On February 28th and 29th 2024, the Mobile World Congress 2024 edition hosted a hackathon designed by MarsBased, to promote GSMA's Open Gateway.

MarsBased has helped conceptualising and devising this part of the event as well as selecting speakers for their tracks for senior developers in a joint effort to attract more senior talent from the IT and software fields.

In an impressive display of innovation and community engagement, MarsBased marked its presence at the world's largest technology event, the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, from February 28th to March 3rd. As a leading consultancy firm in web and mobile app development, our participation was not just a showcase but a statement of our commitment to driving technological advancement and digital talent.

It was also a confirmation of our relevance in the startup and technological ecosystem of Barcelona, to be appointed as the curators of this new initative by MWC.

A new ambitious project

The Mobile World Capital and the GSMA have devised a plan to attract technical talent and, most specifically, developers, to their conference through the creation of a space called Talent Arena.

We were appointed to help with the project. As a main player in the technical ecosystem of Barcelona, MarsBased was chosen among many other players, most of them way bigger, mainly because of our unwavering commitment to building commitment for over ten years now. it's a combination of reputation and savoir-faire. Our 150+ events in ten years and our three editions of the Startup Grind Tech conference might have had something to do in this!!!

Since 2014, we have built a following of over 15000 people following our newsletters and social media accounts, including other projects of relevance like our monthly Startup Grind events and our Slack community BCN Startups.

Tech is not going away anytime soon. It is not created nor destroyed, simply transformed. Now, it's AI, tomorrow who knows. By attracting this kind of profiles to MWC, they're securing the future generations of attendees of a conference that wants to transition from being a huge trade fair to something more community-driven.

Outcome

The project came out exceedingly well. The Talent Arena space was always crowded with people and the content was of high quality, with great names like David Cuartielles, co-founder of Arduino, Carlos Villavieja, sr. staff software engineer @ Google, Xavier Nòria (Ruby Hero) and Javi Santana, co-founder of TinyBird, among others.

We spent plenty of time in and around the area, and talking to exhibitors and speakers like. All seemed happy with how it played out. I myself made interesting contacts there, too, and we used the space to meet friends of the company and potential customers, too, to show them what we're capable of.

Can't wait to see where this is headed in the coming years!