ESEI Students At Mobile World Congress!

Last week, Barcelona was welcoming the top-tech entrepreneurs and companies in the world such as Microsoft, Samsung, Amazon, Google, etc. for the annual Mobile World Congress, the world’s biggest and most influential mobile event and its younger brother 4YFN, the mobile world’s top Start-Ups event.

This year we gave our Masters students in ICT and Start-Ups the opportunity to attend both these events, a big opportunity for those future entrepreneurs to meet the big players in the market and rub shoulders with entrepreneurs from all around the world.

Here’s their feedback on this intensive but rewarding week in Barcelona:

“Thanks to ESEI International Business School, we were chosen as Masters in ICT and Start-Ups to receive a ticket to attend the Event of the year in Barcelona. I was one of the lucky guys who went to 4YFN and the Mobile World Congress to have a look at the latest trends and most innovative technology that will hit the the market this season.

Beside all the small start ups that presented their business solutions and ideas at 4YFN, the big players showed us what we can expect in the future at the MWC16.

Most impressive at the 4YFN Event for me, were the stories of these young entrepreneurs. Most of them reported the same, “The beginning is hard, very hard!”. All of them shared the same attitude and enthusiasm to their product. I am very curious about which of them will still be on the market in 4 years from now and make the jump to the World Mobile Congress one day.

The MWC16 is a different league. The big players like Samsung, Nokia, Huawei and more challenge themselves with enormous exhibition stands, light shows and spectacular product presentations. This year and one of the reason why ESEI chose me to attend the show was because the main topic of this year was Virtual Reality which I am dedicating my master thesis to.

I was able to get a lot of new impressions for my thesis as almost every exhibitor focused and presented products in VR. Mark Zuckerberg himself announced the year 2016 – the year of VR.

For myself it was really nice to attend the two events. On one side I could meet people in the early stage of their business, trying to compete with the market or even set up a new segment and on the other side it was nice to see the big companies and their strategies to place new products on the market.

Thanks again to ESEI and the administration team who made my visit to this major event in Barcelona happen.”

Sebastian Vollman, Austrian master student in Business Management

“With Sebastien, Julian and Sylvain we had the great opportunity to attend the world Mobile congress and the 4 years from now trade show. 4YFN is an international programme, organised by Mobile World, which brings together best mobile start-ups and entrepreneurs with investors, accelerators, incubators and big corporations from digital and non-digital worlds. There, we were able to attend some very interesting conferences and talk with promising entrepreneurs. For example, we had the chance to attend a conference by Amazon’s CTO Werner Hans Peter Vogels. The most interesting thing for us Start up and ICT Masters students was to attend the different Start up presentations in front of the investors.

The main challenges for them were to convince investors to invest in their projects. As a Start-up and ICT Master student, this is what we are supposed to do in few years. We had the opportunity as well to speak with great entrepreneurs in a growing company.

The GSMA Mobile World Congress is a combination of the world’s largest exhibition for the mobile industry and a conference featuring prominent executives representing mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, vendors and content owners from across the world. There, all the greatest and latest innovation technology were shown.

The latest technology is VR (Virtual Reality); An amazing new tool, which allow us to be in a new 360° virtual world.

I would like to especially thank my school which helped me to attend such an international, worldwide known congress.”

Maxime Fiquemont, French master student in ICT and Start-Ups

4YFN was an interesting event and a great opportunity for us to see and understand the process of creating a startup. Various fields composed the trade show: energy, food, innovation, technology and e-commerce.

The most interesting for me was the keynotes, pitches and 4YFN award (innovative startups or ideas). We saw entrepreneurs and international companies’ top management as Werner Vogels, CTO of amazon.

4YFN allowed us to have a better understanding of startup creation stages and processes. It is also a source of inspiration for future businesses and ideas.

Also It was a great opportunity to meet people and have their business cards to start creating our network and maybe find a position / internship.

About MWC, We had the opportunity to enter during the last day; We went to Hall 3, the one with smartphone and major companies: Samsung, LG, Huawei, Intel, Nokia, Microsoft, Oracle and a lot more. This part was really interesting for us. We saw the latest innovations in mobile and electronic devices.

The most prominent exhibitions were VR, Virtual Reality, which will play a key role in the market in 2016. The 360 degrees video recorders were incredible, but this technology is currently designed mainly for professional use.

This week in 4YFN and the MWC was a great and useful experience. I would like to thank ESEI  for this invitation, and hope that other students will have the opportunity to have 4YFN passes in the next years!

Sylvain Leuleu, French master student in ICT and Start-Ups

Sylvain, Maxime and Sebastian.[/caption]

Big thanks to all of the students who attented these events for their feedback and pictures !