21.02.2014 - 13:50
The Mobile World Congress, the most important mobile device show in the world, also gives rise to more and more events each year that take place outside the halls of the expo center. They are promoted by the event organizer, GSMA, or by businesses, groups or institutions with ties to the mobile sector. Some of these diverse proposals take place this weekend before the congress—which will be held at the Gran Via expo center between February 24-27. The following recommendations begin on Saturday, with two of the more unique activities.
Mp3 Experiment (February 22)
Cellularline, in collaboration with the surprise street acting group, Improv Everywhere, will present one of its Mp3 Experiments at 4:30 in the afternoon in the Poble Espanyol in Montjuïc. It is a ‘sound experience’ in which Francesco Tristano, The/Das and Pau Roca will all participate. The event is titled The Listening Effect and suggests that the attendees experiment with Cellularline’s sound related products in order to change the perception of what we listen to daily in the form of music, voices, noises….
Hack The Ride Hackathon (12pm, February 22 until 12pm, February 23)
A hackathon is a hacker marathon focused on a particular topic. In the specific case of ‘Hack The Ride‘ it’s an event sponsored by the automobile company BMW with the aim of attracting developers, designers, and creative drivers who will build, in twenty-four hours, new mobile applications that improve the experience of driving around the city on a motorcycle.
mPowered Industries and 4 Years from Now (February 24-27)
Over the years that it’s been held in Barcelona, the MWC has changed names, size, focus, and also content. This year, for example, the organization has designed two parallel associated events focused on covering categories that are farther afield than those normally included in the show. On the one hand, there is mPowered Industries, targeted to technology professionals in the health, tourism, publicity, and communication media fields and which looks to precisely analyze the rising interest in the mobile sector from various angles.
At the exhibition halls at Montjuïc, between February 24-27, mPowered Industries will also hold the 4 Years from Now (4YFN) day long sessions for entrepreneurs. These are conceived as a high-level international meeting for mobile entrepreneurship and hope to gather important industry leaders, successful entrepreneurs, and digital experts, in addition to accelerators, incubators, and investors. Among their numerous activities, there will be discussions on journalism in the mobile era, of movies filmed with the iPhone, and of the Internet of Things (IoT). It is also within the 4YFN day sessions that the most famous and awaited speaker of the year, Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, will give his MWC keynote, Monday afternoon, on the immediate future of the internet.
Mobile Premier Awards (February 24)
Taking advantage of the fact that the MWC has taken place in Barcelona for the last nine years, the Barcelona-based AppCircus gives each year during the first day of the show, one of the most important mobile application prizes: the Mobile Premier Awards. The event takes place in the Sala Apolo from 4pm to 10pm, and twenty mobile app finalists hope to be crowned app of the year. There are three Catalan contenders among the finalists: Samplr (for iOS) which lets you create music and play with sound, Splyce (iOS) which selects music on mobile devices and mixes it automatically, and Social Diabetes (Android) which helps people with diabetes manage their illness in real time.
Brokerage Event (February 24-26)
Within the Mobile World Congress 2014, the Acció program of the Catalan Government (Generalitat) will hold a Brokerage Event for Catalan companies between February 24-26. It is a business meeting in the format of bilateral interviews oriented toward helping businesses find international commercial and technological partners.
Imagine Express Hack-a-Train (February 24-27)
The Californian-Catalan company Imagine Express is behind one of the more original proposals related to the MWC: the Hack-a-Train (video). It’s a mobile event for creating mobile apps. Specifically, Monday in Barcelona thirty-six specialists will board a high speed train, and during the four day ride, passing through Paris and London, they will create the best mobile apps that they can at 300 km/hour. Thursday they will return to Barcelona to show off their final projects.
Barcelonada 2.0 February 24-28
Moving around in Barcelona is not easy for people who live outside of the city. For that reason, the educational network LaceNet has organized the Barcelonada 2.0, an activity addressed at teenagers so that they can find any place in the city by combining classic methods with the latest technology (mobile internet, geolocation, social networks, QR codes, augmented reality…). Eight high schools in central Catalonia will participate.
Mobile Social Day (February 26)
The rise in the mobile technology sector translates into continuous job growth. A good example of this is the fact that an estimated 800,000 new jobs have been created in the European Union since 2007 thanks to app development. Mobile Social Day, which is held Wednesday at the Mobile World Centre in the central Barcelona Plaça Catalunya is a session organized by the Generalitat, Barcelona City Government and the Barcelona Mobile World Capital in order to explain mobile technology sector job and education possibilities to citizens.
Digital 4C (Febrary 27 and 28)
At the bottom of the Rambles, in the Arts Santa Mònica, the Catalan Department of Culture is promoting a new event tied to the MWC called Digital 4C, with the intent of becoming an essential tool in bringing the technological and cultural worlds closer together. This ‘look towards the future from a cultural point of view’ hopes to analyze how change in the consumer model, production and monetization of cultural and artist work affects creators of culture. It also hopes to promote tools so that these same creators can learn to understand and use new languages and new forms of production and communication.
