In 2013, with events due in San Francisco on 30 April and 21 May, we still managed to fit in our return to Finland; this time in Helsinki.
Thanks to our event sponsors, mobile developer, publisher and tools company CocoaChina and monetisation and cross-promotions outfit PapayaMobile - not to mention our Finnish Fixer Suvi Latva from Neogames - over 300 Finnish developers spent the early (and late) evening, networking, learning and partaking in one or two drinks.
Think and drink
Ensuring we made the most of the opportunity, we had a 30 minutes panel discussion about the state of user acquisition, while CocoaChina and Nevosoft gave short presentations on the Chinese and Russian markets, respectively.
Papaya highlighted its AppFlood cross-promotion platform, and its new carrier billing relationship with China Mobile.
And you could even get a job as Rovio, Supercell, Grey Area and Unity are looking for new recruits, while AppCampus is giving developers money to launch their games on Windows Phone first.
But, as ever, the highlight was the ending Battle Panel, where Supercell, Grey Area, Frogmind and Grand Cru argued that small developers were best. Rovio, King and CocoaChina fought back, pointing out you need scale to make an impact.
The audience voted on each of the six rounds, with the winners being crowned...
Actually, by that stage everyone was having too much fun, so MC Chris James ruled it an honourable draw.
The Battle Panel kicks off
Chris from Papaya explains AppFlood
Lei from CocoaChina talks about explosive growth
Grey Area is looking for a metrics analyst
Supercell is looking for new superstar developers
Rovio has 100 job openings
The Finnish Fixer - Suvi
Work at Supercell. Wear crazy wigs
You can see a short video of how the evening went below, some notes from the user acquisition panel, and more photos on our Facebook page here.
