“Davos for Geeks” – The Sequel

Simdea

Technology & Trends

Wrapping up, the 2016’s edition of Web Summit featured some of the hottest topics around the tech industry and its appliances on other industries as well.

On the technology front, Artificial Intelligence (AI) took the spotlight as the definite answer to solving important security issues, such as stopping hard payment fraud problems using both human and machine intelligence with digital currency, marketing issues and delivering better and more meaningful customer experience. Alongside AI, we took away 3 other major ‘players’ in technology: Mobile, Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality.

On the marketing front, there is one huge opportunity happening right now: Chatbots. Messaging Apps are where most users are and chatbots can be used and improved to deliver better marketing, customer care and customer engagement with a product / company. Brand Experience is another important take away as combining data and social insights to create more authentic ways of engaging customers seems crucial nowadays. Still on the marketing front, a very important reminder about Influencers: traditional word of mouth marketing is the only one that stands through the test of time!

Finally on the startup and entrepreneurship front, we were reassured about the biggest problems every entrepreneur faces: fear and lack of self-belief and learned that doing the work, being self aware and taking care of our customers is the one true path to success.

Lessons Learned

For us this was a magnificent learning experience where we verified some of our beliefs and practices and learned new and exciting possibilities. We were very pleased to verify that Mobile is and will continue to be a relevant area for 2017 and that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming very important in creating better user experiences and marketing strategies. Augmented Reality and/or Virtual Reality is a very interesting challenge for the upcoming years, although we are not particularly aiming to make use of these technologies as of yet. On the other hand, we are very interested in the rise of Chatbots and we plan on betting on them in the upcoming months. Finally, it was a pleasure to get to know the experience of other entrepreneurs and startups, the fears, the expectations and the way forward!

Web Summit 2017

2017’s edition will surely be another learning experience for us and we will return to the venue with reinforced ambitions. Expanding our contacts and business opportunities will have a much bigger focus and we will be looking for the opportunity to showcase our work with everyone there.

Paulo Ribeiro

paulo.ribeiro@simdea.pt
Hardworking and passionate individual keen on learning and clearing any challenges coming his way.
Working in such a fast paced industry as Application Development, Paulo always aims to try and learn new technologies and new ways to perform his work, either through optimization or efficient process management. He is always open to embrace projects as long as they represent a brand new challenge and learning experience for him.

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