Mobile 2.0 Europe Congress

I just came back from my amazing trip through the Middle East, stopping over at home for a few days, before going to France and Berlin afterwards. Beeing in Barcelona I took the chance to visit the Mobile 2.0 Europe Developer Conference, which took part yesterday, 17th of June, 2010. I wasn’t actually going to write about it, because I first wanted to write and share some of my travel experiences … but since it was a really great event, I feel kind of obliged to write at least a few lines about it and do some publicity …

Except for a few little inconveniences the congress was a great event. Almost all presentations I´ve visited – and it were a lot – were very interesting and informative. I got a lot of useful information about new applications and emerging technologies, various kinds of possibilities to make money in the mobile market, comparisons between the wide range of App Stores that have been spreading during the last two years, and much more. I’m not going to give a summary of any of them, for this would exceed by far the few lines I want to write. Anyways, you can download the complete program and get more information on the Mobile 2.0 Europe Congress homepage:

http://mobile20.eu/program/

I basicly attended all the presentations on the BizTrack, which unfortunately left me with no possibility to join any of the workshops of the DevTrack, which were held in parallel. The presentations were done by a balanced mixture of big and well known companies and new small companies and startups.

The session I personally enjoyed most, was clearly the one presented by Frederik Ademar from TAT, “Mobile UI Trends and Innovation”. Besides showing which design mobiles might have in the future, always comparing to the ever copied iPhone design, he showed some amazingly interesting future visions and prototypes of augmented reality applications. Don’t miss to check out some of the companies videos on YouTube. Just search for TAT.

The one which gave me the best ideas on how to start up my own projects and get revenue from it, was the presentation by Christine Perey, “Generating Revenues with Mobile Augmented Reality”.

Inbetween the various sessions, we were provided with coffee, tapas, lunch and had some time and a opportunity to meet and know other participants, ask questions to the presenters and make new contacts.

The last session of the day was the so called AppCircus, where companies got the oportunity to present one of their products in only three minutes time. The best idea was rewarded and there were many good ones! Some big companies took the chance to present and promote their App Stores.

Later in the evening, at the “Networking Cocktail”, the participants again had the oportunity to make contacts and talk about the conference, while having a glass of “cava” or a beer and some more tapas.

The few things I didn’t like so much or which I think should be done better:

First of all, the WIFI connection was pretty slow and didn’t permit all participants to connect, which in my opinion, is big issue at an event like this. Even one of the presenters couldn’t connect and had to improvise on his live presentation using 3G. This has to be much better next time!

Second the program was so packed with interesting presentations and workshops that took part in five different rooms, that it was impossible to attend many of them. It would be a good idea to extend the conference to two days and that way giving the participants the oportunity to attend more sessions.

As already said in the beginning, all in all it was a really great event! The location, the university “Pompeu Fabra”, was perfect, I learned a lot of new stuff, got a lot of inspiration and new ideas and made some interesting contacts. I can only recommend to anyone interested in the mobile market to attend the next congress. I’ll be there for sure!

OK, off to France now …