Jordi Arrufí is the Director of the European Projects Program and the Digital Talent Program at Mobile World Capital Barcelona.

Mobile World Capital Barcelona is an initiative driving the digital advancement of society while helping improve people’s lives globally. With the support of the public and private sector, it focuses on four areas: the acceleration of innovation through digital entrepreneurship, the transformation of industries through digital technology, the rise of digital talent among new generations and professionals, and the reflection on the impact of technology in our society.
Mobile World Capital Barcelona also hosts Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and founded 4 Years From Now (4YFN), the startup business platform, present at MWC events around the world.

MWCapital is working to positively transform the economy, education, and society. How do you think your role in Möbius will contribute to do so?

Mobile World Capital Barcelona is a private-public Foundation that aims to promote the mobile and digital ecosystem to position Barcelona as a digital reference hub through four areas: Innovation, Smart Connectivity, Talent and Society. Each area has its own departments that work on specific identified objectives. MWCapital has been working with immersive media technology via the 5G Barcelona initiative, which validates and tests 5G technologies in the real environment of Barcelona.   

For Möbius, 5G Technologies will be used to ensure high-quality real-time experiences, and MWCapital will provide support to carry out experiments with 5G technologies regarding collective use cases. Together with partners Eurecat (Spain), IMEC (Belgium), Design Entrepreneurship Institute (Belgium), and Bookabook (Italy), MWCapital will participate in the production of the Möbius Book, an enriched immersive reading experience with binaural audio and customized audiovisual content.  

How is the technology deployed for Möbius helping transform the creative industries and publishing sector? 

Hopefully, 5G technology will be the most adopted by creative industries. For the publishing sector the adoption of innovative technologies like immersive and multimedia scenarios or 3D audio experiences could mean a new impulse and the opportunity to reach new markets.  The idea is to amplify the scope of possibilities for the publishing sector and to offer a toolkit that allows the industry to access specific data that maximize users’ insights.    

Explain from your point of view which is specifically your role in the Möbius project? 

Mobile World Capital Barcelona will contribute to the outreach and responsive innovation efforts of Möbius focused on communication, dissemination, and cooperation with Next Generation Media business ecosystem.  

Not only will Mobile World Capital Barcelona coordinate these actions, but it will also leverage the 5G National Observatory (Spain) and 5G Barcelona owned initiatives to maximize the impact of this technology. That is why we are also contributing to user-driven innovation framework for enriched publishing; and analyzing the results and validation of the methodology, carrying out open pilots and dissemination activities.  

With Mobile World Capital Barcelona’s contributions to the Möbius project, we are also carrying out experiments with 5G technologies for collective experiences; and open tests and validation of the technology using prosumer intelligence toolkit to plan and execute communication strategies.  

Why is communication and dissemination essential when explaining technology-based projects? Can you let us know your experience in reaching industry, society, and researchers? 

Currently, we are all living in a social media-influenced society, where digital communication is key to reach any target. For technological topics, such as Möbius, it is even more relevant. Technology is not only for the ones that develop it or exhibit it on fairs, but for society’s development in general. So, that is why communicating and disseminating technological projects is so important, because it must be taken outside of those circles and extended to everyone which could contribute to boost talent, education and improve everybody’s life. That is what Mobile World Capital Barcelona does for a living, bring technology to people’s hands.  

Having a vast experience in communicating and disseminating European projects, we could affirm is a rewarding challenge. On one hand, as all the content is brand new, sometimes we must come up with different strategies and approaches to make the topics feel close to citizens.  On the other hand, the definition of success is when you finally reach industrial players, researchers and society. They understand why this technology is helpful, how can they benefit from it or how they can investigate or commercialize it.  

You have an extensive role in the communication and dissemination of the Möbius project, could you tell us a little more about it from your point of view. 

Mobile World Capital Barcelona is the leader of the work package destinated to communication and dissemination inside the project. Our task in here is mostly creating content for different online and offline platforms, disseminating the project process at a researcher’s level, explaining its ecosystem and consolidating it beyond the project’s lifetime, explaining its objectives and value proposition. Thus, we aim to get society to comprehend the initiative and integrate it further in their daily lives.  

Finally, it would be much appreciated to know what you are expecting from the Möbius project.

As Mobile World Capital Barcelona we hope that the adoption of 5G technologies on the publishing sector could become a well stablished practice in the future, the potential of using immersive  experiences as a tool for the publishing sector could help authors to keep their role as creators of the world we live in and editors as the guardians of these worlds, keep literature as one of humanity’s most precious treasures for years to come and bring the intersection between technology and the publishing sector to a profitable and lasting partnership.

 

Jordi Arrufí, Director of the European Projects Program and the Digital Talent Program

Before joining MWC, Jordi was project manager along 9 years at the management consultant team of PwC Spain, leading performance improvement and innovation projects for large and mid size companies.He is also lecturer at the Master of Innovation and Entrepreneurship of the Tecnocampus University in Barcelona and at the Master in Digital Transformation Leadership at Barcelona Technology School. Jordi graduated in Political Sciences and Administration. He is also holds a Master in Business Administration and a Master in International Trade and emerging countries.