Barcelona's conference agenda will be full of events from now on, first with the Integrated Systems Europe (between January 30 and February 2) and then with the Mobile World Congress (MWC), which will be held from the 26th. to February 29. And the congressmen who arrive in the Catalan capital may not be aware that a drought has devastated Catalonia for 39 months, and that water consumption must be reduced. The organizers of the MWC, who kicked off the congress this Thursday by explaining the main developments, have detailed that they will carry out an awareness campaign about the drought among attendees, who will be, according to their forecasts, around 95,000 people. The business and technology event will bring back Asian companies and congressmen—who in recent years have come in smaller numbers due to the restrictions of the pandemic—and will focus more on technological debates and connectivity platforms and solutions than on the events themselves. mobile telephone devices.
Although the bulk of congressmen's water consumption will presumably be in hotels, MWC organizers have explained that they are also concerned about this issue. “I am from Sweden, and there we have much more water than we need. Many people who come from abroad will not know that there is a drought here,” explained Mats Granryd, the general director of GSMA, the mobile industry association that organizes the congress. Thus, on the one hand, the organization will launch awareness campaigns aimed at attendees, and Fira de Barcelona, responsible for the facilities where the MWC is held, has prepared a protocol to reduce water consumption: the fountain and the ponds on the outside will be turned off and empty, all taps are being checked to ensure that there are no leaks and to shorten the time in which they are automatically open, and the installation in the congress of fountains fed by the water supply network has been ruled out.
The MWC is the great annual business event in Barcelona, due to the volume of attendees – last year 88,500 came, and in 2019 the record of 109,000 was achieved – and because of the years it has been held in the Catalan capital: this one edition is number 18. “When we started, there was talk of 3G, it was only done in Montjuïc, and it was dedicated exclusively to the infrastructure, with antennas, controllers, and mobile phones. “Now we focus on the platforms,” explained Granryd, who made the presentation at the old Estrella Damm factory without John Hoffman, the charismatic organizer of the congress who has always been the visible face, and who this time was absent for reasons personal.
For years, the part dedicated to mobile devices has been reduced, and the congress has turned towards the uses and debates of technology: applications, platforms, usefulness in health and education, or artificial intelligence. “It's much more than mobile phones,” said Granryd, accompanied by the GSMA's marketing director, Lara Dewar. The organization has not given data on the personnel it will hire or the economic impact that this congress will leave on the city, but in the previous edition it was 461 million euros, according to the employers' calculations.
This year, the MWC will bring together more than 2,400 exhibiting companies and around 1,100 speakers, spread across 260 sessions. Among the companies, there are Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Huawei, Meta, Microsoft, Samsung or T-Mobile. Some of them are Asian and are coming for the first time, such as China Telecom and the Japanese KDDI, among others. The MWC will boost the 4YFN entrepreneurship show by giving it an extra floor for emerging companies to set up their stands and show their innovations, and also for professionals, such as engineers and computer scientists, with an area called Talent Arena, organized by the Mobile World Capital Foundation.
Among the speakers at the congress are the executive president of Telefónica, José María Álvarez-Pallete, the CEO of Vodafone, Margherita della Valle, the vice president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, the president of Dell Technologies, Michael Dell, or the co-founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, Demis Hassabis.
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