Long Beach Collective Association and Cannabis Capitol are creating safe spaces for cannabis education and networking to flourish. These collaborative events are called HI LBC and hosted their third event of the year on March 18.
HI LBC is a monthly cannabis industry social and live video production event for professionals to tap into an industry that can be difficult to navigate.
HI LBC is not your usual cannabis event, so do not expect to see a bunch of dudes in goatees and hippie attire in a circle consuming cannabis. It’s a real business and education focused event.
Emily Spears, account manager for Mohave Cannabis Co, said, “It’s an amazing reunion of friends getting together to experience cannabis on a whole other level.
HI LBC is not a ‘secret sesh’. Secret sessions are cannabis consumption events that mainly focus on pushing the visibility of brands and give consumers a space to consume cannabis culture and products.
Steven Contreras from LBCA Community Outreach explained that these events were about education and networking, “We want to avoid making these events another secret session.”
For a young professional in the cannabis industry, this event could feel daunting if you are used to attending secret sessions.
Once you get past the nervousness of socializing, you are welcomed by passionate industry professionals who are eager to network.
You will see various rooms you can enter that have representatives from brands, labs, organizations, and nonprofits largely from Long Beach. LBCA encourages professionals to network and ask representatives questions.
Contreras told us that HI LBC is an opportunity for budtenders, professionals and the industry to have a dialogue about products and anything cannabis related.
Brands and budtenders are able to trade off information that can help both parties learn from each other, which can be beneficial for an industry that lacks safe space for cannabis related conversations.
At all HI LBC events, you will have a cannabis education panel scheduled in the program. These panels can vary in topic every month, but it can be essential to an industry that has a hard time finding reliable information.
For this event, the panel was about “How to get cannabis products into retail stores.” Speakers were Charles (Buyer from Cookies), George Pinto (Founder of The Mericana Dispensary), and Change (VP of Cannabis).
To attend HI LBC, you would have to rsvp via LBCA’s Instagram (@thelbca). They are hosted every third Friday of the month from 5-8 PM.
The next event will be on April 22. The event is live-streamed via Capitol TV’s Twitch.