WIPJam @ MWC 2011
February 17, 2011
Barcelona, Spain
WIPJam @ App Planet, MWC 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
9:45 am - 3:00 pm
ADC#1 App Planet (Hall 7), FIRA, Barcelona
2011 marks the 4th year that we will be jam'n @ MWC. Back where it all started. See agenda below for more information
9:00am – 9:45am Registration
9:45am – 10:00am Opening Remarks
10:00am – 11:20am Developer Stories of Adventure and Enlightenment
The best way to learn how things really get done in mobile development is to hear it from those who have been there, done that AND bought the t-shirt. Come listen to developers talk about their feats and triumphs. Learn from first-hand experience on getting your app to market.
The Format: It’s time to gather around the campfire and listen to 4 true dev stories. Each story will talk about different aspects of the developer industry, whether it is panhandling for financing or a horror story of porting. Then in interactive, bell ringing WIPJam style, the audience will have a chance to ask questions and learn how to achieve the same goals and avoid the same mistakes.
THE STORIES!
#1: The Guardian Anywhere: How a small seaside software company's skunkworks project took an international newspaper brand onto Android, and shifted a million copies in the process
The Story:
Future Platforms, a small mobile software company in Brighton, England, created an Android app called The Guardian Anywhere as a side project, utilizing the public APIs and RSS feeds from the newspaper of the same name. The app has been a huge success and delivered more than a million copies of the paper to users, and turned into a product for other publishers in its own right. Learn about how Future Platforms conceived and built the project and their experience with the Guardian's API and feeds -- and how they managed the relationship with the paper as their app grew in popularity. And, like all good stories, it might have a happy ending, too...
The Storyteller: Tom Hume, Managing Director, Future Platforms
Facilitators: Carlo Longino, WIP; John Wernecke, NAVTEQ
#2: The Secret Society of Pre-beta programs: How a small development company navigated the maze of pre-beta programs and felt like a guinea pig in the process
The Story:
theChanner created a social TV platform allowing users to enjoy and participate watching Internet television on a mobile phone, but it wasn’t an easy process to develop and launch this app. As Apps have become THE story of mobile computing over the last few years, the competition has intensified amongst the app stores to showcase the most and best apps. Many of the large companies are offering bounties for apps, in the forms of competitions and pre-beta programs. theChanner has tried them all. This story will give you the inside scoop on how the big companies scramble to launch their platforms and devices with developers along for the wild and crazy ride. Hang on!
The Storyteller: Nacho Sánchez, CTO, theChanner.com
The Facilitator: Caroline Lewko, WIP; James Pearce, Sencha
#3 From Cocoa to Mocha: The journey of cloud computing geeks to overcome the challenges of platform and technology choices
The Story: There are many approaches to building your app. Onavo, embarked on a journey to explore how the cloud and HTML5 web technologies compare to native application development. Onavo is now ready to launch a new application that although a web app, look, feels and behaves just like a native app. Join us to hear the travelogue of this journey, what they achieved and what was learned in the process.
The Storyteller: Guy Rosen, CEO, Onavo
The Facilitator: Thibaut Rouffineau, WIP; Andreas Jakl, Nokia
#4. When Giving Up Easy Money Is The Hard Choice -- Short-Term Sacrifices For Long-Term Gains
Startups are often forced to make choices between long-term goals and short-term gains. For Sweden's ExpertMaker, large companies with deep pockets have always been interested in its artificial-intelligence search technology and wanted to engage it for custom projects. While taking on this work would have made money, it would have required ExpertMaker to shift its entire core team away from working on its long-term goal of providing AI search tools for developers and made it totally dependent on consulting revenues. The company chose to stick with its long-term plan of building tools -- and it nearly killed the business in the process. But ExpertMaker is emerging from the startup revenue desert with its vision intact and the potential for greater long-term success on the horizon.
The Storyteller: Lars Hård, CEO and founder of ExpertMaker
The Facilitator: Caroline Lewko, WIP
11:30 am – 12:30 am Discussion Groups (5)
Session #1: 11:30am to 11:55am
Session #2: 11:55am to 12:20pm
Wrap Session: 12:20pm to 12:30pm
Its discussion group time and a lot of you know the drill. We have some burning topics this year as we look at porting to tablets, making web apps more compatible and more ways to market your app. It’s the time for you to ask questions and enlighten us with your experiences on what works and what doesn’t.
Format: The room is divided into circles of chairs. A discussion topic takes place in each circle, led by 2 discussion leaders. When time is up, attendees move to a new circle and topic of choice for a maximum of 2 sessions to attend. Learn from the wisdom of the group! We’ll wrap each topicand there will be a quick overview of all topics at the end of each session so you don’t miss a thing!
Topic #1 – HTML 5
With fragmentation beginning to wreak havoc on the mobile ecosystem and HTML5 offering an app-like UI and lots of good design potential, what are some of the ways to take advantage of this trend?
Discussion Leaders:
- Maximiliano Firtman, CEO at ITMaster & Author at O'Reilly Media
- James Pearce, Sr Director of Developer Relations at Sencha
- Ofir Leitner, Founder of Mobile Monday Tel Aviv
- Terence Eden, Product Director Developer Tools at WAC
Topic #2 – Cross Platforms
No developer can be an expert in all platforms. What defines a good platform? How do you choose? How do you get global reach? Do you have to choose, or are there enough tools available to solve this dilemma? Should you partner with just one device provider and one carrier? We’ll talk about how to get your application global and cross-platform through building the right partnerships and using the right development tools.
Discussion Leaders:
- Joe Monastiero, VP of Business Development, appMobi
- Riku Salminen, Technical Consultant, Nokia
- Antonio Osorio, Founder, Lacq
Topic #3 – Marketing Your App
You’ve got your App on an App store – now what? We’ll look at on-desk and off-deck strategies to help you influence and increase downloads; including presentation, ratings, recommendations, and other tricks.
Discussion Leaders:
- Martin Rugfelt, CMO, ExpertMaker
- Pia Vuohelainen, Partner Manager EMEA, Navteq
- Nour Khrais, Founder of Maysalward R&D
Topic #4 – Polishing your Android App
As of December 2010 there are 200 000 apps in the Android Market. In the last few months Google released their App Inventor. Long story short it is becoming easy for anybody to create an app and submit it. But how do you make a great app? One that is smooth? What are the finishing touches that are needed for the Android platform?
Discussion Leaders:
- Robert Virkus, CEO and Founder of Enough Software
- Joe Braidwood, CMO, SwiftKey advocate at TouchType
Topic #5 – Integrating Data from APIs and Social Media
The explosion in APIs and other public data sources has created a huge opportunity for developers to add new features and services to their apps. What are the best ways to use these tools to enhance your app? What are some of the better APIs out there? Learn about the best tools and how to integrate them into your projects.
Discussion Leaders:
- Alan Mamedi, CEO at True Software
- Jose Valles, Head of BlueVia
- Akash Agarwal, Business Development at Location Labs
Topic #6 – Making Money from Appstores
You are on the home stretch, your app in is the App Store, but now it’s time to make the big bucks. What is the best positioning for your app? Freemium? Ads? Subscription? These are choices that need to be made to ensure you are earning the most out of your app and this is the place to learn how to make that decision.
Discussion Leaders:
- Derrick Fountain, Product Manager at W3i
- Alexey Sazonov, Mobile Games Licensing and Marketing at HeroCraft
- Sandy Hammer, Marketing Director, Inneractive
12:30pm – 1:30pm Lunch, Interactive Demos, Sign up for Pitches
During lunch its time to sign-up for our Marketplace speed-pitches where you cram as much as you can into one minute. First-come, First-serve.
It’s also time to fill your belly with some food, show off your products to sponsors, and check out some interactive and cooperative demos (that will require you and your phone). Plus there are plenty of other interactive activities that you will want to try out and compete in too.
Organizer: Blinkendroid Project
Demo: Blinkendroid World Record, We need 100+ Android devices to beat the world record of largest number of mobile device interacting to create a giant screen...
Organizer: RNIB
Demo: Make your app visible, Tips and tricks to make your app accessible.
Organizer: ExpertMaker
Demo: Making knowledge searchable, what could you do with a powerful search engine in your app?
Organizer: NAVTEQ and Wikitude
Demo: Wikitude the award winning Augmented Reality Browser
Organizer: Augmented Planet
Demo: AR Lounge - Building Mobile AR Apps
Organizer: EchoEcho
Demo: Location Sharing Service - What would you do with it?
Organizer: Sencha
Demo: Create Awesome Web Apps in HTML5 with Sencha Touch
Organizer: Inneractive
Demo: Accelerate your mobile ad revenue with Inneractive
Organizer: Location labs
Demo: Build Mighty Location Services with Location Labs
Organizer: WIP
Demo: WIP photo booth - The end of the "I remember this great person I met at WIPJam but don't have his/her business card"
1:30pm – 2:00pm Tips and Tricks for Successful App Submission & App Store Survey Results
In partnership with Exicon.
Speed up the process of getting your app into more appstores (105 and counting!) We all know it is a pain to come up with 25-100-250-400 word description, 20 different screen shots, 8 videos and submit to a TSA pat-down just to submit your app (okay this may be a bit of hyperbole) But the fact is that these are some of the pains on getting your app out there. So come learn a few tips that will make this process an easier one.
Yes – we are going to re-run our App Store Contest. Place your bets on the most developer friendly appstore that will get your app up the fastest. Sometime before MWC, we will place a apps in a number of stores and measure results in terms of ease of use of app store, time to placement and results.
Let us know if you are interested in helping out!
2:00pm – 3:00pm WIP Marketplace - Pitches and Networking for Fun and Profit
Looking for a blackberry developer who also knows objective C? Well such a thing exists and this is the place you are going to find the person you need. Or maybe it’s you – so let everyone know. Plus those suits are here, so throw yourself into the ring and pitch yourself, your company, your idea, needs, wants, and rants allowed too.
That will be it for WIPJam @ App Planet 2011, our 4th Jam at MWC!
Registration for WIPJam is full. Please do place your name on our wait list. You will receive an update email in early February regarding your status.
Click here for: Wait list registration.
ALSO! don’t forget to sign-up for our Carnival of Nations Developer Party which takes place the night before on Wednesday, February 16, 2011. More party information and registration.
Coming soon: WIP’s Annual Developer’s Survival Guide to MWC
Tips and tricks to survive the week PLUS our picks of booths to see and activities to attend so you don’t waste your time, don’t carry around too much, and don’t get sore feet! Guide will be available in a pdf, mobile app, and paper version on site.
