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L.A.'s Tech and Startup UpFront Summit Kicks Off

One of the city's most influential technology and innovation summits kicked off at the Rose Bowl today, bringing together top names in media, tech and finance from singer John Legend to Quibi CEO Meg Whitman. Our reporters Ben Bergman, Rachel Uranga and Tami Abdollah are there to cover it. Follow them on Twitter for dispatches from the get-together, and check back at dot.LA throughout the day for takeaways.

Today's stories

Lee, speaking at the eighth-annual Upfront Summit, said she found fewer people who looked like her as she climbed the ranks at the Viacom-run network. And that led Lee to create the conference which draws power players like Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton as keynote speakers. >>

With the highly-anticipated launch of the byte sized mobile streaming service Quibi a little more than two months away, CEO Meg Whitman defended the company's massive $1.4 billion fundraising total in front of a roomful of investors and company founders in Pasadena.

"There's no question it's a big bet," she said. "We had to raise enough money to create at launch a completely immersive experience." >>

Preet Bharara, the former U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, walked into the Upfront Summit tent in the middle of sunny and bright Pasadena Thursday morning and brought a hush over the crowd as he spoke passionately against President Donald Trump, urging the audience to go out and vote him out of office.

"I've come to a conclusion that whatever your specific issue you care about, for your family and the world is, the No. 1 way to get there in nine months is to have a different president," Bharara said." So don't forget the forest for the trees, think about that in November." >>

Snap Inc. is launching itself anew into the short-form videosphere in 2020 with Bitmoji TV, upping its popular avatar feature to present personalized live-action comic strips of you and your friends. A spokesperson says Thursday that their global release will start in February; it's an effort that may help Snap counter the surging use of TikTok, especially among Gen Z users

When asked to direct "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," the filmmaker said he felt a responsibility to cast actors who were as diverse as possible. "I'm not preaching, but we'll bring our values as much as we can to a project," he said. >>

The Upfront Summit heads into its second day on Thursday. But, there's still a bit of buzz from an unlikely speaker who closed out last night's roster of keynotes -- a surprisingly shy Paris Hilton, who said she was intimidated speaking to a room of hundreds of investors.

"I'm very nervous up here," she said. "I'm used to being at Tomorrowland or Ibiza with a thousand people dancing. Everyone is so serious here." >>