Blog

13.05.2013

Presenting the Mobile World Capital to New York

The mobile industry is triggering the mobile economy. Society is turning more and more mobile, and the Mobile World Capital aims to radically accelerate the global growth of mobile.

Barcelona hosts the Mobile World Congress since 2006, the biggest mobile B2B event in the World, and recently it has been elected the world’s capital of mobile technology, successfully leading companies to take advantage of mobile technology’s limitless opportunity.

On Friday May 17th, the Mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias, and one of the two Executive Vice Presidents of Barcelona MWCapital Foundation, Agustín Cordon, also Managing Director of Fira-Barcelona, will present at IESE’s New York Center all these initiatives that are being developed to boost mobile entrepreneurs and firms worldwide.  If you want to join us you are invited to check the program and participate at the event.

In this presentation to New Yorkers, Barcelona Mobile world Capital has joined efforts with GOWEX, the global WIFI operator. GOWEX offers free internet in over 70 cities worldwide, with offices in Madrid, Paris, London, Buenos Aires, and Shanghai. Since May 2013, GOWEX offers free internet to 20 million people in New York, with 1953 Smart WiFi zones, creating the biggest public WiFi network in the world.

You can reed more info in the press release.

03.04.2013

Phone Film Exhibition Series in MWCentre

One of the temporary exhibitions in the Mobile World Centre shows short movies recorded by mobile phones. Some of of these movies have been selected from several festivals, whereas others have been chosen amongst the most beautiful recorded worldwide. They all were created exclusively using smartphones, such as ‘Waking up to life’ by keirux:

On April 2013 the Centre will offer 3 events, where over 30 selected short movies will be exhibited. All shows are free and will start at 19h sharp. Each day will be dedicated to one different area:

 

Check the facebook event page for more details and some selected previews. There you can find a few more of videos to be shown, such as this stop motion animated ‘Dot’ from Sumo Science:

08.02.2013

Open Government: Yes we app!

Technology allows citizens to improve their quality of life in many different ways, and one of them is to make Governments  closer to people. The Mobile World Capital is currently working on an initiative that will help public institutions to cooperate with research centres and universities in a networked Lab. Even though the initiative will be presented in a few weeks, today is the perfect occasion to introduce you an app that was developed by the Generalitat, the Government of Catalonia, for itslast elections in late November 2012.

For years we have seen multiple examples of open government projects that show voting data in real time . Even TVs and newspapers have been feeding of fresh info sent by institutions and broadcasting it. In the last years media groups and other companies have issued apps to follow the campaigns and results, like this selection prepared by cnet during the last Presidential Elections in United States on November 2012.

The Generalitat however, wanted to go beyond and directly offered the real time results. In 2006 the Government started pilot projects to make data gathering from all voting centers faster and safer using PDAs at the same time as the traditional call centre systems:

In only 6 weeks, and in cooperation with private companies, a research team in the CTTI (the Information Technologies and Telecom Center of Generalitat) developed a new app to  increase the speed of results data processing. The Government usually sends every few minutes a report with the latest data to all media, but this app feeds from the database where PDAs are sending the data to, thus creating an near real time system. Users of the app could see more accurate results than TV viewers a few minutes earlier, avoiding human errors and creating a viral broadcast of the results via social networks.

Catalonia has over 7.5 million inhabitants, 5.4 million oh which were called to vote to 8130 different polling stations in 947 municipalities. This time 80% of the stations used PDA systems to send the data, while traditional voice services were used as backup, and in stations with technical last minute problems or lack of 3G signal coverage.

Once released, the app quickly becamethe #1 download, both in the Apple Store and Google Play with over 80.000 users in only 4 days, in 105 different countries. This represents that almost 2% of the voters downloaded the app, with almost no publicity due to the lack of project time.

On future elections the Generalitat intends to improve the app, including more social features and information about the parties. But the experience can be leveraged to other administrations, and it is now planned to be used also on Spanish and Local elections in the following years. The working team is also in contact with countries all over the world to export the know-how, software, architecture and monitoring, in an exercise to improve worldwide government transparency. For more info on the project please contact us and we’ll put you through to the developers.

31.01.2013

Mobile World Capital invites you to visit our stand at MWC13 located in Congress Square; Stand CS70

From now on, Barcelona is the world’s capital of mobile, successfully leading companies to take advantage of mobile technology´s limitless opportunity.

In addition to the Mobile World Congress the Mobile World Capital comprises three other unique channels: The Mobile World Centre, The Mobile World Festival, and The Mobile World Hub

 

The Mobile World Centre, an open platform and state of the art exhibition showroom where citizens are able to understand and experience how mobile is enhancing our lives.

The mobile World Centre, located in the heart of Barcelona, on Plaza Catalunya 16, is open to the public Monday through Saturday from 10:00 – 21:30. Guided tours will be held during the week of MWC13 on Monday & Tuesday at 11am, 5pm., 8pm. To book please email: centre@mobileworldcapital.com. For more information go to mobileworldcentre.com

 

The Mobile World Festival, inviting citizens to celebrate the mobile lifestyle through a series of creative leisure and entertainment events. We encourage you to stop by our stand at MWC13 located at stand 3C28 and experience a small taste of what the Mobile World Festival will be. For more information write us to festival@mobileworldcapital.com

 

The Mobile World Hub, focused on the design and management of key projects that will transform the world’s mobile economy.

The Mobile World Hub will be located at the MediaTIC building in Barcelona´s innovation district. For companies interested in participating in the Mobile World Hub partnership program please contact hub@mobileworldcapital.com

 

Take part in this new collaborative effort:

For more information regarding Mobile World Capital at MWC13 please visit our congress website.
To arrange a visit or set up a meeting at the Mobile World Capital stand please email congress2013@mobileworldcapital.com or call +34 673 383 432.

 

24.01.2013

New office in Madrid

The Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) opened today its new site in Madrid. The offices are located in the Red.es building and will channel the different actions included in the MWCapital’s strategy. The Spanish Minister for Industry, Energy and Tourism, José Manuel Soria, attended the Grand opening and was joined by Xavier Trias, President of the MWCapital Foundation and Mayor of Barcelona, and John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA Ltd. and Executive VP of the MWCapital.

The Minister of Industry José Manuel Soria is between Xavier Trias, President of MWCapital and Mayor of Barcelona and John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA

The Minister announced during his speech that the Spanish cabinet will approve tomorrow during its weekly meeting the constitution of the Consortium in charge of managing the tax deductions for MWCapital sponsors. In accordance with the Sponsorship Law, the constitution of this body is essential to ensure that sponsoring companies can benefit from tax deductions derived from the event’s declaration of exceptional public interest.

With this morning’s opening, the MWCapital sets a new milestone on its road map. You can read the full press release at the Ministry of Industry, Energy and Tourism’s website. (only in Spanish)