For the first time of startupolic short existence, I’ve decided to invite Miguel Molina, CEO of MySollars (on which I’ve blogged here some time ago), to share his experience attending ICT Spring 2012 in Luxembourg (I was unfortunately not able to attend).
If you were going to ask me about the profile of people that attended the ICT Spring Event in Luxembourg, I would not hesitate with the answer, clearly, a little bit of everything! According to the official numbers, over 3’000 people attended and such a volume clearly gave the event the bandwidth to have salt and pepper, and a few other spices.
We had startups, medium IT companies and large Telco companies on one side, all of us fighting for the consideration of attendants that were listening to presentations and discussion panels from ICT related experts, such as Randi Zuckerberg, former CMO of Facebook and Hiroshi Mikitani head of Rakuten, the largest e-commerce network in Japan.
There were various conferences, from very entertaining such as the one from Brian Wong, CEO of kiip.me, which style is very direct and refreshing, or the one of Teemu Huuhtanen, Head of investments for Rovio (editor of Angry Birds), now thinking about using the success of their characters to create theme parks.
Here are my take-away from this conference that I’d like to share with you:
Emotional High
- Brands want to be where customers are engaged and in an emotional high, for instance whenever they have just completed a level on a game.
- Social media is transforming Brand Loyalty based on emotions.
Emerging countries
- China will be dominating the gaming industry and there’s no doubt about it. In other words all major gaming companies are already looking to have local operations there.
- According to Anis Uzzaman (CEO of Fenox Venture), startups should be looking at BRIC markets, as the opportunities are enormous.
Mobile First
- The number of startups that not even consider having a web-based model is significantly increasing.
- Mobile penetration is higher than PC penetration in emerging countries; take for example Libya where mobile penetration is over 140%.
People as curators
People is starting to filter and concentrate the best from the web for specific topics, either recipes or wedding invitations.
Gamification of everything
Using gaming mechanisms to engage users is becoming the standard, from weighting scales that share your weight through twitter, to the use of badges whenever users execute specific actions.
To conclude, a big high-five to Luxembourg, for its evident effort and investment to attract startups and ICT companies! HUB Luxembourg was inaugurated during the event and they were really pushing the question: “would you be willing to relocate to Luxembourg?” The question goes to you now… would you?
You can find some pictures of the event here.
A big thanks to Miguel for his experience sharing… And maybe you can consider attending the event next year to promote your startup?
