Mobile elite descend on Atlanta for GSM Conference
The last two days at the Omni Hotel in Downtown brought the who’s who of the wireless world to Atlanta. And, by who’s who, I mean a serious gathering of real global players at a conference that combined both big names and depth to an agenda.
Hosted by the GSM Association, this conference was the first of it’s kind in the America’s. The other two events organized by this group are in Barcelona and Mcau. The agenda included a plethora of executives from the likes of Yahoo!, MSFT, etc., to leading VC’s, to innovative start-ups (most having raised close to $100m or more in funding) and the largest global carriers on the planet.
These two days alone highlight the volume of activity in the mobile space and where the industry players see things moving. All this, in addition to some specific opportunities that lay ahead.
It’s a great thing for Atlanta to have this event in addition to having the GSMA’s US HQ right in our backyard.
Much of the time was spent with a number of fast pitch presentations. I was most impressed with ChaCha (although not convinced of their scalability), MMCast, and Modu.
Of the panels, The Social Networking and Advertising panel was dominated by talk of advertising, with social networking put on the back burner.
I think most interestingly was seeing how utility applications were driving the most growth in emerging markets. While 1000 different applications are combating to entertain the eyballs of the 1st world, a couple apps are changing lives in the 3rd world.