence the industry in a significant way. We deliberately have omitted any of the folks on our list from last year, as well as very high profile and high visibility serial entrepreneurs who already have significant exits and success under their belt. We also consciously avoided a list of the perennial “power players” in the local industry — folks like Elon Musk, Brian Lee, Patrick Soon-Shiong, George Strompolos, Scott Painter, Mike Jones, Eric Pulier, Steve Jillings, Jason Calacanis, etc.–to try to shine some light on folks who people might not have heard of, but should, or will. Click Here to download the press release.

2014 socalTECH 50 Honorees

- Watch the socalTECH 50 SLIPP with photos of our honorees here.

Thanks to our readers, who helped to suggest people to include in this list, as well as our nominating committee, a group of insiders in the industry who helped us to make sure we had good exposure to the people who are making waves in the community. That nominating committee included Darya Allen-Attar (ChickLauncher), Paige Craig, Peter Delgrosso (D&B Credibility), Ivan Nikhoo (Siemer & Associates), Kamran Pourzanjani (Bestcovery), David Toomey (Cresa), Andy Wilson (Rexter, Innovate Pasadena), Richard Wolpert (AmplifyLA, Accel Partners), and Jeff Zwelling (Convertro).

Thanks also to our sponsors , who made the event to celebrate our honorees possible!