Join the visit of our Technology Expert Santeri Saarinen to Barcelona! Here he recounts the visually rich details of the event and his impressions of the technology exhibits, as well as his personal experiences on the trip! The article consists of four parts, read on to find out about Day 4!
Text and images by Santeri Saarinen
Day 4 – Attention Economy in an Expo
One the last day I finally had the chance to participate in the Sports and Entertainment Summit running throughout the event. In the morning, the discussion was around the role of audience cultivation. However, I was not totally convinced. As the discussion started, first thing brought to forefront was how the attention span of people was around 8 seconds, and how companies should design their solutions based on this. The 8 seconds was originally parroted around the media in 2015 by the likes of Time, The Independent and The New York Times. This has since been debunked thoroughly, showing that the data was bogus, and just a nice headline with no actual research behind it. If anything, the latest studies by companies such as Deloitte show the attention is not actually shortening at all ( if you’re interested in the topic, read this Forbes article). However, if (and when) this kind of false data is what corporations are following and what consultants are telling them to follow, I would assume it just leading to bad content and missed marketing opportunities. Do your research, please!
Panel discussion on providing the audience what they want
Peer Naubert from Bundesliga and Anshul Kapoor from Google brought couple good ideas forward in the discussion though. Firstly, Bundesliga’s goal is to provide each fan the content in the form they want to follow it, for example, watching a full game or just following the score. Secondly, companies such as Google, have a lot of data on the fans that follow Bundesliga. Combining these two, with new partnerships, Bundesliga could receive knowledge on their fans, which allows them to offer better customized content to each of them. My favourite new idea presented was the GenAI powered search functionality through all of Bundesliga, where you could search through years of archives to find, for example, all goals made from corner kicks on the second half.
My favourite new idea presented was the GenAI powered search functionality through all of Bundesliga, where you could search through years of archives to find, for example, all goals made from corner kicks on the second half.
Following this, we had a weird inclusion in the event. Activision Blizzard revealed the launch date for Call of Duty Warzone Mobile. While mildly interesting, it felt very out of place in the event, which didn’t really have any gaming focus in the keynotes or panel discussions elsewhere. As an old school Warcraft/Diablo fan though, I had to see what my old favorite gaming company had become.
On the expo side, I went through plenty of the smaller companies and startups, looking for anything interesting, or related to our work at Helsinki XR Center. First, I stumbled on Deep.Fine and their Spatial Crafter tool. This reminded me a lot of Immersal from Finland. The idea was to scan a physical space with a mobile device, to map the environment. Then you can add virtual objects in the scanned space. And finally you can locate these virtual objects in the physical space with your mobile device. Simple but effective.
Datision Showcase Tracker
ARty, a small company from Korea, presented traditional marker-based AR solutions, but their interesting work revolves around paper. They create fun and engaging AR books, mainly for children, which enrich the stories and bring them to life, while being interactive. Unfortunately they didn’t have any platform available for third party content creation, but it was nice to see something different after the 20th new Open RAN solution.
Datision works mainly on industry 4.0 solution space, but here they presented the Showcase Tracker. It took the form of a screen, where you could select your favorite garments. However, the point of the tracker was, that through the use of standard cameras and AI, it allows companies to monitor the behavior of people who stop by their establishment. The tracker counts the people, it recognizes faces and can register aspects such as gender and age, while being compliant with current legislation on data protection.
RobSurgical demoed a nice remote controlled device for medical operations. The operator is looking at the 3D screen while using joysticks to control the four different “arms” of the operating device. Their Bitrack system offers better usability and precision compared to current robotic solutions with shorter training requirements and lower costs. I don’t have much experience with surgical equipment, so I’ll have to take their word for it, but at least it looked cool.
Holoconnects presented their Holobox technology at MWC. Their 3D Holographic Display provided very good quality stream with no issues. I’d don’t necessarily see the potential in live streaming across several devices, but for prerecorded presentations and guided tours, this would be wonderfully lifelike.
RobSurgical’s remote controlled surgical robotic system
The Holobox real time stream by Holoconnects
One of the funniest interactions during the week was not with a human, but with Aima. She was an AI agent, who understood my facial gestures and speech. The goal of Aima was to provide empathy, instead of the common cold AI. The company wants to embody humanity, creating an AI agent that adapts to the user and offers intuitive, natural and nuanced responses. It is also able to remember names and faces, providing opportunities for long-term virtual companion. She wasn’t quite certain what she was doing at such a large event though, and couldn’t exactly tell me where to go next.
A great way to get one’s attention is to give them a free beer.
A great way to get one’s attention is to give them a free beer. That’s exactly what happened at Dell’s booth, where they were showcasing their new multi-node edge server and gateway, in the form of a brewery. They had built an assembly line moving cans around, where cameras automatically detect cans that had fallen over. Not sure if it was the most effective way of showing off the technology, but at least it got me listening for the length of a pint.
Aima AI agent discussing with visitors
The Dell Brewery
China Mobile was displaying several miniature models of how their infrastructure would work in different situations. For example, how on a city scale, their 5G+Cloud+Positioning Network could provide intelligent connectivity and vehicle coordination around the city. Networked solutions and tracking systems on this scale are not really implemented in Finland yet, but there is definitely potential in these to provide more sustainable environment. Let’s see how we move forward with several Finnish cities making new plans around their digital twins and data.
Venturi Astrolabs had the new Flex Rover on show. It is the largest and most capable lunar vehicle, being transported to the Moon by SpaceX’s Starship in 2026. Of course it has specific wheels designed for the environment, and electric drive with solar panle charging. But the interesting point to me was the shared payload system, where companies could buy a compartment for their equipment, which could by then unloaded at landing. These payloads could vary in size and weight, up to 3 sq.m. and 1500kg. Would’ve been interesting to know whether they had already sold many of these.
China Mobile city-scale networking solutions
Flex Rover lunar vehicle by Venturi Astrolabs
To end the day, I had to go back to the booth of New Relic. Not to see their interesting web data platform and tools again, but see if I had won the ps5 in a raffle. No luck though, but I’m happy with the water bottle they provided me with. And finally, I have to say, the lunch options available at the location were very good, despite the lines at certain times. Whether it was the falafels, calamari subs or tacos, everything was tasty in the middle of a long day.
Some nice food 🙂
In conclusion, Mobile World Congress 2024 was excellent. I learned a lot, and got to try out many new things. There was so much to see that four days was not enough, even if I was intentionally skipping majority of the networking hardware stuff. Let’s leave that to the engineers. I will definitely come again as soon as possible.
And of course, before flying back home, I had to visit Camp Nou. Learned a lot about Barcelona history and future plans as a football city, walked around in their virtual experience embodying Hristo Stoichkov in the middle of all of the Messi’s, Xavi’s and Suarez’s. A great sunny day to end the week on. The funniest part of it? The tables in the café had important goals and their situations leading to them pictured.
Champions League trophies
Meeting the stars on the pitch
The future of Spotify Camp Nou
Enjoyed my burger at the table on which Messi played 1vs11 and scored
We hope you enjoyed visiting the WMC 2024 with us! Check out highlights of Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3 if you missed them. And follow us for more reports of visits to exciting events and places!
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