Mobilize 2017 Draws 250 Mobile Innovators to San Francisco

On October 16th, 250 mobile leaders from over 125 companies across industries and continents attended Mobilize 2017 at the Westin St. Francis in San Francisco. The conference, organized by Apptimize, focused on how teams can unlock their genius and build better products through experimentation and data-informed decisions. The day was filled with actionable and inspiring keynotes from leaders at Airbnb, Delivery Hero, HotelTonight, Netflix, Now TV, Starbucks, Strava, Wall Street Journal, and others.

SC Moatti, founder of Products that Count and a tech visionary, kicked off the conference with a talk about building great mobile products. SC explained, “you can find a hook for any one of your businesses that will keep your users entertained, so that when they are ready to buy, you are there.” SC shared that great products are extensions of our best selves.

“The best mobile products learn as we use them, give us meaning, and operate by beauty.”

Steve Urban, engineering leader on experimentation at Netflix, presented a keynote on how Netflix navigates the experimentation lifecycle. Steve not only shared experimentation best practices, but also the company culture required for good data-driven decision-making. Steve commented,

“No matter how data-driven a company is, or how sophisticated your data pipelines or analysis techniques are, experimentation is a discipline which combines art, science, and company culture.”

Jeff Feng, Product Manager for Analytics Products & Experimentation Platform at Airbnb, led a session on How Airbnb Does Data Science. Jeff commented, “data is the voice of the customer at scale.” Jeff discussed how 60% of engineers and data scientists at Airbnb run experiments every week.

“At Airbnb, controlled experiments are the building blocks for decision-making. We believe that everyone should be equipped to make data-informed decisions.”

During the conference, Apptimize also gave the audience a sneak peek into its exciting product roadmap. Nancy Hua, CEO of Apptimize, shared three major product updates centered around supporting teams to make data-informed decisions efficiently. “Each of these feature releases is designed to help product teams both create amazing user experiences and also drive bottom-line results.” These updates include:

1. Integrated results beyond conversion (e.g., support for measuring basket size changes, among others)
2. Advanced rollout capabilities: holdout groups and advanced allocation logic
3. Cross-platform experimentation

Those who missed Mobilize can view videos from many of the presentations here.