App-solutely fantastic evening at AppCircus London

This is a guest blog by Claire Owen.

London's silicon roundabout was awash with hopeful, if sightly nervous, app developers last Wednesday evening as we saw the finale of AppCircus London 2012! The concept behind the AppCircus roadshow is to provide a platform to some of the most creative and innovative apps in the market, app creators get exposure to fellow developers and key industry specialists as well as the opportunity to receive a nomination to present at the Mobile Premier Awards during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. <caption id="attachment_223" align="aligncenter" width="512" caption="Expert panel flexing their mobile muscle."> 

</caption> Past winners of AppCircus London have included SwiftKey, Echo Echo and The Next Web Review. What more of an incentive could you ask for to submit an application!? This year AppCircus London promoted their interest in attracting both female app developers and female targeted apps  the 10 selected pitches definitely reflected this move to attract developers with more of a focus on social, children's play and arts/heritage themes.

The Final 10 pitches:

• British First Aid - Free first aid app bringing life-saving skills into your hands, featuring animated content, interactive quizzes, and videos.
• CircleMe - CircleMe is the social network that connects you to the things you love and to people around the world who share your interests.
• PilotUniPPL - Pilot Uni PPL is the app that makes you a real pilot. Pilot Uni interactively walks you through all essential scenarios needed to fly a small aircraft
• Boots Opticians - The app assesses your vision through a series of simple tests tailored by professional opticians and makes recommendations based on your results
• Curzon Cinema - Explore the Curzon Cinema for memories, from snogging in the back row, to the bomb that exploded outside the front entrance in 1941, to celebrate their centenary this year.
• Shhmooze - Shhmooze helps you make smart connections so you can have fantastic face-to-face meetings.
• Surrey Police - Social media mobile apps for engaging the public with police. 500 officers & staff use the app for quick real time updates, compare police activities with monthly crime etc
• A Midsummer Night's Dream - A Midsummer Night's Dream follows the plot of the original play closely but with a short rhyming text. Fully interactive, illustrations, lots of puzzles and riddles, bilingual English/Spanish, voice recording
• Learn the Words: Animals - Learn the words: Animals is developed under the educational concept of 'learning by doing' with the purpose to encouraging a creative play.
• Novellas - Read. Write. Share. Movellas is a social community platform for young readers and writers. Movellas works on iOS and Android, with 1000s of free stories to be discovered.

You can find out more and view the pitches on the AppCircus website. The lucky 10 had just 3 minutes to pitch their apps to an audience of around 100 "technologistas", developers, app enthusiasts, and the grand jury. The jury included Simon Cross - Engineer at Facebook London, Paul Sawers - App & Media Editor at The Next Web, Daniel Appelquist - Head of Product Management for BlueVia, and our very own supremely talented Limvirak Chea, Director of Business Development! <caption id="attachment_221" align="aligncenter" width="512" caption="InMobi's Limvirak Chea fully focussed on the A Midsummer Night's Dream pitch!">

</caption> Being a relative newbie to the world of app development I was struck by the level of enthusiasm, individuality and personality that came across in each of the presentations - especially Midsummer Night's Dream, Curzon Cinemas and Novellas. The level of corporate professionalism was incredibly high - with a special mention to British First Aid and Boots Opticians for their great pitches! After a nail biting half hour of burger munching, beer slurping and networking, the all-singing, all-dancing WINNER of AppCircus 2012 was announced...

CircleMe was the grand winner!

Shmoooze achieved the runner-up prize

The winner most definitely doesn't get it all at AppCircus with The British Red Cross and Boots Opticians apps both receiving the coveted "Honourable Mention"! A big thank you to all those developers who had the nerves of steel to present such inspiring pitches, we'll all be eagerly watching your rise to the higher echelons of app fame over the next year!