Talent Arena returns with double the activities and big names in technology

Barcelona maintains its title as a technological hub in Southern Europe thanks to the events, congresses, and talent that coexist within the city. The fact that the Catalan capital is a pole of attraction for technology professionals, as well as a leading nerve center in the world for IT proposals, is key to its competitiveness. Favoring the maintenance and growth of this ecosystem is not easy, and precise tools are needed to help the capital create, retain, and attract this talent that will help sculpt the future of global technology. For three editions, one of these initiatives has been the Talent Arena, from Mobile World Capital, an event within the framework of the Mobile World Congress that seeks to connect companies, trainers, and talent to position Barcelona as the "benchmark for a European digital hub," in the words of the entity's CEO, Laia Corbella, during the event's presentation press conference this Thursday.

"It is a unique event," assured Sianne Ryder, CEO of Events and Industrial Services at GSMA Ltd, who also added that there is a clear need to find more talent and train existing talent, as "the world of technology advances and changes, therefore, the skills of its professionals must also do so." This year, the Talent Arena will be held from March 1 to 3 and will feature double the activities in some of its verticals. The objective is to continue building the future of technology through professional training profiles, but also with the ideas of young talent yet to be discovered. Practical classes, hackathons, mentoring, and technological development spaces are just some of the various activities planned for Hall 8 of Fira de Montjuïc during the three days of the event. After the success of the last edition, the project once again seeks to be a connecting point, an interactive space, and a showcase for the ideas, proposals, and companies of local and foreign talent: "Last year we achieved 25,000 attendees and 1,500 companies," highlighted Corbella, who added that they do not have an estimate of the number of attendees, because "they focus on ensuring quality," everything points to success.

Guest speakers and more thematic axes

Among the first names announced, a selection of international references from different fields of technology stands out. Edwin Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios; Ken Kutaragi, creator of PlayStation; Radia Perlman, known as the mother of the internet; Sergio Boixo, director of Quantum Computing at Google; Irene Solaiman, Head of Global Policy and SVP Strategy at Hugging Face; and Daniela Rus, director of the MIT AI lab, are part of the Talent Arena 2027 program. These profiles will be joined by professionals from companies such as Lovable, Mistralenca AI, GitHub, Qualcomm, IBM, Bitrise, ASML, and Multiverse Computing, among others, who will participate in sessions linked to the main areas of technological evolution. There will also be a space dedicated to content creators who "help disseminate technological talent," as shared by Jordi Arrufí, director of the Digital Talent area of Mobile World Capital. 

Overall, Talent Arena 2027 will offer a program with 90 keynotes, 72 talks, and 60 workshops and community activities, with proposals aimed at different profiles of the digital ecosystem. The program will be structured around six thematic axes: Artificial Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Cybersecurity, Software Development, and Management. As a novelty, the sixth axis will be Infrastructure, which is incorporated with content on quantum computing, chips, semiconductors, and space tech, which will broaden the event's perspective towards the technologies and infrastructures that are defining the next digital generation. In parallel, the hackathon space is also expanded, with a dozen of these competitions that will allow attendees to experience, compete, and demonstrate their capabilities as developers. For now, Arrufí commented in the presentation that some reference companies and entities are confirmed, such as Barça Innovation Hub, the Polytechnic University of Catalonia - BarcelonaTech (UPC), and World2Meet, among others.