LONDON, May 10, 2013 /PRNewswire/ --
The 21st Internet World took place last month at Earls Court 2 and has been hailed a resounding success by organisers UBM Live. The show comprised of six 'worlds' covering Digital Marketing, Cloud & Hosting, Social Media, Mobile, Content Management and eCommerce.
Organisers also launched The Big Data Show this year which ran alongside Internet World.
Event Manager Sarah Tanner said, "Internet World is unique within the technology event space in that it combines fantastic free-to-attend education alongside some of the most innovative exhibitors in the industry. This combination ensures that visitors to the show have all they need to discover new suppliers, keep abreast of industry trends and learn from some of the digital and tech landscape's leading voices; all under one roof."
The keynote theatre included a number of sessions which were full to capacity, these included talks from Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, VISA and Secret Escapes. These keynote presentations took place in addition to full seminar programmes in a further nine theatres, two of which were dedicated to Big Data.
"The launch of The Big Data Show has been very exciting," Sarah Tanner continues. "There is a real hunger within British business to further understand and make the most of the huge potential surrounding how to handle Big Data. The show served to answer some of those questions opening the event up to an entirely new selection of visitors as well as adding an extra dimension for existing Internet World attendees."
Also new for 2013 was the Internet of Things feature which allowed visitors to interact with objects which are connected to the internet. Inventors, DoES Liverpool showcased their inventions including the Bubblino,a Twitter activated bubble machine that is linked to a specific hashtag; the WhereDial, inspired by the clock owned by the Weasley family in Harry Potter which retrieves a person's location from FourSquare, Google Latitude and a variety of other services and rotates the dial to show where a particular person is; and the Goodnight Lamp, a family of connected lamps that lets you communicate the act of coming home to your loved ones, remotely.
Sarah Tanner said, "The Internet of Things feature was incredibly well received and really goes to show the strength of face-to-face events for business. Our visitors want to be inspired and to interact with technologies of the future. We will be working hard to ensure that this element of interactivity and futurism is continued for the 2014 event."
Exhibitor feedback was very strong with 72% re-booking onsite for the 2014 show. Gary Smith, Vice President of Your Amigo, said: "We've had a great show, speaking to this calibre of visitors is very important to us because we come to this show to have interaction with them and make sales. There's been a large variety of high profile companies here at the show. Our presentations have been received very well and attracted the attention of these big companies, so overall a fantastic result and the organisers are doing a great job of running the show!" while Matt Taylor, General Manager at Funnelback, said: "The lead quality has been much better than other events we've done. The quality of attendees has been very high, with lots of relevant visitors. The show has exceeded our expectations and we've already re-booked for 2014!"
Visitor feedback was also overwhelmingly positive:
Paul Comyn, Commerical Director at Pitchcom, said: "Internet World is the ideal place to find new suppliers and potential business partners. There are some excellent talks on mobile and social media. Big Data is important aspect to our business and a great addition to the show."
Jason Andrews, Social Media Manager at Dog Digital, said: "Excellent keynote talks! I discovered new software from exhibitors and will definitely be returning next year. Good to get face-to-face interaction with new suppliers too."
Oliver Arscott, Conference Manager at Terrapinn, said: "Internet World is an evolving event, especially with the addition of Big Data. Here you can meet new companies and see the latest technologies and solutions. Very interesting Big Data section too, which is great!"
Conversations on social media were rife throughout the campaign with more than 5,000 tweets about the event during the 3 days it was open. These tweets combined had a reach of almost 1,800,000. Organisers also ran a Twitter chat with keynote speaker, the BBC's Kate Russell, in the week prior to the event. This Q&A lasted one hour and included 242 tweets between the Internet World community and Kate Russell. Exhibitor Oakley Mobile also designed an augmented reality piece to include in the pre-show badge mailer. This featured a teaser recording about Kate Russell's keynote speech.
Taking place in the Cloud & Hosting Theatre on Tuesday 23rd April, First Tuesday (networking group for the UK's technology leaders) announced their most promising venture capitalist internet company. 10 finalists were chosen based on the robustness of their business model including degree of innovation, USP vs competitors, market size/company growth, technical execution and quality of the team. Three were chosen to present at the show itself with live judging taking place during the presentations. The panel of judges were Sanj Bhayro, Area VP, SMB UK and Emerging, Salesforce.com, Nigel White, Cloud Managed Services Executive, IBM and Paul Forster, Co-Founder, Indeed.com. The two runners up were Lazook and Codio with YPlan scooping the first place. YPlan is an app which allows you to see what's going on in your area and book tickets with just two clicks. The people's choice category was voted by visitors to the Internet World website. This poll received more than 60,000 votes with the eventual winner announced as Give as you Live, a site which allows you to donate to charity as you shop online.
Internet World and The Big Data Show will return to Earls Court 2 from April 29th - May 1st 2014. For further information please visit http://www.internetworld.co.uk.
About UBM Live (organiser of Internet World and The Big Data Show):
UBM Live connects people and creates opportunities for companies across five continents to develop new business, meet customers, launch new products, promote their brands and expand their markets. Through premiere brands such as MD&M, CPhI, IFSEC, TFM&A, Cruise Shipping Miami, the Concrete Show and many others, UBM Live exhibitions, conferences, awards programs, publications, websites and training and certification programs are an integral part of the marketing plans of companies across more than 20 industry sectors.
