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Thursday 13 February 2014

Camp Brings Kids to MWC 2014

MWC mYouth Camp


At this year's Mobile World Congress, 40 kids between the ages of 8 and 14 will get to experience the show. Is this part of a new trend towards child care at tech conferences? They're born mobile, Qualcomm likes to say. So for the first time, the world's largest mobile phone trade show is offering a childrens' program: mYouth Camp, where 40 fortunate kids of attendees will get to learn about 3D printers, coding, digital filmmaking, what the Europeans call "football," and, hopefully, a little bit of mobile tech.

"We want our attendees to view mYouth Camp not as a convenient childcare solution, but as an opportunity for their child to be involved in MWC and to enhance their understanding of the digital / mobile world. We want them to see what a cool industry their parents work in and to understand how hard everyone works to provide these innovative solutions that impact on everything around us every day," camp organizers Merchanservis said in a statement.

MYouth Camp is the most aggressively themed child-care arrangement I've seen in the tech world, but it isn't the first: Google I/O offered child care for the first time in 2013. According to both the GSMA (which runs MWC) and Google, we're now seeing child care at trade shows because of input from women attending them. Google took an even more family-friendly step by making its child care free; the GSMA is charging €100 per 12-hour day.

Outside the tech world, companies such as Corporate Kids Events and KiddieCorp organize camps that are often themed by the location of the corporate meeting, but on-site child care isn't widespread along tech conferences. When I asked the CEA if it was considering doing something similar at CES, the world's largest tech show, the organization said it was focusing on adult attendees.

"As more women travel the meetings and events circuit, features such as additional security for women travelling alone and child care, among others, needed to be considered," the GSMA said.

How Techie Will It Be?So the question becomes: how do you turn a huge trade show into a camp so kids can really see what Mom and Dad do? I have some ideas (several of them involving Samsung S Pens) but the actual plans seem to be in flux so far.

"We have had some strong interest from companies and we are currently reviewing their proposals to see what we can do this year or develop for next," the company said. The kids might get a quick tour of the show, but for safety reasons they'll mostly be kept in their own room on the convention center premises. If the camp succeeds, GSMA and Merchanservis will look at how to integrate the kids' experiences more closely with the show, the organizations said.

"These may be the industry leaders in the future standing up in our auditoriums doing the next MWL keynote," they said, maybe a little over-optimistically - but maybe not, as 9-year-old app developer Alex Jordan proved at last year's TechCrunch Disrupt conference.

The camp has gotten interest from middle-class middle managers in nine countries including Spain, France, the U.S., Israel, and Romania, organizers said. I'll be sending my 8-year-old daughter Nina, who has done some reviews for PCMag.com, to report on it, and you'll hear about it during Mobile World Congress. If you're interested in joining us, you can sign up on the Mobile World Congress Web site.

Source:http://www.pcmag.com

 If you are visiting Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, MWC or GSMA in 2014 or just want to make a Tour, Day trip, Attractions or Excursion or are interested in any other tour services, then check out the picture above at the top and if you can't find what you are looking for, call us on +34 647 044 889, because you can be sure we can do it.       

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