A big hello to my readers who have been following these brief updates daily. Two solid days of sessions, and spent indoors, paved the way for campus visits to Apple, Google and Facebook. All these companies have attained cult-like status. Their annual revenues are greater than the GDPs of many countries and the sheer number of individuals that they impact, would put them a notch higher than several densely populated nations. Call it the binding force, the glue, stickiness factor or what you will, but perhaps it would not be too brazen to even challenge Karl Marx and his apt observation back then, about religion being the “opium of the masses.†Arguably, and after 150 years, it is technology that may have well replaced religion as the new binding force. Would it sound blasphemous, if I compared these modern day Head Quarters to popular places of worship? The high citadels where only geeks kowtow!  A stretch of imagination, it may well be perceived as, but the excitement inside our bus was real and not imagined at all. We had spent an adequate amount of time with each other, in the last couple of days and the spirit of camaraderie was contagious. At Apple

• Right at the outset they described how innovation is viewed within the organisation. Clearly it is about disrupting the market.
• 1.5 mn apps that Apple runs is a testimony to that. Of course, there’s an entire community of people out there who do not necessarily swear by Apple’s products, so it is up for debate. Nonetheless, it tells a remarkable story of a single organisation which gave the world its many firsts.
• 380k members of paid apple developers program, the minds behind all these radical shifts that the brand is closely associated with.
• 1.2 mn jobs created in Europe. Impressive as it may sound, it also raises tremendous hope at times when Europe is facing a crisis of sorts, and remains precariously balanced at the cusp of great change.
• $ 40bn paid to developers. A whopping figure indeed but clearly tells the story about where the focus lies. The guys who are doing the heavy lifting and getting rewarded in turn.

The Crux of the Talk by John Geleynse, Sr Director Technology Evangelism An app has to be:

• Delightful: which is inviting, intuitive, engaging exciting, memorable, and most importantly, useful.

• Innovative: ground breaking, category defining, inspirational, memorable, influential, State of art & takes advantage of latest ios devices, supports latest OS releases, integrates with latest technologies.

• Connected: adding value to customers by connecting to other devices.

Designed to be: efficient, interactive, looks gorgeous, virtual, familiar, retina ready and adaptive, dynamic with motion effects.