Digital Enterprise Show Madrid 2016

Last week, a couple of colleagues from the Digital Business specialization had the pleasure to attend the Digital Enterprise Show 2016 in the Exhibition Center of Madrid. It was the first time this event was celebrated in Madrid and I have to admit I was amazed by the quality of the event, not only of the companies on it but also the speakers during the exhibitions and presentations. 

Top tech companies, influencers and digital titans shared their expertise, solutions and products in order to help organisations become more efficient and competitive in the digital era. During the 3 days of the Digital Enterprise Show, the Congress covered the Digital Transformation impact on all kind of organisations with a 360º approach, running conversations considering different roles, different industries and different technologies.

In this year edition, the Masterminds Congress covered 8 Tech Hot Topics: Big Data &Analytics, Cloud Computing, Social Business, Cyber Security, IoT, Mobility, Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality. 

Even though it was a Congress mostly focused on B2B, it was a very enriching experience for MIM Digital Business students as they helped us understand better all the technology trends we often discuss in class.

Here an example of what some companies like Deloitte Digital are developing with Virtual Reality technology.

Digital Business Immersion Week in Silicon Valley.

The San Francisco Global Immersion Week was a period I will always remember. It helped me believe that if you really want something, you can reach that dream with passion and effort. The group was able to experience this when meeting different people working on tech companies of the valley and I could perceive their energy towards their dreams on the interaction with them. 

During the week we did three things:

• We explored what it means to be a startup in Silicon Valley, and given that almost everyone in the group came from outside the US, it helped us understand what it meant to be a startup created by someone that comes from outside the ecosystem. One example was UserZoom, a UX solutions firm that just raised +$30 million last October in Series A funding, quite an accomplishment at the time with the market contracting. CEO Alfonso de la Nuez hosted us and showed us how is it possible to move a firm from Spain to Silicon Valley.

• We also understood how some of the oldest – most successful companies in the valley worked, what does it take to work in the corporate tech world? How do they do innovation and global management? Intel was an example of this, they hosted us on their office in Palo Alto and showed a couple of demos to us about their most innovative solutions.  

• Finally, we also tried to understood how the new giants like Google or Facebook compete, both in terms of processes and talent. We were able to even see a Google Self-Driving Car on sight!

To wrap up, it was a very enriching week that helped us understand all the ecosystem of the valley, starting on Universities like Stanford or Berkeley, going through the startups and ending up with the Venture Capitalists that finance all this technology development. 

Here is the agenda of company visits and workshops we had during that week.