In the early 80’s I was fortunate enough getting invited to exhibit at the Edinburgh festival or participate in its Fringe events. At the time, not thinking extraordinary to be dinning with Joseph Beuys, Jean Michel Basquiat , Mary Boone, Richard Demarco and Robert Fraser in an evening. Here and now after decades of my greater involvement with technology I am getting invited to a different kind of occasions, equally fantastic with promises in store at the Mobile World Congress 2012.
This time round it is to the MWC a jamboree of techno geeks & business leaders descending on the Northern Spain Gothic City of Modernismo and Gaudi. Barcelona cultural city like its highland sister ciudad Edinburgh has also grown accustomed to many fringe events dotted around outside the Fira where the main congress is being held.
A cursory scan of MWC keynote speakers reveals an illustrious line up of industry giants such as Brian Dunn (Best Buy), John Donahoe (eBay), Bret Taylor (Facebook), Eric Schmidt (Google), Vikram Pandit (Citigroup),
Ralph de la Vega (AT&T), Vittorio Colao (Vodafone),
Santiago Fernández Valbuena (Telefonica), Li Yue (China Mobile), Peter Chou (HTC) and William Clay Ford (Ford) are a handful representing a wide range of interests from banking to retails, motoring and manufacturing.
There will be myriads of round tables, dinner festivities, an assortment of all nighter hacketons, promising a packed calendar of events and interesting people to cohort with, like swedishbeers an amazing beer fest spearheaded by numero uno TechnoKitten > Helen Keegan not to be missed.