D10 conference kicks off in advance of Tim Cook appearance

Located at the Terranea Resort in Ranchos Palos Verdes, Calif., the conference has been greeted this year by beautiful sunny weather. Since 2003, the conference has attracted a series of influential figures in media and technology, providing a unique glimpse into the minds of such technology luminaries as Steve Jobs, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Ray Ozzie and Steve Ballmer, Google's chairman Eric Schmidt, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen, Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, Nokia's chief executive Stephen Elop, Disney chief executive Robert Iger and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, as well as George Lucas, Al Gore, John McCain and Lawrence Lessig.

This year, following an initial reception hosted by Contacts.com, event hosts Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher will introduce an opening session this evening featuring Chase Carey, the president and chief operations officer of News Corp., and a highly-anticipated appearance by Apple's chief executive Cook.

After closing out the opening day with a dinner and anniversary celebration of the conference presented by NASDAX OMX, the conference will continue through Wednesday and Thursday with sessions featuring LinkedIn executives Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner and Daniel Ek and Sean Parker of Spotify.

Wednesday, sessions by Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers partner Mary Meeker and Zynga chief executive Mark Pincus will be followed by a session featuring Intellectual Ventures chief executive Nathan Myhrvold and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, who wrote the award-winning film "The Social Network," based on the founding of Facebook, and who will pen a script adapting Walter Isaacson's authorized biography of Apple's co-founder Steve Jobs as a Hollywood film.

Tomorrow afternoon, Disney-Pixar president Dr. Ed Catmull and Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison will present "The Lessons of Steve Jobs."

Thursday, the conference will continue with presentations by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Federal Trade Commission chairman Jon Leibowitz, as well as Stanford University president John Hennessy, Microsoft's Skype Division president Tony Bates, and Google senior vice presidents Sundar Pichai (who heads up Chrome and Apps) and Susan Wojciski (Advertising).

Visit AppleInsider's D10 archive for ongoing coverage of the conference.