Integrated Systems Europe - A man’s audiovisual world

Since Tuesday, January 30, the world’s biggest audiovisual trade show, Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), has been taking place at Barcelona’s Fira Gran Via site.  

Prior to the event, Mike Blackman, the managing director promised that this year’s edition – the 20th of its kind and fourth in Barcelona, would be “the biggest ever” both in terms of space, visitors, and exhibitors. 

Divided into seven technology zones, the exhibition has been showcasing the latest technologies in the audiovisual field, with artificial intelligence, or AI, being particularly popular at this year’s edition. 

This is also the case for the Catalan startups, which are among the more than 1,300 exhibitors present this year. 

Jesús Benatove, the strategic innovation consultant at Barcelona-based startup Metacampus, who is attending ISE for the first time as an exhibitor, says to Catalan News that technology is “at the center of our lives.” In fact, he says, it’s “changing the way we socialize or even the way we work.”

One of the Catalan startup companies, which uses AI is Feeder. Co-founded by Pablo Filomeno after the 2020 pandemic, the company uses artificial intelligence and facial recognition technology to analyze how audiences react to video and audiovisual content.  

“I used to work in marketing and did a lot of marketing campaigns, and I always thought there was a lack of qualitative analysis,” Filomeno tells Catalan News while the technology behind him registers the different emotions on his face from the degree of attention, ‘wow’, fun or anger, to name a few. 

According to Filomeno, it’s important to understand how people feel when in front of a video in order to better create a specific product. Facial recognition technology can, therefore, be used to specifically identify emotions, without having to ask the audience directly. 

Catalan start-ups at ISE 

On Tuesday, during a tour of different companies’ stands at the Fira Gran Via site, Catalan business minister Roger Torrent told media, that the audiovisual sector is growing in Catalonia, having generated over €7,500 million in revenue in 2023, which is a 7% increase compared to 2022. Torrent also added that startups were “rejuvenating” the sector.

For Beatove from Metacampus, ISE is a great place to connect with new clients, and most importantly find “synergies”.

“For us, networking is the most important thing,” he says. 

According to the StartUp Heatmap Europe Report 2023, Barcelona is Europe's third favorite city to locate a startup for the sixth year in a row.

“Barcelona is the perfect city to be a creative company, we have a nice ecosystem, a lot of help from the city council and the public institutions,” says Sebastian Soriano, co-founder of Catalan creative company Lowkey Moves, who is also attending the ISE for the first time as an exhibitor.

What makes it difficult to be a startup in the Catalan capital, he says, is that the city is small compared to cities such as London or any city in the US, which in turn makes the competition harder. 

Filomeno from Feeder agrees adding that getting funding is very difficult, because “there are a lot of amazing startups and ideas everywhere.” 

Gender gap in the tech industry 

Despite Argentine audiovisual artist, Sofia Crespo, as well as multi-time Academy Award-winning director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy headlining as keynote speakers at this year’s edition, female exhibitors and attendees are few and far between when walking around the over 82,000-square-meter site. 

At the 2023 edition of ISE, 82.62% of all attendees were male, while 15% were female, 1.9% didn’t specify, and 0.5% were non-binary, according to ISE data.   

Globally, less than 30% of all people working in tech are women, and when it comes to funding, only about 10% of the people who receive funding are female. 

“Obviously, it's a shame,” says Soriano of Lowkey Moves about the lack of gender diversity in tech but adds that he thinks it’s something that is changing. “When I look around, I see more women and non-binary people working in the creative and tech industries and only it's a matter of time before it will be reflected on the boards of companies,” he says, adding that although Lowkey Moves is still a small company, they try to be conscious and aware when hiring new talent.  

In Metacampus’ case, about 30% of the talent hired is female, as is one of the co-founders, and both Jesús Beatove from Metacampus and Pablo Filomeno from Feeder agree that change is coming, although slowly.  

“The younger generations don’t think about it that much,” says Beatove of gender roles. “And I think the metaverse is the best playground to play with your digital identity and become whatever you want.” 

The 20th edition of the Integrated Systems Fair wraps up on Friday, February 2.