For two years, the pandemic turned fairs and congresses into aseptic television sets, and the pavilions, into open fields where cobwebs grew. It was said, insistently, that digital connections were here to stay and that the physical would always have to coexist with the virtual. There were even those who predicted that the fair cities would go into decline because the companies would never pay for the trips of their managers abroad.
Fortunately, the post-pandemic has exposed the most doomsayers. The fairs held so far have given clear signs of recovery. And, if anyone still had doubts, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) is going to settle any debate this week. Neither an open war in the middle of Europe nor a convulsive geopolitical context, with the US and China reissuing the cold war, will tarnish the congress.
There will be screens – of course – that will allow people who cannot travel to participate in the contest. But it doesn't make much sense to be obsessed with achieving that balance between the physical and the virtual: as long as Barcelona and other fair cities manage to provide a good stay for displaced professionals, there will continue to be handshakes and restaurants with full reservations. The screens will only be an added value.
What is significant is that, even in the worst years of the pandemic, Mobile never ceased to have a positive influence on the city that hosts it.
This time it was not the taxi drivers or the restaurateurs who took advantage of the congress, but Barcelona as a whole. The mere presence of the MWC in the city has ended up enriching its brand as a center of scientific, technological and cultural talent. In the midst of the health crisis, investments by companies in the sector did not stop announcing.
Part of the blame for this redefinition of the city brand lies with the fact that the GSMA chose it in its day as the capital of new forms of connection between people. Although it was not an immediate crush – the Mobile World Capital took a few years to reach cruising speed as a link between the city and the fair – the symbiosis ended up taking place: the congress grew exponentially, and Barcelona began to frequent the exclusive club of technological cities.
In the midst of the decline of the traditional industry and the expansive model emanating from the 1992 Olympic Games, based on the great urban reforms and mass tourism, already exhausted, Barcelona has no choice but to redefine itself through what are its new strengths. In recent years, a promising technological ecosystem has been added to the good cultural offer and scientific excellence.
The MWC has been an accelerator of this transformation, because it has favored the connection between the local community and the industry that lands each year at the congress. One of the fruits is the 4YFN, the event dedicated to startups that is held in the same venue as the MWC. Another, the arrival of a hundred technological hubs, with a turnover of 1,400 million. These are 96 digital centers that have been established in the metropolitan area and that employ 15,000 people.
But, in a technological context that changes at the dizzying speed of artificial intelligence, all effort is little. The city must interact even more with the technological community that the congress attracts.
One of the pending subjects is to position Barcelona as a reference city in the debate on technological humanism. For this, it has a tool that came from the hand of Mobile, the Digital Future Society, dependent on the Ministry of Economy, which still has a long way to go.
Confirmation that the MWC will stay in Barcelona forever should allow this and other issues to be promoted calmly, but also with determination. The commitment to turn the city into a global technological pole will not find a better ally than the largest world congress on connectivity. The MWC.
