Last week we repeated our experience as exhibitors at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, the main event of the year not just for TAPTAP but for many of the other businesses that were also there. If you’ve never been, the event is of a size unlike almost any other, and just attending MWC and surviving a Barcelona brought to a standstill as a result is an achievement in itself. Booking a hotel close enough to let you walk to the Fira is now mission impossible, if that’s your intention for 2015, which means taking a taxi and everything that that entails. Finding a cab early in the morning is a complicated business, if not a downright challenge. And unless you’re called Mark Zuckerberg, you’ll have to queue up for everything: being issued your accreditation, food (if you can call what they serve in there food) and gaining entry to one of the featured conferences.
Despite all these difficulties, taking part in the Mobile World Congress is quite an experience. More than eighty thousand people from every nationality you can imagine (I don’t know what the percentage of Asians is, but it’s very high) move around as they visit the eight pavilions that make up the event. So much walking is involved that the organization was giving out prizes to visitors who walked the furthest, using a smart bracelet with a pedometer to gauge distances. Hall 8.1 is traditionally one of the most visited pavilions, due to the advertising world’s interest in the world of smartphones. This is where all the major mobile advertising companies can be found, and TAPTAP wasn’t going to miss out on its second year in a row at the event. There was a constant flow of visitors and the space we used was busy from start to finish, we may well need a bigger stand next year. Here are a few photos to sum up how the MWC went for TAPTAP, we made it through, and in some style.
