Thanks to Startacus, I won a gold pass to this years Apps World. This ticket gave me access to everything! All talks, panel sessions, workshops, exhibition and even the Appster Awards and after party!
I was really excited to attend, what was essentially, my first big business conference/exhibition (whatever you want to call it).
I had a fantastic two days down in London and was certainly sad for it to end. However, not all aspects lived up to expectations.
The Good
The talks and panel sessions.
Turning up on the first day to see Jason Bradbury talk about wearable tech and then interview google glass inventor Babak Parvis is a pretty good start!!
Over the course of the two days, this was followed up with panel sessions on topics including:
- Effectively driving acquisition, retention and conversation
- The state of mobile enterprise
- Wearables and the mobile marketing landscape
- Using location based technologies to compliment the UX
- DevOps – The Next Opportunity
(And many more!)
Mixed in were guest speakers including:
- David Shing
- Tom Teichman
Some of these speakers were open for everyone, others were for paying delegates only.
It was these speakers and panel sessions that made my trip worth while. Some talks were insightful, others full of knowledge and some just funny!
The Bad
The exhibition.
Don’t get me wrong, some were great! Generally the more establish companies had the better stands.
My issue –Â a lot were very similar!!
I counted lots of ‘we can get your app built for cheap’ stands, soon followed by a ‘we can help you analyse the data coming from your app’ stand. They were small, similar and sometimes just boring.
I walked around wanting to see exciting technology being applied to apps. Apps that were attempting to change how we worked or played. Instead I got the same sales pitch over and over.
Overall
Would I go back?
Yes, definitely, if I have access to the talks! I learnt a lot and had a great time. So perhaps I’ll just have to try and win a ticket again next year!!