Digital Future Society participates in the annual meeting on technological governance of the World Economic Forum in San Francisco

• Cristina Colom, director of the Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCapital) program, will participate as a speaker in a round table on the acceleration of inclusive digital services and will share Barcelona’s good practices in the fight against the digital emergency.
• The meeting of this international organization will bring together more than 300 participants from 60 countries between June 21 and 23.

22 June, 2022

Digital Future Society, the society program of MWCapital, will participate in the reflections on governance and technology at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) that is being held from today until Thursday, June 23 in San Francisco (United States). Specifically, the director of the program, Cristina Colom, will participate as a speaker in a round table on the acceleration of inclusive digital services, in addition to moderating other tables and reflecting on technological humanism in a podcast of the international organization. The podcast, promoted by the Víctor Pineda Foundation and with the collaboration of the World Economic Forum and the University of California Berkeley, aims to ensure that, as a global network of cities, progress is made towards a future where the needs and circumstances of all people.

In this sense, this edition will have more than 300 participants from sixty countries and a program consisting of 55 sessions. Besides, it should be highlighted that in this conference the Global Connected World Council of the WEF, of which Digital Future Society has been a member since 2019, will meet in person. The committee, led by Jeff Merrit, Head of Urban Transformation & Member of Executive Committee, works to strengthen global governance and innovation of IoT technologies in order to maximize the positive impact on society.

From Barcelona to San Francisco, DFS brings technological humanism to the WEF

The round table, which will include the participation of the director of the Digital Future Society, is entitled ‘Accelerating Inclusive Digital Services‘ and wants to delve into the most effective strategies and alliances to promote affordable and accessible digital opportunities for all. “It is really significant that in an environment such as a meeting of the World Economic Forum, issues as fundamental as this one are raised, which, in short, makes us focus on the digital gaps that currently exist and propose solutions to minimize them”, says Cristina Colom. “Specifically, we at Digital Future Society have been working for some time to alert about this situation and we propose that technological humanism be applied to promote a safer, more equitable and fairer digital transformation for all, that leaves no one behind,” she adds.

In this direction, Colom sees this participation of Digital Future Society in the World Economic Forum meeting as “a great opportunity to emphasize the good work that is being done from Barcelona in the fight against the digital emergency, as well as to highlight the good practices that are carried out in Spain and Europe”.

This event will be held on the morning of June 23 (San Francisco time) and is promoted by the Digital Economy Platform of the World Economic Forum and the EDISON Alliance for Digital Inclusion, which is a flagship initiative of the Forum to accelerate access accessible to the economy and the digital society. Apart from Colom, in the event will participate Aaron Maniam, Deputy Secretary for Industry and Information at the Ministry of Communications and Information of Singapore, Tunde Fafunwa, Senior Advisor to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, Robert Opp, Digital Director of the United Nations Development Program, and Paula Ingabire, Minister of Information Technology and Innovation of Rwanda.

The round table will be moderated by the head of the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Industry of the World Economic Forum, Isabelle Mauro.

World Economic Forum, a key space to discuss current and future challenges

In this edition of the Global Technology Governance Retreat, the WEF has proposed a program with three core ideas: foundational technology (Artificial Intelligence, digital payments, data policy), digital society (Internet of Things, women, inclusivity and digital services) and keys of the future (metavers, quantum computing, blockchain).

The World Economic Forum, based in Geneva (Switzerland), promotes public-private cooperation, integrating the main economic, political and business leaders to foster certain aspects of the global and regional agendas.