With 80,000 attendees, the February 24 to 27 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona is the largest mobile- industry event on the calendar. And not only do British Columbian companies and developers attend, but a Vancouver company organizes one of the liveliest events at the congress.
For the past seven years, Wireless Industry Partnership (WIP) has staged the WIP Jam, where developers brainstorm to create apps for big companies like Sony (NYE:SNE), Intel (NYE:INTC), Nokia (NYE:NOC) and Amazon (Nasdaq:AMZN). It’s called a jam because it brings sponsoring companies and developers together, but the real fun occurs at the event within the event: the hackathon.
The WIP hackathon starts with a “reverse pitch.” Instead of developers pitching their ideas to investors, the investing companies tell the room full of developers what kind of app they want, and then the various developer teams spend 24 or 48 hours trying to come up with something the companies can use.
According to Caroline Lewko, CEO of WIP, deals are struck every year at the jam, which has grown to 3,000 this year from 150 participants in 2008.
“This is a place to go to make deals,” said Lewko, whose company builds development communities.
While WIP organizes a dozen hackathons annually, Barcelona is the big one.
“If I didn’t go to this event, my company would have been dead years ago,” said Lewko.
Chris Hill, vice-president of marketing for Richmond-based Mobidia, also circles the Mobile World Congress on his calendar.
“This is a huge, huge, huge show for us,” said Hill.
Mobidia, which specializes in mobile and wireless data, will send a four-member team to Barcelona.
“We use it as a way to have business development meetings. In one week, we can do the equivalent of three months’ travel, meeting with people from Europe and Asia. Last year we sent a team of five people, and we had 70 meetings in four days.”
And?
“We had a couple of deals out of it,” said Hill, adding that Mobidia attends the event to increase business with existing customers, create revenue opportunities with new clients and meet with media to spread the word about the company.
Mobidia participates in the WIP Jam, less so for the hackathon element than to participate in sessions on business development and how to generate business from mobile apps.
“I see [the WIP Jam] as a way to network and learn,” said Hill. •
