Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is one of the largest trade shows dedicated to mobile products, applications and services, with over 85,000 attendees over four days. IBM has had a presence there for several years now, and in a sign of the growing importance of mobile our president and CEO, Ginni Rometty, gave the hotly anticipated keynote speech at the event on Wednesday, to give IBM’s perspective on the industry.
I was fortunate enough to represent IBM at our booth this year, meeting with clients and show attendees to tell them about and demo our IBM MobileFirst strategy. As a first timer at the event I was unprepared for the sheer scale of it all. There are ten halls, two geographic locations with nearly 1,700 exhibitors—and it is impossible to cover it all.
Here’s a diary of my average day at the event. It was quite a whirlwind—hard work yet enjoyable and rewarding at the same time.
8:00 a.m. Even though the conference center doesn’t officially open until 9:00, I get an early start to make sure things are set up at the IBM booth. We check that our suite of tablets and phones are charged and set up with the relevant demo apps, and we refamiliarize ourselves with the supporting slides and videos that we’ve set up on the large touchscreen plasmas.
8:30 a.m. The IBM booth is already a hive of activity as conference goers arrive early and eager to hear and see the work we’ve been doing with IBM Watson, cloud, MobileFirst, Smarter Cities and so on.
10:15 a.m. A rumor spreads that WhatsApp is going to launch voice services, and some of us get time to check our Twitter feeds for confirmation and further details.
10:30 a.m. After a nonstop morning, a colleague covers my station on the booth and there’s an opportunity for me to explore the rest of the halls. Samsung announced their hotly anticipated Galaxy S5, as well as their new Gear Fit wearable fitness tracker. The stand is set up for us to try these out, and I’m impressed the curved screen and buttery smooth Tizen-based operating system it uses. Within 15 seconds it reports my heart rate at a steady 69 beats per minute. There’s no time to hang around as I continue on to visit Sony, Nokia, Ubuntu Phone, Firefox OS and Yotaphone.
12:00 p.m. Knowing it’ll be another busy afternoon, I make use of the near field communication (NFC) based, PayPal-powered Mobile World Congress app to pay for some food at one of the kiosks and beat the queues of people making the traditional card and cash-based payments.
12:30 p.m. I go back to start my shift at the IBM stand, and there are scheduled client tours. As host I take them from station to station at our stand, depending on what they’re more interested in. Some have focused agendas; some are after more general information. Some have detailed technical questions on the workings and capabilities of our products, and having led technical teams to deliver Worklight applications I’m well equipped to answer their queries.
1:30 p.m. Ginny Rometty, who has been in senior client meetings all morning at the IBM booth meeting rooms, comes out to speak with some of the IBM staff and gets an opportunity to see some of the work we’ve been demoing at the conference. It is a swift visit, and she heads back to further client meetings before her highly anticipated keynote later this evening.
2:30 p.m. I have another break from IBM booth, and it feels like time to check out some of the more niche players. With 1,700 exhibitors it is hard to know where to head. I make a quick check of Twitter, and there are several tweets from IBMers about HZO’s stand, displaying their nano-coating technology. I dash over to see a fully functioning Raspberry Pi immersed in a full fish tank, as well as a wide array of waterproofed phones and tablets. They had no bulky cases; this was all through an invisible, super thin coating. This is surely something that will become commonplace in the future.
3:00 p.m. The IBM MWC staff WhatsApp group has been awash with messages all morning. Another “word of mouth” recommendation is the Fujitsu stand, where they are displaying their new haptic feedback touchscreen technology. They have a demo tablet set up with an on-screen guitar, and I could feel every strum of the strings on my fingers. This was seriously impressive stuff, and the screen was barely any thicker than my iPad at home.
4:30 p.m. I go back to the IBM stand for the final shift of the day. There’s no time to sit, as the booth is busier than ever.
5:58 p.m. The lucky few of us who are able to get time off to see Ginny’s keynote run to hall 4. There’s a buzz of anticipation as the crowd of journalists and attendees are waiting for her to come on stage. Our illustrious leader delivers her forward-thinking view on where we believe the industry is headed. “Data is the world’s next natural resource,” is just one of the quotes, and we hear about everything from innovation that will come out of the developing world through to Watson in the cloud and cognitive computing.
To see a replay head to http://www.mobileworldlive.com/mwl-tv-keynote-ibm.
After a nonstop four days it is back to the day job, working with our clients to implement and deliver innovative technology solutions to their business problems. After an eye-opening few days in Barcelona, I’m already looking forward to next year’s event.
Did you get a chance to attend MWC? Who were your favorite exhibitors, and what did you see that really opened your mind to a glimpse of the future?
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