Steve Jobs Appears at Obama Tech Dinner

By Barbara E. Hernandez

| Tuesday, Sep 6, 2011 | Updated 4:46 PM PDT

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The White House

President Barack Obama joins a toast with Technology Business Leaders at a dinner in Woodside, California, Feb. 17, 2011. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza) This official White House photograph is being made available only for publication by news organizations and/or for personal use printing by the subject(s) of the photograph. The photograph may not be manipulated in any way and may not be used in commercial or political materials, advertisements, emails, products, promotions that in any way suggests approval or endorsement of the President, the First Family, or the White House.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive who left on indefinite medical leave last month, showed up at Thursday's tech dinner with President Obama in his trademark black turtleneck and was given one of the best seats of the night -- on Obama's left. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared the honor by being seated on Obama's right. (Zuckerberg decided to forgo his signature graying black hoodie for a striped button-down and jacket.)

All were meeting at the home of venture capitalist John Doerr in Woodside, Calif., according to Reuters. Other guests of the night included Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz, Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Genentech chairman Art Levinson and Google's Eric Schmidt. Stanford University president John Hennessy and former state controller Steve Westly filled out the guest list.

The president held the meeting to promote technology innovation and hopes that it would create jobs to battle the country's high unemployment. From the article:

Obama met with 12 leaders from technology companies and discussed ways to work together to invest in innovation and promote private sector job growth, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said after the meeting.

"The president specifically discussed his proposals to invest in research and development and expand incentives for companies to grow and hire, along with his goal of doubling exports over five years to support millions of American jobs," Carney said.

Obama is expected to continue his meeting with tech companies by visiting an Intel semiconductor manufacturing plant in Oregon today.

What I find most interesting is how far away Eric Schmidt is from the president and how few guests (I'm looking at you, Cisco and Google) who were drinking wine. Apparently they wanted to keep their wits about them before being schmoozed into donating to Obama's 2012 campaign.