Knights & Dames of Silicon Valley with President Obama

I stumbled upon this picture and I thought it was a huge move that President Obama dined with the Knights and Dames of the Silicon Valley last Thursday night.

Ever wonder who gets the VIP seat both on the left and right of President Obama? Look at the picture carefully: Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) who sits on the left of Obama and on the right is CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg. He is the youngest amongst the most powerful Knights and Dames of the Silicon Valley.

The Seating Arrangement at Barack Obama’s Techapalooza Dinner

They were hosted at the home of venture capitalist, John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, reports Bloomberg. In attendance were the crème de la crème of the tech circle. In addition to Jobs and Zuckerberg, invitees included Google CEO (until April 4) Eric Schmidt, Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz, Twitter head Dick Costolo, NetFlix chief Reed Hastings, Genentech chairman Arthur Levinson, Stanford president John Hennessy, and venture capitalist Steve Westly. (Sorry, Microsoft. It sucks being in Washington state instead of California sometimes, doesn’t it?)

Members of the press were not invited, but a White House spokesman tells Bloomberg that they discussed “the economy and education.” With various class action lawsuits over privacy issues brewing against Apple, Google, Netflix, and Facebook, I have to believe that privacy came up as well.