On 6-7 November, 2013 we had the privilege to attend the Webit Congress – probably one of the biggest marketing, digital and tech events in Europe, with more than 8,200 attendees from 103 different countries. Every year, C-level executives, publishers, agencies, digital marketing specialist, industry professionals, developers and tech enthusiast gather at Webit from all other the world to share the latest digital trends, expose their brands, network and find new business opportunities.
In 5 years, Webit forum turned into an international hub for digital creativity, marketing and technology innovation, gathering entrepreneurs and leaders from America, Africa, Europe, Middle East and Asia. We’ve seen a lot of interesting stuff, and will share the experience we had during this congress.
Speakers
There were around 300 first class speakers conducting 6 major parallel events: Digital Marketing and Innovation Conference, Leaders of the Future Conference, Metrix & Big Data Conference, eCommerce Conference, Telco Summit, AppsWorld DevCamps, Webit Awards. Top representatives from IBM, Twitter, Facebook, Acer, Nokia, TechCrunch, SoundCloud, Skype, PayPal, Yandex, BBC, Orange digital, Madvertise, Gemius, comScore and more, shared the latest digital trends and revealed interesting case studies. A live stream of all tweets where displayed on all screens in all presentation areas (#webit was the official hashtag of the event).
@TeslaThemes @TomKBowman @bnb @optimizeyourweb: Thanks for coming. I enjoyed the panel!
— Ali Jafari (@jafari) November 9, 2013
A lot of topics were covered, big names shared their expertise in digital advertising, publishing, entrepreneurship, analytics, big data, ecommerce and much more. The most frequently used terms where #mobile, #social media, #big data, #cross channels, #content, #digital marketing and more. Here is a little keyword cloud showing the most discussed subjects:
Probably the most interesting presentations were conducted by Ali Jafari from Twitter and Ben Barokas from Google. We also had the chance to exchange a few words with them. Presentations are available for download in attendees’ accounts on Webit site.
Networking
We met a lot of web, tech and digital marketing enthusiasts and established some great partnerships. Vuksan Rajkovic from Domain.me was the first who exposed valuable data about their users (AKA millennials – tech superior users who are more likely to follow a brand) and realized the strong connection between Domain.me clients and WordPress lovers. Domain.me was also the sponsor of StartUp Challenge competition.
We’ve also had a great conversation with our friends from Poland who run Oktawave. Dariusz Nawojczyk and his team took the 2nd place at Webit Startup Challenge with their cloud computing service (powered by Autoscaler – a smart mechanism that observes the demand and load of computing power and changes the parameters of the service up or down).
The guys from Boomads asked for our expertise in plugin and widget development and told us about their content marketing platform.
Paysera came with some new ideas and payment solutions. We are investigating all new opportunities, as we wish to offer a wide range of payment alternatives for our users. We’ll soon launch a new payment gateway that will offer our users the possibility to pay directly with their credit cards.
StartUp Challenge
Interesting projects were seen at StartUp Challenge event: more than 834 candidates applied and only 21 startups got into the semifinals. A wide variety of ideas and solutions were exposed: mobile wallets in Africa, optimized transport and logistics system, smart cloud computing solutions, interactive Facebook commerce platform and much more. The 1st place was taken by Intoino from Italy (Congrats guys!) – an application for smartphones and tablets that helps you bring some interactive ideas to life. They got 5,000 Euro and the opportunity to get additional funds, partnerships and clients.
Quotes
Lots of interesting statements that reflect the current digital and tech trends were revealed. We’ve comprised some interesting quotes from industry’s leading representatives:
“Multi-channel is the new norm” Brian Cheng, CTO for the Growth Markets Unit at IBM
“Data is the new oil” Chris Schaumann, Global VP, Digital Marketing and CRM at Nokia
“Customers need to have a voice” Roberto Mainardi, Head of CRM & Social media at Acer
“SEO is not dead, it’s tougher” Glen Conybeare, Chief Commercial Officer at Stickyeyes
“Adapt to mobile revolution” Stephanie Hospital, Executive Vice President at Orange Digital, Audience and Advertising Division
The bottom line
Webit 2013 was for sure one of the biggest events in Europe, supporting digital, marketing and technology effectivenes. It’s great to realize that our service is a part of this community and brings its products and innovation to the market. We’re doing our best to deliver high quality creative works and have some great products to reveal in the next few weeks. Stay in touch with TeslaThemes!
By: Igor Pisov
