MobileBeat 2013 — VentureBeat’s 6th annual flagship conference on the future of mobile — is convening the brightest minds and biggest names in the industry to explore this year’s overarching theme: Building a Winning Mobile Experience.
Mobile has become so important, it’s everything. Last year, mobile design emerged as a key differentiator for mobile sites. An awesome UI/UX was table stakes for surviving and thriving.
However, in 2013 and beyond, consumers are integrating phones and tablets into their lives ever more deeply. This heralds a “second inning” of the mobile revolution: The mobile experience has moved beyond just design fads. It is also integrating technology and commerce in even deeper ways than before.
MobileBeat 2013 is gathering the latest crop of companies who are looking beyond design to implement a fully integrated approach. This results in apps that are at once quick, beautiful and easy to use, but also cater to business models and functions.
Balancing all of these things enable your customers — from end-users to SMB and enterprise — to have a positive experiential connection with your company and brand. Hear directly from leaders about the winning methodologies they’re implementing to avoid being left behind.
Sub-Themes:
1. Brands and Agencies – Mobile Advertising Armageddon or Heaven
Your company can’t be caught flat-footed and miss the impending multi-billion dollar brand spend. Heavyweights like Lucas Entertainment and Oreo demonstrated a keen mobile dominance in 2012. Hear who will master the shift from one-time campaigns to long term customer engagement in 2013 and beyond.
2. IT: Consumerization of the Enterprise
No longer can enterprise companies rely on phrases like “enterprise grade” “5-9’s” and “Security” to excuse a poor blending of design and technology. You need security, scalability, rock-solid reliability alongside intuitive human design. We will explore how you can blend all these concepts to build killer enterprise products.
3. Infrastructure/Cloud: Scale is Beautiful, Implementation is Key
Elegant networks and cloud systems must be set up to follow strong design ethics. They need to enhance, and not detract from the end-user experience. We will explore principles to help you avoid inevitable system failure, risky slowdowns and end-user backlash.
4. Mobile Money – More Money, More Problems
Banks, businesses, and Bitcoin operators are finally pushing mobility to its penultimate monetary purpose. How do traditional and untraditional institutions maintain or gain relevance with today’s always-connected, incredibly demanding, end-users and enterprises. Learn what the top players are betting on in the next few years, and see how it can affect your business.
5. Commerce: Mobile Experience Determines whether you Live or Die
For big retailers, neglecting an integrated strategy for mobile encourages “showrooming,” and it produces big wins for fashion-forward ecommerce startups. Whether you’re an online or offline retailer, you need to learn to smooth out friction, collect meaningful data, and empower sales as well as customers loyalty. Mobile devices will not replace stores just yet but it’s influencing what consumer expect: deals, service, and trust at the speed of LTE.
6. Wearables by Design: Welcome to the Post Smartphone Era
How will end-users communicate, consume content, and work in the next few years? Voice commands, hand gestures, and data-collecting wearable devices all contribute to weave a ubiquitous device-lite network hive around us.
7. Gaming: We’re not “Playing Around” anymore
These studios engage users by the tens of millions, dominate the top of the charts, and know how to get their ad spend back. Be it by catering to whales or balancing freemium to in-app contents sales. Gaming is ahead of the curve on mobile monetization; it sets the example by which all of mobile should follow.
8. Mobile development platforms/tools
Developing for mobile is hard. We live in a world of platforms, APIs, and tools that seek to reduce development cost. Build the best tools require that you be 100% focused on developers, 100% focused on business, and 100% dedicated to a disappearing act. Most tools fall short on all three… Don’t be left in the cold around what’s new or what’s next. Catch the advantage so that you can win too.
9. Digital Lifestyle: Curating Context in a Connected World
No matter the business you’re in, context is KING. If you are to remain cutting edge you need to know the Who, What, Where, When, and intent of your customers. Find out how to maintain that edge from these Captains of Context!
