MWC 2017 Mission Accomplished
March 2017: Dashboard Limited, headquartered in Exeter in Devon, took a team of 7 to Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, the world’s leading annual communications event which now attracts well over 100,000 visitors annually (108,000 in 2017) from 208 countries and is a ‘must do’ attend for the leading tech players and influencers.
Originally conceived as the annual showcase for the cellular industry, with communications having become the glue that binds the connected world, technology has now become indistinguishable from the wider tech world as the mechanism of connectivity for everything.
Dashboard were delighted to have received exemplary support from the Department of International Trade (DIT) who carefully selected a group of exciting early stage companies to showcase at MWC as part of the 2,300 companies who exhibited at the event this year.
There were many examples of drone and virtual reality innovations on show, together with a huge variety of apps, network infrastructure components and handsets. Material science was on show in the form of advanced screen protection and liquid repellant solutions for the protection of electronics.
One of the major themes of this year’s MWC was, of course, the Internet of Things (IoT). The connectivity requirement for IoT was, of course, very much in evidence with significant stands for the LoRa Alliance and Sigfox, however the talk of the show centred around NBIoT (Narrow Band IoT) a new cellular standard pioneered by Vodafone and Huawei in just 18 months which is proving to be a very attractive solution for device connectivity.
Dashboard, as a company providing end-to-end industrial IoT was there in force to take a variety of meetings ranging from technical partnership engagement to commercial and investment. MWC, held in Barcelona every year, has become a huge draw and a convenient place for meetings to take place between people and companies from around the world. Many of the meetings that take place are arranged in advance and, as an exhibitor at the event, the Dashboard team not only arranged meetings directly but also received a considerable number of meeting requests at the show.
The team which comprised of Piers Corfield (CEO) Pete Stirling (CPO) Gordon Adgey (NED) Andy Philp (Programme Manager) Steve Webber (Senior Solutions Architect) Dana Parking (Account Manager) and Val Vodden (Head of Administration) were able to take a wide variety of meetings in addition to researching many of the latest technology innovations on show.
One or two of the pivotal meetings included a pre-planned meeting with a major Oil & Gas operator facilitated by one of the leading global networks, together with two investment presentations together with technical and channel partnership engagement discussions.
There is an enormous amount of follow-up to be concluded, however this year’s attendance has already been judged a huge success for the company and, whilst hectic to say the least due to the sheer scale of the event (held in no less than 11 exhibition halls) will undoubtedly be an event in our diary for 2018.
