Last week the Web Marketing Festival 2017 took place in Rimini – Italy.

First of all: what is the Web Marketing Festival? It is a 2-days conference focused on web marketing and on the digital industry with more than 200 speakers divided per subject into 31 educational rooms plus a main stage with guests (the Plenaria room).

Web marketing festival’s aim is to create interaction between different aspects of our world that in a way are connected thanks to the digital revolution. Main subject are Industry 4.0, Social Innovation and Digital Transformation.

This year there were 8 new educational rooms chosen by the attenders:

• Digital health
• Digital jobs
• Foreign markets
• Digital accessibility
• Brand
• Programmatic
• Chatbot
• Startup

JWE attended the Friday session which started in the Plenaria main stage with the Modena City Ramblers concert. This year main theme was “the 100 steps” to demolish the distance that divides Italy from its digitalisation. After the concert the female testimonial of the event, Giorgia Palmas, with the host, Cosmano Lombardo, welcomed us to the event and started introducing the speakers.

In fact, the first and the last part of the day were all in the Plenaria and 9 speakers talked about case studies, doing business, the digital industry and its consequences in our life/world, Social media and crimes, internet advertising, innovation and digital transformation. LEGO Group also launched its news app (Lego Life) in Italy during their speech.

The central part of the day though was spent in the educational rooms on the 31 different themes and everyone could choose what to attend.

We follow more than one specific topic:

“Twitter like a pro”: an educational speech focused on Twitter tools for business.

“People-oriented purchase journey”: on marketing performance and Facebook analytics and audience.

“The aspects of going abroad”: both on foreign markets and on selling with the e-commerce abroad.

“Twitter and the news industry”: the new way of doing journalism and find news and how to create engagement with the audience.

Overall the talks were all very interesting, from real cases to educational labs. Some of them really technical, other more general and fun. A really good and innovative way of training and sharing ideas and tools.

Just one criticism… too many interesting speeches at the same time!

But Web marketing festival thought about this too – video of all the talks will be available for all the attenders.

The web marketing festival Friday session also included the Startup Competition, where between more than 300 candidates the finalists were:

Watly: the first computer that working with solar energy purifies water, generate electrical energy and create internet connection.

Tutored: a social app for students that can find help for exams and a job after their studies.

Wenda: an app for the supply chain for the food and beverage sector. Started with the wine industry, thanks to this app we can follow a bottle from the start till the end, also checking the status during the transport and to check its quality at all time.

Tommi: it’s a digital game based on a virtual world created for kids affected by cancer and their parents. This app is also able to check the disease stages and the levels of stress of the kids and help parents to share moments with their children.

deSwag: a mobile game app that allow people to play with fashion and winning the clothes they are playing with.

Paladin: a rental app where everyone can post. Not to sell, only for lending things.

The audience chose Tommi whilst the jury elected Watly. Both ideas for people and society.

If you need more info on the event visit www.webmarketingfestival.it.

The new dates for next year are already out– with a special surprise: 1 more day added. 21-22-23 June 2018 Rimini (Italy).