CTIA Super Mobility Week Launches to Success in Las Vegas
September 10, 2014
Connectivity was supercharged at the CTIA Super Mobility Week, a trade show and conference for all things wireless that took place Sept. 9-11 at the Sands Expo & Convention Center.
The inaugural Week brought together CTIA’s consumer and enterprise-focused events that used to run in the spring and fall, as well as 4G World, IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin (via online portal) and Competitive Carriers' Association annual conference, which ran at the Cosmopolitan hotel and shared badges with CTIA.
“We are a very dynamic industry. We have to start from scratch every year,” said Robert Mesirow, vice president and show director for CTIA. “The mantra for this year’s show has been Ctrl + Alt + Delete.”
The reload mode paid off with 20 percent higher square footage, about 1,100 exhibitors and approximately 40,000 attendees.
Commenting on the thought process behind creating this new event, Mesirow said, “What we really wanted to do was to convene the new wireless ecosystem. As a result, every metric is up year over year.”
As if innovation on the floor and the new product launched from Apple streamed into the keynote weren’t enough, the show also positioned itself on the cutting edge of wireless. With industry partners, it created a “heat map” of the floor and began to tap into the potential of indoor mobile engagement technology.
Mexia Interactive installed more than 125 sensors around the floor. Supporting Apple’s iBeacon and Android devices through an open-BLE antenna, the platform allowed CTIA to instantly monitor and analyze locations of mobile devices on-site in real-time, show where attendees are lingering on the Big Data Wall.
But what’s even more fascinating is that at next year’s show, the technology will allow to deliver contextual proximity messages to attendees who’ve downloaded the official show app and opted-in to receive notification. Attendees also have a choice to opt out.
“You’ll walk into the Samsung, and it will ask you questions about what you’d like to see and offer to schedule a meeting and send information to your phone,” Mesirow said. “It makes it a lot more efficient for exhibitors as it automatically does their lead generation and follow-up.”
Another new aspect of mobile engagement is the SocialRadar component of the app that gives real time information about the people around. It also alerts the user when one of their connections appears nearby.
“I can be walking in New York next month and it will ping me that one of my CTIA connections is within a mile and ask if I’d like to connect,” Mesirow said.
Noting how hard it is to create a 365 community around a show, he said, “Maybe this is it.”
On the floor, much excitement was around the cars connected to the internet as well as wearables and mhealth solutions. The new format of the event seemed to work for both attendees and exhibitors. Exhibitor Seth Dare with Gadget Guard said, “We’ve had great traffic. We love this show.”
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