Every year in early summer the chair of Prof. Dr. Andrea Back is organizing the St.Gallen Mobile Business Forum. For me it is the third Forum that I am involved in and every year it is a quite challenging task to compile an interesting and inspiring program. This year we put our focus on the application wearable tech in an enterprise context.

So here are the things that I personally look forward to the most:

Meeting a “Cyborg”: While the majority of people thinks “smartwatches” when talking about wearable tech, Pekko Vehviläinen is using around 40 devices and apps on a regular basis, including a chip implant that can transfer bitcoins. This made him earn the title “Most Quantified Man in Finland”. Pekko will be on the panel discussion with my colleague Barbara Josef (who is an excellent interviewer), but also show some of his devices and applications for the health sector during the innovation speeddating.

Pekko Vehviläinen – The most quantified man in Finland

Which is the next thing I am looking forward to:

Speeddating with the latest wearable tech: In the past years we often received the feedback that the content of the Mobile Business Forum did not include enough innovation. So we decided to add more innovative ideas to the agenda, but not in form of a presentation but as short and hands-on live demonstrations of new solutions. We found 10 great solutions targeting different industries – from logistics to healthcare, banking, lifestyle, or Mobile ERP. During this session you get a short and quick overview on the latest in wearable and mobile tech.

Last year’s Mobile Business Forum featured one wearable device – this year there will be more :-)

Enterprise applications of wearables in the “not so far away” future: While in Switzerland I did not come across many companies who productively use wearable technology, Vandrico, a Vancouver-based technology company, has successfully implemented several wearable solutions (and compiled a brilliant database on wearable tech). Gonzalo Tudela, CEO of Vandrico, will join us for the closing keynote and talk about current and future applications of wearable technology. I really enjoyed his talk at last year’s Mobile Business Forum and the brainstorming workshop that we had the day after – he is a really bright mind with lots of great ideas, plus has a broad range of experiences on what actually works in a business context, so his keynote is definitely a must.

Gonzalo Tudela at #mbforum15

Getting hands-on with wearable tech: I participated in a workshop on creating wearable technology a couple of years ago and I found it very inspiring to actually not only sit in front of a screen and create a concept, but to get hands-on and build something. I think a lot of our participants are rather from the business side and might think about potentials of wearables a lot, but have not touched a circuit yet. So I asked Anna Blumenkranz to join us at the pre-conference event on May 31 and conduct a workshop using Forster Rohner smart textiles so participants can create a smart shirt or bag to take home.

Smart textile workshop at the pre-conference event

The program contains  a lot more inspiration – keynotes, panel discussion, workshops of our partners. Go check it out here.

There are still tickets left! Hope to see you there!