In a world of conferences…

It would be hard to summarize all the conferences we’ve attend but I’ll try to do my best and give you a brief inside look at the congress so you can have a better notion of what we got to experience.

The first conference I attended was one called: The Connected Consumer. It had three speakers: Ebay’s CEO and President, who talked avout the changes in the industry and how the ecommerce and retail could combine themselves. Then, BestBuy’s CEO went on to talk about his experience and stated that all devices should be connected, which would led to richer lives. Lastly, we listened to Interpublic’s CEO, Michael Roth,  who made his point about mobile advertising and said we should all introduce ourselves into the concept of mobile engagement.

My second conference was no other than Brett Taylor’s keynote about Facebook. Basically, the talk was focused on Open Graph and how this concept has and will continue enhancing the Facebook experience for everyone. Facebook wanted to become partners with many companies that could use this mechanism and wire accounts together.

Apps for all was a two-part pannel where the main topics where finacing apps and the developer ecosystem. Everything was pretty technical and the main idea that was that everyone should make an hybrid approach and try to give the users what they want, it doesn’t matter  if it’s HTML5 or native apps.

If you’re interested in the Future and Text & Voice messaging, What’sApp’s CEO made an appearance and confessed the app was not intended to be used as a messaging system but simply as an app for displaying your status during the day so people would no bother you when you were busy. Four other speakers followed Jan Koum and they all gave their opinions about the outlook of this particular topic and how everyone should be connected.

Evolution of App Developement was one of MWC’s key pannels. At&T’s Jon Summers spoke about the evolution of Apps, Cloud and APIs, focusing on AT&T engagement model and the three key areas: Cloud enablement, open networks and world class information. The second one was Scott Jenson from Frog, who made a controversial speech about native and web approach, stating that “Native Apps must die” and the three trends that dominated the environment: App glut, Size and cost reduction and Leverage other platforms. The two following companies featured were Service2media and AlJazeera, who was a client of them and talked about an app’s Lifecycle and Cross-platform experiences. The last one to go on stage was SK telecom, a Korean mobile service provider who made their speech about app ecosystems.

The longest queue was to see Eric Schmidt from Google. Everyone was expectant and he didn’t disappoint. Firstly, they showed us the new features of Google Chrome for Android: being able to navigate comfortably between tabs and using your mobile device to access to the computer’s web browser history with just a click. Then, Schmidt proceeded to give a lecture on the future of mobile connection, trying to reach countries with no access and the different types of consumers, from the Ultra-connected people to the communities with no connection at all. “Connect people with information and they will change the world”.

The Mobile Education project featured people with experience in the field. The first one was n experienced young boy who had created an innovative initiative in favor of digital learning and the use of mobile devices in class. We also heard a woman from Telefonica Learning Services who explained their success and their teaching mechanism. There’s quite a lot of information about the project and it actually makes some good points.

The last conference I attended was one that featured people from the music business and was titled: The future of mobile music. A music manager,  a music company economist and Terra Latinoamerica’s CEO let all the attendees know about their views on the music business. People are nowadays more invested in music, although they don’t want to pay for a physical album.

Mobile Awards might not be as glamorous as the Academy Awards but we enjoyed them as if they were. GSMA Global Mobile Awards were extremely enjoyable thanks to the presenter and his songs featuring Talking Tom Cat and a love letter to an old mobile phone. Samsung was one of the main winners (Peter Warrior managed to list all the winners on Twitter when they were announced) and fun fact: Apple was not there to receive its Tablet award. On the other hand, the Gaming Awards’ ceremony lasted all day and we were sad to know only a few of the winners were actually Android games. They need more recognition!

And that is all, AndroidZoomers, we hope you’ve enjoyed reading about MWC12 and you’ve come to understand a little bit more what it is about and the type of lectures that are usually given.

A.G