AT&T Developer Summit 2012 ‘Rap Up
The new year never really sinks in until the AT&T Developer Summit and CES come along. The WIP team was in charge of FUN at the AT&T Registration Reception this year and with close to 600 in attendance, it was a great night with developers and other mobile ecosystem members choosing 3 or 4 buttons that reflected who they are to pin onto their lanyards. With equal number of each button available, the Android one was the first to run out reflecting the large number of Android developers at the Summit. Beer Drinkers, Wine Drinkers, Apple Developers, Cocktail Drinkers Buttons were not far behind. If there's any takeaways from this informal exercise, it's that developers like Android and drinking.
The Buttons allowed for identification of like minded people and provided entry to various activities based on the pins during the evening: Frequent Fliers designed and threw paper airplanes, Red Wine Drinkers received an exclusive wine at the bar, and Music Lovers used their rap skills to get their device fills (they weren't as bad as me, but pretty close).
Other Notes:
- AT&T announced unlimited access to their new API's for the year for $99, including Payments, U-verse, MMS/SMS, Location, Device capabilities, and AT&T mHealth tools.
- Other announcements by AT&T included joining Open Stack, the AT&T Cloud Architect, and the Application Resource Optimizer (ARO), which helped Pandora and Zynga optimize their apps by minimizing traffic and reducing battery consumption.
- Action X-Ray won the Mobile App Hackathon with their app where users can share pictures and status of their injuries. No word if Michael Owen's already invested.
- An astounding 72% of respondents on our WIP survey said Android was most the important platform for them in 2012. 0% said BlackBerry.
- The Windows Platform by far made the biggest buzz at the keynote, with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer bringing his usual ball of excitement alongside Nokia CEO Stephen Elop (who later that day announced the Nokia Lumia 900) and HTC CEO Peter Chou. The Android platform also made some noise, with Samsung, Sony, and Pantech introducing a bunch of new devices and tablets. There was nothing mentioned about i0S and BlackBerry OS.
- The Nokia Party had a significantly larger crowd than the Samsung hosted party, which occurred at the same time, but both were quite busy as neither DJ's played any Nickelback.
- Coolest swag: AT&T gave out 2GB branded USB drives shaped in the form of keys, and they also doubled as a bottle opener as well. Brilliant.
Full pictures of the event