An indicator of the state of form of a fair event is the activity it generates in the previous days. In this sense, the large number of public and private calls circulating these days in Barcelona on the occasion of the Smart City Expo reveal the extent to which this fair has become a global reference for cities. A reference, especially, in the debate of ideas, beyond the technological innovations that were so fascinating in the first editions, as explained today in the Dinero supplement.
But here we will stop in a small village located in the confines of the Smart City Expo and that responds to the enigmatic name of Puzzle revolutionaries of the future. Its founder and director is Zina Jarrahi Cinker, physicist and frontier tech strategist.
The event is in its third edition, after it was presented in July 2021 by the CEO of GSMA-Mobile World Congress, John Hoffman, who is also the president of Puzzle
In front of a salmon tartare, in a restaurant near the Fira, Jarrahi Cinker admitted on Tuesday that hers is an author's forum, marked by her particular conception of how ideas should be presented today. “Our radar captures advances and we translate and interrelate them, but we do not do it through the traditional conference model, but rather using technology to make our presentations much more attractive.”
We told her that the use of large screens to reinforce the staging forces the speakers to have a certain theatrical attitude, in the style of Sónar D, a festival in which she herself participated in its last edition.
They can be called forums, events, symposiums, congresses or festivals, but there is something in which fairs have not changed since their origins: the enthusiasm of the trader when he explains the novelties that the public is going to find.
This is the case of this scientist: “We have scheduled, among many other things, a conference on advances in the ability to store data in DNA. In a place like the one this restaurant occupies – he states while extending his arms – one day there could be room for all the knowledge accumulated during history, with all that that entails, because we are going to have a serious problem due to the space occupied by the data".
The director of Puzzle highly evolved formulas of technology.
The Nobel Prize in Physics Roger Penrose is one of the guests (he is 92 years old and will speak on screen). As locals, among others, Professor Andreu MasColell; the physicist José Ignacio Latorre or the CEO of Neuroelectrics, Ana Maiques.
The worry? The uncertain future of Puzzle
Puzzle for integrating all these concepts, and there is the example of the Sagrada Família.”
The Smart City Expo is a first-class showcase. It benefits Puzzle X because it puts it in contact with companies that develop advanced solutions for the future. But it can also make invisible a forum with much smaller dimensions and a very marked personality.
Maybe your destiny is to fly independently, or to be associated with some other type of event. It is a forum born at the Fira that is in tune with the commitment to innovation that Barcelona is making as it tries to reduce its dependence on tourism. It would be a shame if he flew with his inventions and his crazy wise men elsewhere.
