The Mobile World Congress (MWC) is celebrating its 18th edition in Barcelona, and if this were a birthday party to celebrate coming of age, it would be massive and with very diverse people who don't know each other, but are very willing to get along. On the one hand there are the family members, those who pay for the party: the mobile telephone sector. They have been blowing out candles since the child was born and have seen her grow up alongside the public administrations, who were there by her side when in her teens she faced a pandemic crisis that blew everything up in the air.
On the other hand, there are all those friends that he has made over the last few years and that have shaped his way of being. Some bring cars, others robots, those from further away talk about things that are not very tangible but apparently very interesting such as artificial intelligence and 6G technology... All of them attend the coming of age celebration willing to remain present in that person's life. conference that has made Barcelona its home and is entering adulthood with the desire to take on the world. “It has been the best first day of Mobile,” celebrates the visible face of the congress, John Hoffman, at the end of the day, which will be followed by three more. The organization's forecast is that there will be more than 95,000 attendees, although there are already more than 100,000 registered and the final figure may end up exceeding all expectations.
Erected as a great transversal event in the world of digitalization, Mobile has recovered the feeling of great occasions, with an incessant bustle accompanied by conversations in very different languages since it opened its doors this Monday. It was practically impossible to move through the central corridors of the fairgrounds throughout the morning of the first day of the congress and there were no free tables in the executive meeting spaces.
That is one of the main reasons for the congress, which for four days becomes a small UN where professionals from almost all the countries in the world coexist. On one side of the corridor Colombia, on the other Korea and between them, the United Kingdom. Barcelona acts as a neutral meeting point in Europe for professionals from America and Asia, one of the geopolitical reasons that have promoted the congress during all these years. Asian professionals have a prominent presence, with numerous delegations arriving from China who had not been able to come since 2019 due to the Asian giant's pandemic restrictions.
With them, the exterior structures enabled by the organization to accommodate the 2,400 exhibitors have also returned, an unequivocal indicator that they need space beyond the eight pavilions of the Fira de Barcelona Gran Via venue in l'Hospitalet. Great hopes for the future are placed on the inauguration of pavilion 0 with 60,000 square meters, although that will not be until 2027.
Until then, it's time to fit everything in as best as possible, which is clear from the entrance to the congress itself, where a large external structure that was installed in 2019 has been recovered to reduce crowding and speed up the registration and validation process. of the entrance. With this installation, in addition, the ornamental fountain is covered without water due to the drought, a problem that the organization has informed all attendees about and that is remembered with messages on the mirrors of some sinks from which less water comes out than before. .
Drought is the umpteenth challenge. “In 18 years I have never done the same thing, every year something different happens,” says Sandra Ripoll, director of external events at Fira de Barcelona, leading 30 people who work all year round so that these four days of celebration go smoothly. . This Monday, at half past five in the morning I arrived at the fair and a piece of carpet was torn. Everything was quickly activated so that when the doors opened at eight in the morning everything looked pristine.
Ripoll has accompanied the growth of the show, which he looks at with pride from the engine room and celebrates how “it has progressively gotten bigger.” The growth spurt hit him in 2013, when he moved from Montjuïc to Gran Via, and Ripoll highlights that the work procedures have been greatly improved as the congress has grown older. Everything is becoming more technical and the Fira de Barcelona and GSMA teams are more involved in what Ripoll describes as a “relationship of mutual trust.” Even so, until the party ends on Thursday, no one will rest here.
