48 hours of programming at the Talent Arena of MWC Barcelona

• The Hackathon to design the future of telecommunications has been the centerpiece of the Talent Arena, the first meeting of digital talent driven by MWCapital at the congress.
• Teams have explored the potential of different Open Gateway APIs provided such as: Number Verification, SIM Exchange, and WiFi QOD.
• The 3 winners of the hackathon have defended their innovative solutions applied to public administration, healthcare, and streaming broadcasts in the boxing ring.
• Talent Arena has hosted sessions with 30 renowned experts from the ICT sector such as the co-founder of Arduino, the former vice president of engineering at LinkedIn, or a software engineer from Google.

February 28, 2024

Mobile World Capital Barcelona has successfully concluded the hackathon of the pilot edition of Talent Arena, the new space dedicated to digital talent at MWC Barcelona 2024. For two days, 48 tech professionals have developed innovative projects to design the future of telecommunications. The hackathon has been the main activity of the Talent Arena, aimed to connect digital professionals from different backgrounds with leading companies in Barcelona and exploring the latest trends and job opportunities in the digital sector.

The three winning use cases of the 48-hour hackathon were, in first place, a collaborative system to report incidents to the public administration and verify their location; in second place, a streaming platform to optimize the experience of users watching live video; and in third place, a platform to improve healthcare when you are in a foreign country without knowledge of the local language. All the participants have defended their projects in the boxing ring. Throughout the experience, participants have had the opportunity to create practical use cases to explore the potential of different Open Gateway APIs provided such as: Number verification, SIM swapping and WiFi QOD. The professionals, with profiles such as front-end, back-end, full stack, and business, have worked in 12 multidisciplinary teams.

Talent Arena, the new epicentre of talent and networking in the technology sector

In addition to the success of the hackathon, Talent Arena has featured sessions by renowned experts such as Arduino co-founder, David Cuartielles; former vice president of engineering at Linkedin, Xavier Amatriain; Google software engineer, Carlos Villavieja; Institute of Artificial Intelligence co-founder, Miguel Ángel Román; Tinybird.com co-founder, Javi Santana; and Ruby on Rails core member, Xavier Noria.

The new digital talent space driven by Mobile World Capital Barcelona, in collaboration with GSMA, Government of Catalonia, Barcelona City Council and CaixaBank as the main partner, has allowed participants to immerse themselves in the latest developments in the sector through various workshops and technological presentations that have offered a detailed vision of the emerging trends and future opportunities offered by the digital sector, as well as the latest disruptive projects from Barcelona’s leading technology companies.