Mobile World Congress 2013

This past week the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology sent my start-up team, Flowbit, to represent Cal at the University Mobile Challenge at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  Wow, this was an experience of a lifetime.  It was held at a brand new convention center with 9 large halls all filled will booths of mobile tech companies.  They had many seminars with speaker panels and series of keynote speakers.  Unfortunately my badge clearance did not allow me to attend any of the keynote speakers, but I definitely took advantage of the seminars.  Some of the seminars were relevant to my start-up and some were just for fun.  They ranges from "Taking Mobile Agriculture Innovation to Market" to "Social Entertainment: Paradigm Shifts and the Future of Converged Entertainment".  Two elements of mobile that were being emphasized at the conference by the GSMA (the company that threw the event) were the push for new mobile advertising and NFC.  NFC was everywhere, but only because GSMA was pushing it hard.  Many of the companies that had booths and engineers that I spoke with did not care too much for NFC and thought it was humorous that the GSMA was pushing it that hard.  What I found very interesting was many of the new ways companies are approaching mobile advertising.  They are taking more of an opt in or active approach where consumers can opt in for push notification ads or shazaam like features to find more about advertisements.  I find this very interesting because I find ads annoying and there is no way Im going to see an ad on TV or on my phone and think to myself "Wait a second, I need to find out more about this entertainment interruption and fast".  I'm not going to lie, a lot of the companies were data analytics and software oriented and were way over my head as a non engineer attendee, but everyone was extremely friendly and was happy to explain as best they could their product or company to me so I could better understand.  Aside from tech companies showcasing their new product lines, The Internet of Things had a large presence a well at the congress.  This was very relevant to Flowbit as we are creating hardware that is controlled wirelessly.  Some of the tech that was displayed in this field was a prescription bottle that has a cap you click to let your pharmacist know you need a refill (AT&T) and a chip that can be installed in pretty much anything (they displayed a coffee pot) to control with your phone (Qualcomm).  Just to be clear no social media companies were in attendance and of course Apple was not there either.  Sorry for the late post, it has been one hectic week but if you would like to know more about the congress just let me know and I would be happy to talk about it.