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Pocket Gamer Connects lights up San Francisco with over 650 delegates, sponsors, and speakers

First event in the US continues conference series' successful run

Pocket Gamer Connects lights up San Francisco with over 650 delegates, sponsors, and speakers

In hindsight, the week after July 4 might not have been the best time for British visitors to invade American shores.

But fortunately the two days of Pocket Gamer Connects in San Francisco passed without a shot being fired or tea unnecessarily spilt.

This isn’t to say the show was without incident.

Indeed with over 650 delegates representing more than 20 countries from four continents, enjoying 30+ hours of tracks, and taking part in 1,000+ business meetings, it was one of our most productive conferences.

Learnings

It was typically creative-heavy of course, with well over half of attendees being developers or publishers ensuring the I Love Indie Showcase area was buzzing and the Big Indie Pitch as exciting as always.

But there were also some decidely heavyweight attendees too, with over 21% of the crowd being C-Level or founders and an additional 33% Senior Management, VP level or above.

What was particularly gratifying though, is that we again fulfilled our mission to unite a cross-section of the industry.

A fireside chat with DeNA West CEO Shintaro Asako

Senior execs from the likes of Disney, Kabam, Glu, Wargaming, EA, and Bandai Namco plus platform giants Apple, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Samsung were rubbing shoudlers and exchanging ideas with start-up developers and students.

And it was all documented with a healthy number of press from titles as diverse as GamesIndustry.biz, VentureBeat, and Tech Radar to Famitsu, 163.com, and Asia Today (as well as our own Pocket Gamer, 148Apps, and AppSpy, of course).

Good advice

We learned a lot across the 5 packed tracks, especially about the power of brands and importance of data and were reminded just how amazing the West Coast US games scene is from creative indie developers, tool providers, and monetisation experts to the world’s biggest brand holders, platforms, and publishing giants.

Of course it wasn’t all work, work, work.

As you’d expect from a Pocket Gamer event there was plenty of networking after hours too, with our Speakers Dinner and after-show party.

You can relive some of the highlights with a selection of photos live on the PG.biz facebook channel and this will be followed by session videos to our PG.biz video channel in the next couple of weeks.

In the meantime, we’d obviously like to say a huge thanks to our sponsors, speakers, and everyone who came along and made our first proper conference in North America so memorable and successful.

We will definitely be back next year (look out for details on these pages and at www.pgconnects.com).

You don't have to wait for more PGC goodness though, as we have new shows lined up in Helsinki (7-8 Sept) and London (19-20 Jan 2016) designed to help you connect with the biggest names and smartest thinkers in Europe’s mobile gaming scene.

For more information on taking part as speaker, sponsor, or attendee check out www.pgconnects.com.

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A footy game fanatic and experienced editor of numerous computing and game titles, lively Chris is up for anything - including running Steel Media! (Madman!)