Beacons & Big Data Applied to Conferences and Smart Cities

Transcript

• Maria Fernanda 00:04

  MOCA is a big data repository that captures data from different sources in order to understand people in physical work.

  Oleg Morajko 00:11

  At Mobile Congress actually, we deployed a number of different use cases that work beautifully, and has excellent results actually prove that the proximity is very powerful and also can be beneficial from a revenue point of view. We have number of success stories, when the organizer were able to basically earn three, five times more money than the the total cost of ownership of the platform, including deployment and maintenance.

  Maria Fernanda 00:42

  With the data, you can profile, you can understand context, you can understand moments. With that information you can communicate with the user to generate revenue is sad.

  Oleg Morajko 00:54

  And the conversion rates are very high. We had rates from 12% up to 60% of opening rates, click through rates, and also we were measuring at the same time it complete funnel from how many people we reached, how many people clicked, and how many people physically went to the particular part. So we are measured measuring performance per year per dollar 60% 65%. I think attendees finally downloaded the mobile application out of about 100,000 people that attended conference, this is a very high radio, okay, and every year we can observe it just increasing.

  Narration 01:34

  You're listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem with Steve Statler.

  Steve Statler 01:45

  Welcome to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem. My name is Steve Statler, Statler Consulting our partners in this production Proxbook with their Proxbook directory and their Proxbook report, and this quarter, their report has been on events and stadiums and one of the companies featured in the report was MOCA, and I have the two founders of MOCA with me for this week's interview. And Maria Fernanda and Oleg Morajko, and I know, I haven't pronounced your name properly, like, but hopefully that was close enough to pass muster. Welcome to you both. Thanks for joining us on the show.

  Maria Fernanda 02:30

  Thank you very much.

  Oleg Morajko 02:31

  Thank you, Steve.

  Steve Statler 02:33

  You guys are based in Barcelona. Right? Are you? Are you in Barcelona at the moment?

  Maria Fernanda 02:38

  Yes, we are in Barcelona.

  Steve Statler 02:40

  One of my favorite cities thatand and that is a city that gets very busy around about the time of Mobile World Congress. So I know that was one of your that was the case study that was featured in the report. So I want to talk about that. But before we get into it can one of you just kind of say you are the CEO and the CTO of MOCA respectively? Maybe one of you can just give us a quick introduction to what your company does.

  Maria Fernanda 03:09

  Okay? Okay, we are mycoplasma, were the co founders. And when we constructed MOCA we were thinking about the person and how to personalize marketing for one person. And we detect that one person, when people move in, get it in the world, if people are constructing a profile, an invisible profile, and we want to discover that profile, in order to do marketing for that person, or for that specific group of people. To do that, we need the data analytics and technologies to construct that solution for people. And MOCA is that solution. MOCA is a big data repository, like capture that captures data from different sources in order to understand people in physical world. We got information, companies can understand a movement profiles, I can connect directly with people via my law in order to personalize marketing campaigns.

  Steve Statler 04:10

  That makes sense. And the origins of the company are you had a big data? You both were running a big data company before MOCA? Is that correct? It kind of morphed from a big data focus to big data applied to proximity and location. Can you talk a little bit about how that happened? And I'd be interested in hearing a bit about your founding story.

  Maria Fernanda 04:33

  Yes. Okay. Oleg and I, we are PhD at all, at least PhD in parallel computing and PhD in physics. We were working in the past, doing and constructing big data solutions for big companies. And with that solutions, a company could be able to earn money really money, because one of the problems in big data is how to extract the value to Airmen. And we always wanted to customer that software solution to solve that big data problem for different industries in that moment, the proximity solutions and big data was not a word that people used. But in this moment is a common word. But in that moment, we wanted to construct that kind of solution with algorithms or with technologies, and to consume that in order to cause to our product for Vegas, to give us because khalaby and in the past, we began to work, this SRB product for energy sectors, particularly communications for job, a banks, for a travel industry. And with that money that we earn in the moment, and with the knowledge, we detect the focus where we wanted to go, I was a mobile phone, the mobile apps, the personalization, and the marketing. And in that moment, it was beginning their proximity marketing with the baked goods. And for the reason, we began, because to make solution for big companies for in order to understand the market, in order to understand any product we wanted to go through and to our money to go to the web route.

  Oleg Morajko 06:12

  So yes, actually, we started doing consultancy, B data services, and a C perfectly. Now, every single company is a different world, although they have common problems. But a specific solution is so personalized, actually, you cannot scale it out to different companies, right. And we were looking for, for a solution that you can apply again and again to two completely different companies. And that takes data actually learns and brings them direct value. So they can benefit from it very easily. And in a scalable fashion. Right. So this was our requirement, we will start thinking and actually thinking about MOCA. MOCA and as a solution for the problems. And actually mobile phones, actually our mobile applications, location. And this context with this is the first time in history, I think that technology enables the creating a new kind of solutions that can take advantage of all this data. And all this data is completely scalable. So you can apply this really to completely different different companies. Okay, and this is actually what's the first requirement and one of the milestones and key concepts for us to actually start a company product company, which which MOCA has now.

  Steve Statler 07:24

  So it makes sense to go from consulting and try and trying to get a product where there's some level of repeatability and scalability. So you're not inventing something new for every client. I'm interested in understanding more about what big data can contribute to proximity marketing. And, you know, specifically, I was actually just reading this morning that Xerox PARC, who just this have this incredible heritage of invention of God into the beacon business, and they developed this very cool app for people that are traveling on, on the on trains to give personalized offers. And so I downloaded the app and and the level of personalization was incredibly crude. And I am just wondering, at a very practical level, what is it that you can learn with big data that can make the interaction more personal beyond what you could do with something that's incredibly simplistic, which if I look at the Xerox PARC thing, you know, they invented the mouse, but their beacon solution was very crude. So what is it that big data can add to an experience that I wouldn't get with some very simple rules?

  Oleg Morajko 08:36

  Okay, well, I think that the data correctly applied, and the right value extracted out of all this, you know, huge amounts of data can be totally amazing. We struggled to live in this and we worked over that direction. And I can tell you that one of our success stories here is more about Congress. And we actually, we started from very simple case, when we just had a congress tradeshow huge ratio, with a website and a very simple initially mobile application. And in less than three years, we actually achieved very high level of sophistication. And we believe that actually proximity help to overall improve customer attendee experience of the Congress. So let me tell you the story from from the beginning. Right. So yeah, so three, three years ago, we were approached by DCMA. And actually companies that work with them to organize the conference. And this was very, you know, very, very appealing opportunity. As it enabled us to jump from typical pilots, lots of companies doing we you buy 10 or 50 big guns and you put them in the three four stores and you can it's right to see what's the proximity impact, right, which normally is very, very low. And here the context were completely different we had from scratch 100,000 attendees five intense If days basically all it and mobile industry worldwide coming to a single place, well 250,000 meters squared of space, and 2000 exhibitors, you know, overwhelm of information, right? So in this context, when you think about attendee, and then you can also think as an exhibitor. So today, what are the typical issues both half and the Congress? So from one side, people come to the Congress and they are interested, you know, to get entertained, first, to see what's new, what are the gadgets, what's really, you know, trendy, and so you don't want the need, you don't want to miss anything, okay? So you need kind of a guide that will help you to ensure that the most important points for you all right, are our checks actually visited them and you enjoy them, right? So every single person, this list, if you imagine is completely different, right? The Profiles are different, you know, the needs are different people come from making business or they are looking they are what they want to meet particular people. Okay. And obviously, if you think as a mathematician or as, as we used to think here is, so what is the optimal set of people you should meet during the five days, and when we're okay, so that you can maximize the benefit of the visit. Okay, so if you think a straight shot this way, it gives you a number of opportunities, and usually you can provide to people. And the other hand, if you are an exhibitor, obviously, you want to target the right audience, you want your message, your products, your your offers, to reach the correct people, and you also want to meet them. And traditionally, what you do is you you know, you spend your budget on trying to reach everybody, and then we maximize the number of people expecting you know, that the right person will get catch the message. Yeah, proximity here is not the definite solution. But it's a huge step forward, actually achieving bowls, right. So at Mobile Congress, actually, we deployed a number of different use cases that work beautifully, and has excellent results and actually prove that the proximity is very powerful, and also can be beneficial from a revenue point of view. Okay, so just let me give you a couple sample some some examples. Right? So imagine that you're a CEO coming from Milan, from London to Barcelona, five days ahead. And the first thing that happens to you when you land in the airport. Okay. Is that you? You're out of internet? I mean, you're using a roaming off because it costs money, right? What's that it's normal, its usual. Okay. And the second Wi Fi not always works, or maybe you don't want to pay for it. Okay, so you're at the airport, and the organizer of the event DCMA is willing to welcome you in a personalized manner, and is willing to give you hence, so your stays better. So MOCA, for example, was able to solve that problem, no connectivity, low location precision. And yes, we were able to detect the presence of the person after leaving the plane. And for example, deliver messages like take grab your batch at the airport at Terminal save two hours of waiting in the queue in the first day. So this was both useful and welcomed by users.

  Steve Statler 13:29

  So how can you figure out that I was at the Barcelona airport if I wasn't actually connected to the to the cellular network?

  Oleg Morajko 13:37

  Right? Yeah. So I fill this one, these are of the one of the key components, key technological components of maca system. So one of the first things we took into account when designing the platform was the the Bitcoin itself is just a part of the story. And you just cannot just focus on this, right? The context is as much broader concept and you need to know who the user is. So you know, his profile, and also the geolocation as well. So MOCA takes into account geofencing and geolocation technology of the phone itself, which doesn't, which can be based on GPS can be based on cell tower triangulation, all the location services that just that smartphone provides you today, iOS or Android. Okay. And just taking advantage of this technology, you're just able to detect that. We just landed from the plane and you enter the terminal, right? It may require beacons, but it doesn't require Okay, so this is the way and then providing the content. Because we have the moment we have a user, okay. And then imagine that we are targeting all the English speakers. Okay, so just the phone tells you that this is a English language because you've configured your problem this way, very simple. But then how do we provide full screen content when there is no internet connection? So if you think of it Ah, you know, there's lots of solutions that just work doing exactly that, for example, Dropbox. So you synchronize your content, you just download this, when you have connectivity to your mobile phone, and just this content just pops up in the great moment. So this is how it works. Actually, we continuously synchronize the content with the codec focus.

  Maria Fernanda 15:19

  In one sentence about your question, big data techniques and technologies in the proximity ecosystem is very important. Because with the data you can provide, you can understand context, you can understand moment with that information you can communicate with the user to generate revenue is his idea.

  Steve Statler 15:39

  And what sort of so you talked about profiling the user? Is that something that was available to the organizers of mobile world, World Congress, what sort of data were they able, so part of the point of profiling is that the user gets a better experience, but also, you want the owner of the venue, the client to understand more about what their customers are doing? What what kind of information do I learn as an event organizer that I might not know, without this technology?

  Oleg Morajko 16:12

  Right. So the key point here is actually not only what kind of information I learned, so not only the data enrichment, which is one part, but also the fusion of them, okay, so by integrating systems, so there is a registration system, there is a link in Cal's, etc. And there's all this profile information that the organizers are using. So you're able to actually merge the CRM data with location data, and website and mobile, mobile mobile phone. So you just create a unique view, a holistic view of a person. And then maca provides this unique feature to give you location insights. So you may know that when you are at a particular place when you move from airport to your hotel, or when you enter the venue, or how exactly you move inside the venue. So for that propose we deployed in the location solution as well. So this gives you ability to see a floorplan on your mobile app and see blue dot navigation and know exactly where you are all the time. So basically, we have a map of more than 2000 exhibitors, and your exact location with I think, average precision was lower than three meters. Okay.

  Maria Fernanda 17:31

  But one important part here is that we don't only collect data, but we can infer the heights of the movement.

  Oleg Morajko 17:39

  This is very interesting part here, because it's not only about tracking GPS points, it's understanding where you are, and what how much time you spend there. So imagine that you just are moving between different standards, which are different exhibitors. And this exhibitors, academic, IBM, Cisco, and they're classified like hardware providers, network companies, cloud solutions, providers, etc, right. And you just can study the interests of people by just tracking their location during the visit to usually infer this information. And this can be directly used to enhance user profile.

  Steve Statler 18:14

  So what data could what data did the different stakeholders have access to Mobile World Congress? So if I was an exhibitor? Could I get insights from this system? Or was that just something that the organizers saw you? You've got some wonderful heat maps that you show on your website? Was that part of what the MWC stakeholders saw? Can you give me a sense of that?

  Oleg Morajko 18:41

  Right, actually. So the exact scope of the services we provide for for our customer, which is FIRA de Barcelona is disclosed. Anyway, we can explain in terms of the scope of functionality we provide so so in this terms, we characterize audience in general, with the objective on understand the mobility of the audience. So the organizers are interested to know when people come to the city, how they move, what parts of the city, they stay in, how much time how much time they spend in the venue, and all these kinds of mobility related characteristics and metrics. They want to measure to understand what's the best way of using the space and how to improve the future conferences. All this kind of location based analytics is a key part of the offering we provide to them to provide to Mobile World Congress on actually to any threshold organism.

  Steve Statler 19:39

  So going back, maybe we're not talking specifically about Mobile World Congress, but I do have people that asked me questions about what's achievable. So I'm really keen to get a clearer understanding of if I'm an exhibitor at a trade show. What what are the benefits? What's the data I get, as I mean, one of the benefits is hopefully I'm getting the right people showing up on the stand. So it's not Just more people, it's more of the right people. But can I get data about what kinds of people are arriving? What data do I get as an exhibitor?

  Maria Fernanda 20:12

  Due to the fact that we measure micro data, every person in the Congress and during the Congress and in the afternoon before the Congress, and without that information, or the proximity campaigns are exactly an issue. And for that reason, if some exhibitor by opportunity campaign, they can, they can receive the exactly information about how many people were a using their mobile app in that moment. And how many people were in this, in some determinated moment when they.

  Oleg Morajko 20:50

  In terms of benefits from an exhibitor point of view, you're actually getting exactly two benefits, the first benefit is that you can understand the people that visit you and are actually interested in your products. It can go down to particular, you know, product lines, because you can essentially put sensors inside or stand. Okay, and then you can tag people, when they spend some amount of time looking, you know, if you have tablets, smartphones, etc. You just tag people by their particular interests, and then you get you, you're given a tool that enables you to retarget those people, you know, next week, are they after their visit with the proximity campaigns, because you perfectly know that they showed interest in particular products, this will be 111 part of the solution. The second is we call it a mock attraction. And this is the kind of campaign we designed to attract people to come to your place. Okay, so this how this is performed. So this is a service you buy as an exhibitor. And this is commercialized by trade organizer as a service, okay, so you're actually you're buying your meter square, you're buying your marketing at on the wall, and then now you're buying a proximity marketing as a service. So So for example, imagine that you run your campaign, your personalized content that will pop up as a push notification message at nine in the morning. At the main entrances, when there is a you know, 1000s of people, but you may want to target only CTOs of certain countries. So you're able to do that exactly right, the Eurich dot people, and the conversion rates are very high, we had rates from 12%, up to 60% of opening rates, click through rate, right. And then the people just get a full strain, creativity very nicely designed. So it's attractive. And this creativity invites them to go to particular style and see the solution or product. And also, we were measuring at the same time, the complete funnel from how many people we reached, how many people clicked, and how many people physically went to the particular part. So your measure measuring performance per year per dollar actually have that solution.

  Steve Statler 23:09

  Those are some terrific metrics that you've shared. And it seems like one of the biggest challenges we have in our industry is we can for those of us that are focusing on mobile apps is getting people to actually download the mobile app. And then once they've downloaded it, to use it. I can't imagine a better conference, the Mobile World Congress to get people to do those things. So that's wonderful for you, guys. I'd be interested, can you just share how many what proportion of the visitors actually use the app? And overall, what kind of conversion rates you shared some of that information? But is there any more data that you can share?

  Oleg Morajko 23:51

  Well, actually, yes. So GCM I shared this information this year, click published about 60% 65. I personally think attendees finally downloaded the mobile application, about 100,000 people that attended the conference. So this is a very high radio, okay. And every year, we can observe it just increasing about your right this is a very specific conference versus a specific audience. Okay. And obviously, this rates for different conferences are completely different. They may be as low as 20%. But if you look at this, if you look at different mobile applications, that makes your life more useful. And if you go to different verticals and trade shows, if we go to travel space, have lots of people are using, you know, airlines travel applications, you can search book and you know, you can be in front of gate change or what luggage is right. So this transactional apps you can use all the year, not only the Congress, okay? They have very, very high conversion a high percentage of our audience that is using mobile apps, and they're slowly migrating to web only to build the more platforms Okay. All right. So this is the context where actually the proximity is highly useful, and it has direct impact to, to the revenue of those companies.

  Steve Statler 25:09

  Well, I think as conference goers, we're starting to be trained that there's a mobile app, we should expect the mobile app and we should look to use it maybe a couple of years ago, it was a novelty, and most people didn't think to do it. Now, I think people think, well, I don't want to be carrying a big guide with me, I just want to use my phone. And so I think that is very, a very positive trend for you guys. Can we talk a little bit about the business structure for this, and you don't need to describe specifically Mobile World Congress. But if I was a conference organizer, I had been simplistically thinking, oh, I need to pay to have this app. But it actually seems like this is potentially a revenue generating opportunity. This is something that I can do to get some incremental revenue and add some incremental value for the exhibitors who are one of the main sources of revenue for me. So what should I expect as a, as a conference organizer? Should I actually, is this going to cost money? Or am I gonna make money from from investing in this kind of service?

  Oleg Morajko 26:16

  That's an excellent question. We are asked multiple times. Yeah. So actually, yeah. So in MOCA, we've been working on trade show space for three years now. And actually, we were able to package the solution to address different needs. Okay, so we have three packages today for call premium events, the Moca for premium events. And the first thing we address is engagement. So if your objective is to improve your customer, your attendee experience at the conference, you buy this package, and we enable you with the lowest cost possible actually, to better reach your audience with campaigns with messages with beacons, etc, number of number of features. Obviously, this is a cost for you. And your benefit is that more people will be will be become more happy. And eventually, they will come later. Back to you. The second package we have is, is called monetize. So it's direct response to your question, right? So the monetize is okay, so how can I use this technology to make money? And the answer very simple, because the event organizers, they make money, basically by selling services, and one of the key services and meters where they sell to exhibitors, and now we just say them, we just tell them, Okay, so why don't you sell digital space as well? Okay, this is very useful tool you have, and it enables exhibitors, to reach our audience in a new way with using new channels, in this particular terms using mobile channel. So we have number of success stories, when the organizer, were able to basically earn three, five times more money than the the total cost of ownership of the platform, including deployment and maintenance.

  Steve Statler 28:05

  So you can make money as well as deliver a better experience for your visitors. Let's talk a little bit about your partners, you've been active in there. And it's clear that you don't deliver the kind of solution that you've just described, doing everything yourself. You mentioned LinkedIn, do you integrate with LinkedIn in order to do some of this personalization? Or was that an abstract?

  Oleg Morajko 28:33

  Not directly. So normally, our experience showed us that different mobile applications that they have different ways of actually integrating with social networks or their existing CRM systems, etc. So we didn't want to go that far. And so we just have invoke an API that enables the mobile application to pass us any information that is in the hands of the application itself. So this is a this works beautifully in lots of scenarios, because we don't need to handle any no privacy sensitive data. Because stays out of that scope is very simple. We identify users by just ID and a set of attributes, okay? And this is you as an application owner to decide what attributes that you have. You want to share it with us, and what attributes you want to use for targeting or for better analytics. Okay, so this enables us to work with a number of different CRMs like Salesforce, Oracle, etc. Okay. And dependents.

  Steve Statler 29:39

  So let's, let's talk about beacons. How many beacons did you have at Mobile World Congress?

  Oleg Morajko 29:46

  Right. So in the venue, we run the network, bit below 1000 Because it's normally the idea is not to maximize the number but just to go down to to minimize the costs. Okay, so basically, this number is huge because of the requirement of being able to provide in the location. Okay? Which is completely different thing. If you compare this to proximity, we maybe we would need 100 beacons to cover occupied key strategic locations like entrances and hotspots, etc. And this will be enough, but in the location requires you that every single place you have visibility signal from at least few beacons, and then you're able to give you exact indoor location. Okay, that's the reason.

  Steve Statler 30:36

  And the beacons with these Pollstar beacons that you're using at Mobile World, Congress or different.

  Maria Fernanda 30:42

  Different providers.

  Oleg Morajko 30:43

  Right. Keep we can use for indoor location. This is poster technology. And yes, we are using beacons.

  Steve Statler 30:52

  And somewhere like Mobile World Congress, I don't know what the connectivity is like, it's normally a struggle to get good connectivity at these trade shows where the beacons just configured as iBeacons or were you using some kind of conditional access rotating the UU IDs and so forth? Which of those were you?

  Oleg Morajko 31:16

  Okay, so, actually, as MOCA, we are not actually hardware manufacturer, we are not working on firmware of devices, right. Moca is big on agnostic, right? Anyway, the requirements of such specific, you know, location by size and volume of audience require some specific very, you know, higher level requirements, I would call it industrial requirements for vehicles. So, in this case, this poster, which is very specialized, and they are designing manufacturing beacons, that are both scalable and secure. So there are a number of, you know, ideal rotation schemes they implement, etc. Yes.

  Steve Statler 31:59

  But my question really is the ID rotation normally requires access to the cloud. And on a trade show floor quite often, you can't get to the cloud, because there's just too much traffic. So I'm wondering how you solve that? Do you solve it by saying, hey, anyone can see these beacons? Or is there some other way that you solve that problem?

  Oleg Morajko 32:23

  That's great. There is some other way of solving the problem. And it actually doesn't require internet connection. Okay.

  Steve Statler 32:29

  Very good. And one of the other beacon companies that it looked like you had a partnership was G cell, what? Can you talk a little bit about them and why you're working with them?

  Maria Fernanda 32:43

  Yes, he said, they are a company in London, they have salary codes. And they want to provide a final complete solution to the final client. For the reason we did with, with them a strong partnership, in order to integrate technologies to solve the problems for the final clients. And when some clients by this albicans make up all the solution, the platform they because they analytics, technology and the market. Right.

  Oleg Morajko 33:12

  So the GSL is their specialized in toilet technology. And the biggest one of the products they have in the product line. And it's very interesting for all of us that work in the proximity sector. It's very, very interesting, because actually, the one of the biggest barriers of deploying beacons is the fact it's hardware. So we live the online word when everything can be actually executed in the cloud, they you don't need to physically go to places, and there is no maintenance costs at the Brigham introduces this. And this is one of the serious issues when you think of deploying big on the onScale. Right. So solar becomes has this unique feature of installing from that because they are able to continuously get energy from solar source. And the you don't need to go to replace battery. You don't need to go, you know, to check the battery level. So all these additional costs that are incurred, you know, are completely minimized. And it's very interesting because we were actually surprised when we met with Giselle, because they were able to work indoor, so you don't need solar noon sun to work. Right. Right.

  Steve Statler 34:28

  The theory sounds great. What I'm interested is what the practice is. Are you does it actually work is my question, I guess.

  Oleg Morajko 34:37

  Absolutely. Yeah. So we did certified just so because in our platform, one of the first things we did is, you know, test protocol we have designed for every single freaking band for tour with us here in LA. And yeah, so the difference is huge word from different beacons. In particular, we were surprised by two characterised declutter unique. The first is that if there is no light, it just stopped emitting immediately. So there is no battery inside it. Yes. Okay. Which is interesting, because if you think when you need when this can happen at night, for example, yeah, because working at night, it's doesn't it's not necessary at all right? It makes sense. And the second is that the, the normally become image with 100 millisecond frequency or or lower. And normally this is lower to make your lifetime of the battery longer, right. And they are unique as they don't have this problem. They are able to emit high frequency, which gives you that the, at the smartphone, you can just get more frames per second, the signal is more stable. Okay. And for example, for indoor location, it's very interesting alternative as well.

  Steve Statler 35:52

  And so can they do they do that supporting iBeacon? Do they have? Do they support other protocols as well? Is there like Eddystone ephemeral IDs? And I imagine that would consume more battery to do that kind of encryption.

  Oleg Morajko 36:08

  They work with iBeacon there I become compatible. I don't really know if they are working on Eddystone. It's not it's out of our knowledge, I guess. But just by doing by demand this will give us an answer from the business point of view, I just said is waiting for us to because there are a lot of demand of that solutions in Smart Cities ecosystem. Yes, Halfords Mercedes. So our vehicles are very, very important. And this, so the opportunity to actually to showcase a little bit custom branding feature of MOCA. So this is one of the things that many partners have, have asked us. So how can I demo the proximity solutions for my final customers? With my logo with my branding, etc. Okay, so actually, we are not white labeling MOCA we are actually custom branding, it means that you can put your branding, and this is powered by MOCA technology. And she said was one of the examples. So you get a fully customized domain, URL and, and login and the colors, log and everything. And then you're able to actually add your hardware product package with a broker platform and very easily make your customer trying.

  Steve Statler 37:26

  Maria, you mentioned smart cities, applications that are what what are the kind of use cases and applications for your platform with smart cities as opposed to supporting events?

  Maria Fernanda 37:41

  In our cities that are different concepts that we want to we need to integrate to provide the final solution. First, the IoT ecosystem, where you have sensors a where you have Wi Fi where you have beacons. Second, the personalization with a visitor in the city with the resident in the city. Third, the marketing part. The magic part is when you need some information to define a trial with a marketing. That's why we work with a magazine a partner, for example, with a UV and a sidebar in the United States. Okay. And that and that solution, complete solution give us the possibility to construct that a complete solution for the final user, for example, we have our case hearing in Spain, that is when either in Canada, they have an app, and with the app, or the tourist is constantly a informed about news in the city, about different places in the city where they use it to be in in some moment. And it might mean that you're out in a Monday, we are when either you can receive important information about that month and in that moment. But we need to complement with different kinds of things. And it's much it isn't directives need that kind of solutions.

  Oleg Morajko 38:56

  But yes, the smart city related solutions, they require high level of integration with existing systems. So this also is happening in retail. So everybody in retail and smart cities, they have Wi Fi networks, they are widely available. And many people want to know when the people are. So they need to kind of a hit mark as one of the features of motor. So we realized that just by generating heat maps with beacons, or even with the fine grained location in the location technology is very nice, very cool. But it's not enough because maybe 80% of your audience, they don't have an obligation. So this is when the Wi Fi kicks in and just increases your coverage. So you're able maybe to cover 90% of visitors. It's just another that you have your smartphone and you're just you get tracked anonymously, obviously. But at the same time, if you need to communicate with the person, you need the application in the phone, right so but but combining both technologies you get the full spectrum. So for example, what we do is we integrate with solutions like Cisco Meraki or CMX analytics Next, that enables us to interchange data flows, and present to the final customers, you know, Wi Fi based heat map. And on top of it, for example, mobile based heat map, so they have full information legislator that's available.

  Steve Statler 40:15

  So where are we in the development of smart city? Infrastructure? I mean, it's very hard for government, certainly in the United States Government moves very slowly. Have you actually, so is the Benidorm example, is that actually deployed or what? What stage? Okay, so there's actually a Benetton app, which role is location sensitive, and that is paid for by the local city or use the what's the commercial.

  Maria Fernanda 40:45

  Local a city for the administration, because they need to understand the visitor in the work. And they need to impact the visitor. And they need to construct a complete platform to understand mobility in the city. We deal with people with a cars and with a different kind of sources that can complement that. So the first step began using Mocha, but they are going to complement.

  Oleg Morajko 41:13

  As I said, we are at a very early stage of smart cities. It's a new concept, and it's still under development. And the majority of projects are pilot projects, or some more serious deployments going on. And we just hope that in the following years, this will just increase and actually become a reality.

  Steve Statler 41:30

  So I can imagine a city app and as a tourist and Bennett on has lots of British tourists. So which is a double edged sword, a good thing and a bad thing? So I can see some utility from the tourists why they would use the app and I can see why the city would want to understand more about where people are moving. How close are we to the hotels and the restaurants being embedded on being plugged into that system? Is that happening now? Is it going to happen in the future?

  Maria Fernanda 42:04

  Okay, the idea here with the small hotels and restaurants is that they could have a new channel to communicate with the final user. With the vanilla, for example, with the vanilla app, they have that new channel, because they can connect with the final user. And they don't need the app. That is the problem that we were talking about a few moments ago. And I think that in the future, the big apps will be the new channel for the restaurants for the hotels, and the marketing campaigns will be more extensive and more democratic in that way. Because I can connect with different apps to connect with a final user. Our proximity is excellent in that in that way. Because if you put beacons off when you put your pencil in someplace where the hotel is or where the restaurant is, you can attract people with different products and with new products and with low costs.

  Oleg Morajko 43:01

  I think that the key point here is the question. So who owns the app? Who owns the audience, right? It's a big battle, worldwide battle. And obviously, cities are interested in being the owner of the audience, right. And this is I think this this, this trend will go will spread out. And there's lots of technologies that will enable that. And obviously, they compete with the US. But they also want to compete with Facebook, Google and other big players, for the audience, right? Because this enables them to actually make their local economy stronger, and build local connections and local ecosystems. And I think this is one of the directions that may happen. And this is different to internet and to everything is online. Because the you need physical devices, you need physical location services, maintenance, and people and teams work together locally, to provide such services.

  Maria Fernanda 43:58

  And they are competing with Facebook and Google, not only for the audience, but for the knowledge of the audience for the analytics, because they don't get this, I will make a new cup analytics in the physical world. Yes,

  Steve Statler 44:11

  I think the data ownership is going to be very, very interesting, because everybody feels like they own it. Find the consumer, I feel like I own my data. If I'm the venue owner, if I'm the city, then I feel like I own the data. The retailer wants to own it. And maybe if I'm a CPG company and a brand and I'm paying for the promotions, then I feel like I should have access to the data. So resolving that and also keeping track of who can see what is a big challenge.

  Oleg Morajko 44:40

  Absolutely. And that's the goal of the century, right?

  Steve Statler 44:43

  Yes, very good. Well, good luck in solving that. It's been fantastic talking to you both. I'm so pleased that we could talk to a company that's led by a woman I feel bad this is probably our 12th or 13th episode and you're the first female CEO so we're gonna I try and do better. We did have so the Hitchhiker's Guide to the ecosystem is kind of the companion book. And we had two female contributors there who did a fantastic job on our RFID and our programmatic advertising sections. So here's to saying stronger female influence in our ecosystem. So very good. Maria and I like thanks very much for your time you guys are doing some really interesting work. Congratulations on the company.

  Maria Fernanda 45:29

  Thank you very much.

  Oleg Morajko 45:30

  Thank you, Steve. Great talking to you. Going back to your question about music and Mars right. I think will be very simple for me. Basically, I'm a musician myself I started and then change the keyboard you know. Okay. Yeah, but I think the good vibe is very important. So this is motivation that drives to do things right. But your question is very simple. So I just tell you, Shania Twain, okay. The Beatles, okay. Just drowning, which is, you know, hard, hard, heavy metal, which he's a he's a, I think number one guitar player in the world, in my opinion, okay. And this gives enough energy to do anything you need to do right. So, this will be my answer.