I attended EiG Expo this week and listened to many of the sessions, here are my reflections from the week.
Multiplayer and social games: Monetising the communities by Jörgen Larsson, Founder, AhaBingo, Playzeek, onGolf and esn.
The talk pointed out that you should use viral marketing insted of spending money on marketing. You should also make emotional and entertaining content which is social by nature and customers want to consume social content socially. This can be done by integrating with larger social networks and let players play real money games with friends.
This was …

Image 1. EIG Expo, Copenhagen.
The CEO Panel discussion was very interesting to listen to.
On the panel were the following:

Norbert Teufelberger, Co-CEO, bwin
Gigi Levy, CEO, 888
Jim Ryan, CEO, PartyGaming
David Yu, CEO, Betfair
Ed Andrewes, MD, Ladbrokes eGaming
Henry Birch, CEO, William Hill Online

The main key points from the panel were for me

B2B business will be more important and many on the panel see that media companies will go into online gaming to increase revenues and especially 888.com (with Dragonfish) and PartyGaming work hard with B2B.
Focus on CRM and retain players
bwin have put a …

The Start-Up Launch Pad was a fun session where four startups had to pitch their ideas.
The Start-Ups were:

Tailorbet offers an automated, peer-to-peer service that allows customers to create customised bets on anything statistically quantifiable in sports, with or without odds.
USM is developing new casino software technology that will challenge current business models and offer an alternative to gaming operators.
Jacky Betting from Sweden is bringing a new proposition for sports pools with a strong social media context.
MasterGrinders is a French start-up developing an innovative, community-based, consumer facing affiliate platform for mass-multitable …

The first panel session at EIG Expo talked about the future and what trends they see.
The main areas were:

innovation
entertainment
mobile
social media (voted as the trend that would have the biggest impact on the online gambling)
user experience (understanding the customer was voted the most important key factor to succeed in the next five years)

It is great news to hear that the gaming industry see the importance of social media and user experience.
The panel had the following speakers:

Mark Blandford, Chairman, Valhalla Investments
Dietmar Knoechelmann, CEO, Wirecard Payment Solutions
Adriaan Brink, CEO, iCoins and MD, Genesis …

Good news for me! It looks like I will be attending EIG 2009 in Copenhagen 15-17 of September. Are you going to? And want to discuss user experience and igaming then let me know!
Send me an e-mail, staffan.schroder @ inuse.se :)
/Staffan

This year European I-Gaming Expo by Clarion Gaming takes place in Copenhagen in September.
The programme looks really good and I’m really hoping to be able to attend.
Here are a few of the great topics of this year’s programme:

Start-Up LaunchPad
State of the industry: Winning strategies in today’s business environment – hear CEOs of the leading operators speak
Designing and exploiting analytical tools to build consumers’ profiles, understand better their gaming habits and forecast their future behaviour
Customer focus group
Handset revolution and user experience
Multiplayer and social games: Monetising the communities

Go here for the full EIG2009 …