Last week more than 85,000 people attended the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, that’s big growth from 2013, when 72,000 attended the event. Although Mobile World Congress doesn’t have a big focus on mobile games, we took a couple of days to visit the exhibition and lingering around checking the exhibition halls. It was nice to see on first hand all the new phones, tablets and mobile gadgets that will arrive over the coming months.
On Thursday we attended and participated at Digital 4C. It was the first edition of this event, created with the purpose of promoting and discussing the role of Catalan artists and companies in the creation of digital content and their participation in the digital world. We first had the chance to listen to Enric Barba’s talk “Innovation as a model/strategy for survival. The professionalization of innovation” It was really interesting to listen to Enric’s thoughts as a manager of a successful company, he emphasized the importance of innovation as a key factor for business survival, not only in I+D, but also in marketing, design, technology and distribution.
After the talk, we moved upstairs, where Samuel, one of our Bees, participated in the panel group “New professions arising from technological change”. The panel was composed by a group of professionals from the digital world (games designers, producers, bloggers and a video game soundtrack composer amongst others). They discussed about how they arrived in their current positions and key tips on how to replicate this. They all agreed how these days self-training, interdisciplinary knowledge and the flexibility and adaptability to continuous changes in the digital world are the key to success in the new digital professions that have emerged over the last few years. It was a fun panel.
Although we only had the chance to attend one day, Digital 4C was a very nice event, held in the beautiful Arts Santa Mònica, which we hope it will be for many years to come. Below are some of the pictures we took of the event, enjoy!
Mañana estaremos en el DIGITAL4C aprendiendo mucho (y de los mejores) acerca de transmedia, marketing sensorial, innovación. Debates, y mucho co-working del cual esperamos forjar algunas alianzas profesionales. Si estáis por ahí, preguntad por "los de RENO".
If you are involved in or have a strong interest in the mobile industry, next week Barcelona is definitely the place to be!
From the 24th to the 27th of February, Barcelona will hold the GSMA Mobile World Congress. Celebrated since 2009, the GSMA Mobile World Congress is a combination of the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a conference featuring prominent executives representing mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content owners from across the world.
This year the exhibition will gather more than 1,700 exhibitors, divided across eight halls that occupy 94,000 square metres (did we mention it’s kind of a big deal?). If your focus is on mobile games, we recommend that you don’t miss the App Planet Exhibition (Hall 8.1).
If unfortunately you don’t have enough money to pay the 749€ to 4,999€ for the GSMA Mobile World Congress pass, don’t worry!! There will be many other things going on that week in Barcelona for a broad range of budgets.
On the 27th and 28th of February the Arts Santa Mònica Centre will hold the Digital4C event. Created by the Catalan Ministry of Culture, this first edition of Digital4C has been created with the intention of becoming a tool to facilitate the coming together of technology and culture. The 4C stands for Catalan Creative Cultural Content. Samuel, one of our Game Designers, will be representing Bee Square Games with his participation in the panel New Occupations thank to the technological changes (Thursday 27th of February, 12-14h. at Espai Balcó), don’t miss it!
After all that if you still want to experience more things in this wonderful city then be sure not to miss the Pocket Gamer's Mobile Mixer, on Monday 24th; their events are always a great opportunity for networking and hanging out with other professionals involved in the mobile games industry. The people from Inmobi also have organized a party for Wednesday 26th. We’ve also heard through the grapevine that guys from Burger Developer Central will have one of his Burger Meetings in the city, the place and date is to be confirmed yet.
If you want to stay up to date with another events that may happen during next week in Barcelona, stay tuned into our twitter account, we will try to inform you of all the events that will be interesting to attend! If you are coming to Barcelona, have a nice flight and we hope to see you around :-)