The desire to return to the Gran Via venue of Fira de Barcelona and get lost among the stands could be felt on the first day of this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC). The world's most important mobile phone fair has returned, though it has done so a little changed. Lower attendance is the first thing that catches the eye, magnified by the large spaces left between exhibitors to ensure social distancing. There were no elbows thrown during the peak hours of the fair.
This was Samuel's feeling in his third Mobile, as well as Nerea and Nadia's, who were debuting at the fair to present their startup The Good Goal. Despite this, all three have seen the congress as an opportunity to do business again and discover new initiatives, even though the economic context is still complicated.
In fact, Tamara has seen how a lower influx at her Submer stand, a company from L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, has allowed them to improve the quality of meetings, eliminating the curious who came to snoop but had no real interest in their project. The feeling is that the few who have traveled to the MWC have done so convinced and with a strong reason, a clear advantage for the local companies participating this year, who will not have to compete with large multinationals to gain their attention.
But this has not been the only change. Whether due to the summer dates or the mix under one roof of corporations and startups, the strict MWC etiquette has diluted a bit. Fewer suits and more t-shirts and flowing dresses have been seen. Some have even dared to wear Bermuda shorts. Congress attendees, accustomed to visiting the fair at the end of February, have encountered the June sun, which doesn't press as hard as a few days ago, but warms more than the timid snow that has been seen some years at Mobile. As a result, outdoor restaurants were full, as were the terraces of the venue.
For the general director of Kotra, the Korean trade and investment promotion agency, Young-Yu Ahn, the new dates can become an attraction for those who want to stay on vacation once the congress is over, as already happens in other large international fairs located in tourist cities. In that sense, the executive explains how about 100 people have traveled from Korea and some of them have decided to arrive a week before or after to take advantage and visit Barcelona.
New protocols
Beyond summer and the relaxation of etiquette, MWC 2021 will be characterized by the new protocols imposed by the pandemic to guarantee its safety. They were already tested on a small scale at the beginning of the month at the Integrated Systems Europe (ISE), with an attendance slightly higher than 1,500 participants, but now they will level up, controlling between 25,000 and 30,000 congress attendees, according to the latest GSMA calculations.
The protocols to avoid covid contagion are characterized, basically, by antigen tests before entering, FFP2 mask and hydroalcoholic gel in abundance. On the first day of the Mobile, some absent-minded person who showed up with a surgical or cloth mask had to buy an FFP2 and also had to wait a while to get tested. The organization recommended arriving early, taking into account that there could be some congestion and that the results take between 20 and 30 minutes.
Precisely, the few queues that have been seen at the beginning of the day have been to pass the antigen tests. Once the test is passed, the result is automatically uploaded to the Mobile application, which this year has become the accreditation to access the congress, leaving behind those that were hung and invaded the city for a week.