Do you have a connected doorbell? A fitness tracker for dogs? A connected water sensor that will change the way farmers irrigate their fields? What about an awesome toy that talks back to the web? If you’re a hardware entrepreneur, we want to give you a chance to strut your stuff at our Mobilize 2013 conference as part of a Product Showcase.
Since one of the guiding theories behind the show is that mobile computing isn’t just happening on mobile phones but on everything around us, we’re focusing heavily on the internet of things and the enabling technologies behind it. So we wanted to give those new connected devices some love.
We changed our Launchpad competition into a hardware-oriented competition designed to give the finalists a chance to show their wares to the Mobilize audience and receive an evaluation from our venture capitalist judges. There’s also an audience choice award.
So if you’re an accelerator or hardware incubator, tell your companies to apply. If you’re a founder working out of a garage with a soldering iron and a Raspberry Pi then check out the application. If you’re an investor with a stake in a Kickstarter-based project then send your portfolio company our form to fill out. Basically, we’re really excited about what people are building and we want to show it off. The deadline for applying is September 6th at 11:59 PM PT.
We started with some awesome speakers from the hardware space, such as Scott Miller, the CEO of Dragon Innovation and Alex Hawkinson, the CEO and cofounder of SmartThings. We have also included some real connected device brainiacs like Mike Kuniavsky from PARC, Hugo Fiennes, CEO and cofounder of Electric Imp and Alicia Asín, the CEO and cofounder of Libelium.
While Mobilize has focused on mobile networks, mobile devices and the app economy in previous years, we think that vision has become dated. We still have a network focus (after all, we will always need a pipe), but we’re moving into the devices and technologies that will make that pipe useful. It’s the difference between having a conference about broadband and modems to building a conference around the social web.
So hardware startups, I hope you’ll take a few minutes and fill our the application. At Mobilize we not only want to show people what it takes to build the internet of things, but also why people should be so excited to see this come to fruition. Fill out the application and I hope to see you there!
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