congress

The GSMA Mobile World Congress, the main international trade fair and congress for cell-phone-related industries, is being held in the Catalan capital from Monday the 25th of February until Thursday the 28th. 70,000 attendees, half of which are senior executives from 200 different countries, are coming to Barcelona to develop new business opportunities and discover the sector’s novelties. With 94,000 square metres of exhibition space, 1,500 participating companies and 300 speakers, the 2013 MWC will break all previous records, and it will be the 8th consecutive year it has been organised in Barcelona. In addition, Barcelona will unveil its new Mobile World Hub by June, aiming to become the world capital of the mobile industries in its own right.

The Spanish Drivers and Railway Assistant Workers Trade Union, which had called for the strike, has reached an agreement with the Catalan Government’s trains operating company and has cancelled the protest, scheduled for the 25th-28th of February. The strike had been planned to coincide and affect the Mobile World Congress, the main international event of the cell-phone-related industry, to be held in Barcelona next week.

The platform, which is aiming to become one of the world’s main hubs for companies working within the mobile and cell phone-related industry, will start its activities in the Catalan capital in June. The Mobile World Hub aims “to transform Barcelona and Catalonia into the best mobile framework” to enhance entrepreneurship, develop business projects, attract talent, create knowledge and become one of the main world centres of the mobile industry. In addition, it will also work to make of Barcelona an international lighthouse hosting the regulation and standardization bodies for the mobile industry. The Mobile World Hub will be located in the MediaTIC Building, a high-tech venue in the Catalan capital’s Poblenou neighbourhood. The announcement comes five days before the Mobile World Congress kicks off.

Barcelona plays host each year to the world’s largest cell phone-related technology event, the Mobile World Congress, and the Catalan city is becoming an international hub in this field, concentrating several platforms, business initiatives and cultural projects. In fact, Barcelona was declared the Mobile World Capital, in order to act as a global meeting point and platform for mobile related industry. The Mobile World Centre was unveiled on Thursday in Catalunya Square, in the heart of the city, and will become a permanent lighthouse for mobile technology. It will display human stories of how this technology can help in everyday life, explaining the latest developments and also the history of this industry.

The world’s main event showcasing cell phone and mobile technology, the Mobile World Congress, is starting the final countdown to open its doors in one month’s time in Barcelona, as it has been doing each year since 2006. In its 8th year in the Catalan capital, the MWC, which is organised by GSMA, will move from Montjuic to the Gran Via venue of Fira de Barcelona, in order to increase its space by 30%. Between, the 25th and 28th of February, this trade fair, expert conference and industry meeting point will host more than 70,000 visitors from 200 different countries, 300 speakers and 1,500 companies, 70 of which are Catalan. The congress will bring in more than €300 million to Barcelona’s economy and will create 6,500 temporary jobs.

Barcelona’s trade fair complex will end 2012 with a €116 million turnover, an improvement compared to 2011 and even more so compared to 2010. With international leading shows such as the Mobile World Congress, Alimentaria and the Smart City Expo, Fira de Barcelona competes at an international level with the world’s main trade fairs. In a press release, Fira de Barcelona reaffirms its “leadership in Spain in the area of industrial trade shows”.

Barcelona will hold, at least until 2018, the status of being the world’s mobile industry capital. Every year Barcelona hosts the world’s main event in this industry, the Mobile World Congress. This event is part of a broader project: the Mobile World Capital, which plans activities and events throughout the year and works to make Barcelona the greatest business and technological centre of the mobile industry. The Spanish telecommunication giant Telefonica announced it will bring €7.8 million to develop this project. Furthermore, it will allow MWCapital to use 1,800 square metres of a building located in Barcelona’s main square – Plaça Catalunya – to show the latest technological developments.

Phonetastic Sitges Mobile Film Festival will be held next summer and aims to promote new audiovisual media and film distribution. The MWCapital, based in Barcelona as the organiser of the Mobile World Congress, and the Sitges’s International Fantastic Film Festival of Catalonia are organising lectures and workshops on the subject. It will be held with in the Mobile World Festival’s Summer Week, the week of cultural activities related to mobile technology that will be organised each summer. A new feature at the Sitges Film Festival will be an award for the best short films made using mobile phones and touch tablets.

The North-American company will launch later this year the ‘PayPass Wallet’, a global technology platform that unifies physical and digital payment systems. Master Card has just opened an office in Barcelona in order to take advantage of the synergies in a “pulse for future technological development” according to the president of MasterCard Europe, as Barcelona, was proclaimed World Capital of Mobile Telephony. MasterCard Europe has only one office per country, so Catalonia will be the first exception: with the opening of the new office in Barcelona, the company has two locations in Spain.

The 27th edition of the Electric Vehicle Symposium (EVS) –the benchmark world congress for this sector- will take place in the Catalan capital, taking over from Los Angeles in organizing the EVS27. Barcelona beat Paris and Geneva in the fight to organise the event, which is a chance for local electric mobility companies to create international synergies.

From May 21st to 25th the First International Congress about Management and Disclosure of Protected Volcanic Landscapes, Volcandpark, is taking place in Olot, in Central Catalonia. The event will project the Garrotxa Natural Park's Volcanic Zone.

The world’s most popular short-message network has included Catalan as one of its 28 official languages. Twitter has opened a Catalan ‘translation centre’ to adapt its content. In the first 24h, more people had registered voluntarily than the number of those who did it within the 6 months after the Finnish version was released. Twitter’s CEO had already announced at the 2011 Mobile World Congress, which is held every year in Barcelona, that the company would do it, but he did not specify a date. Wikipedia opened its Catalan version 11 years ago and Youtube incorporated Catalan in early 2011. Catalan is is the world’s 8th language with the most blogs, the 13th most used language in Wikipedia, and the 14th search language in Google.

‘Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya’ (CDC), the Liberal force within the two-party Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Coalition ‘Convergència i Unió’ (CiU), held its party congress over the weekend. For the first time in its history, CDC has claimed for Catalonia to have its “own state” in order “to avoid being erased off the map of cultures, languages, and world nations” as “Spain threatens Catalonia” and is no longer a “project that can be shared”. The current President of the Catalan Government and until last weekend the CDC Secretary General, Artur Mas, has now become the party Chairman. Oriol Pujol, son of the former Catalan president Jordi Pujol and Mas' close collaborator, has been elected the new Secretary General with 97.8% of the votes.

Barcelona was declared the Mobile World Capital last summer, and the organising city of the Mobile World Congress until at least 2018. Being the Mobile World Capital means that Barcelona aims to become one of the main world centres for the mobile industry. Furthermore, several projects will be based in the Catalan capital, such as a Mobile World Hub. A foundation has been created to promote these projects and attract investments. It is funded with € 30 million each from Barcelona City Council, the Catalan Government and the Spanish Government, and it is open to the private sector.

Virtual desks, automatic cash points, a new packaging line or consulting services on innovation are some of the Catalan products displayed at CeBIT. This is the Europe’s biggest trade fair on digital industry. It is being held in Hannover from March 6th to March 10th.