If a man from Michigan had appeared 18 years ago and started talking about the “digital ecosystem” in the middle of a museum in Barcelona, someone would have called security personnel to ask them to remove that individual from there. But we are not in 2006, we are in February 2024, the hotels are full of professionals from the sector who have come from half the world and the man from Michigan is John Hoffman.
The visible face of Mobile takes the microphone at the Antoni Tàpies Foundation to celebrate one of the main legacies left by the largest congress held in Barcelona: a solid digital ecosystem of companies and professionals who make a living throughout the year in the city outside the four days of the event that acted as a catalyst. “In 2006 there was no ecosystem – recalls Hoffman – and over the years we have gone from an event that takes place once a year to leaving a legacy.” Nearly 50,000 people work among emerging companies and the 140 hubs of large companies installed in the Catalan capital.
The general director of the MWC, who is asked to take photos with him as if he were a rock star, attributes part of the credit to the Mobile World Capital foundation, in which the congress organization itself is represented along with public administrations. and private partners. It is precisely MWCapital who is behind the organization of the Mobile Lunch, an event that brings together nearly 400 professionals from the aforementioned digital ecosystem on Sunday at noon to kick off the congress a few hours before the more institutional dinner and the unstoppable maelstrom once the doors of the fairgrounds open this Monday morning.
Tàpies said that “a work of art should perplex the viewer” and the truth is that many of the attendees are impressed by the environment in which an already common meeting is held that has previously passed through the Palau de Congressos, the market the Boqueria and Palo Alto. In this environment chosen to commemorate the centenary of the artist's birth, with large-format paintings on the walls and trays full of food everywhere, the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, takes pride in the technological hub of southern Europe in which the city has become.
And that is when, aware that Mobile is enjoying one of the most peaceful moments of the 18 years he has been here, Collboni proclaims that “Barcelona has returned, to compete and to share the idea that technology has to be at the service of society and not society at the service of technology.” In the same sense, the Minister of Digital Transformation, José Luis Escrivá, urges reaching “a consensus with social agents and civil society to face the great debate about the limits that are placed on machines.”
It is what is known as technological humanism, a concept that a couple of attendees asked at random are incapable of explaining just as those next to them cannot understand what Tàpies wanted to convey with that pair of socks hooked on a huge painting next to the who taste a good portion of sausage with beans that requires no explanation.
