/ Town Hall
Friday 13th April 2018
MALLORCA, WORLD CAPITAL OF THE INTELLIGENT ISLANDS WITH THE SECOND EDITION OF THE SMART ISLAND WORLD CONGRESS
The countdown begins for the celebration of the second edition of the world leading conference on smart islands, Smart Island World Congress. The purpose of the event is to strengthen ties between island territories to face shared challenges such as climate change, economic competitiveness, technological innovation and tourism. The congress will bring together 95 speakers, a hundred representatives of islands from around the world and 20 exhibitors.
Within 10 days the Mallorcan municipality of Calvià will become the world capital of the intelligent islands with the celebration of the second edition of the Smart Island World Congress, the main meeting and dialogue point between insular territories of the entire planet. Organised by Fira de Barcelona, with the support of the Government of the Balearic Islands, the Consell de Mallorca and the Calvià Town Hall, the congress will have as its main themes the tourist industry, the future challenges facing the islands and their own resources.
Arising from these themes, 15 conferences will be developed with the participation of 95 international, national and local speakers, amongst island leaders, industrial experts and responsible for research centres, universities, governments and international organisations. They will address issues such as smart and sustainable tourism, social welfare, cultural heritage, seasonality, startups, business incubators, mobile connectivity, climate resilience, renewable energy, waste management, or infrastructures.
The second edition of the Smart Island World Congress reinforces its more relational side and will organise for the first time a professional event, called Island2Island, in which the participating islands will be able to arrange meetings between them, with the participating companies or with the visitors, with the purpose of establishing business relationships and find business opportunities. Likewise, and as it happened in the last edition, the event will also have an exhibition space with a score of participating companies, including companies such as Orange, IOTLABS, Grupo Etra, Wongo, Tirme or Meliá Hotels International.
Workshops on climate resilience and technological innovation stand out from the parallel events that will take place, as well as the celebration of a Hackathon event in which participants will compete to develop a prototype with IoT technology that will solve a problem affecting the islands.
After last year's success, the peak will arrive on the afternoon of 23rd April with the delivery of the Smart Island awards. Awards will be presented in three categories: best smart island, best smart destination, and best proposal for sustainable development.
International keynote speakers
Amongst the 95 lecturers that will take part in the conference, the main ones are Doug Lansky, consultant and international expert in tourism and Lauri-Ann Ainsworth, Director of Development and Communications of the Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship Caribbean, the foundation of the Virgin group, which leads the support for startups with social purposes.
Lanksy, who is the author of a dozen books on tourism and articles for National Geographic Traveler, Esquire, The Guardian or The Hufftington Post and speaker of the World Tourism Organisation and TED talks, will talk about the main challenges that the tourist sector faces today, formulas to improve the traveler's experience, as well as innovative business models that contribute to guarantee the sustainability of the sector. On the other hand, Lauri-Ann Ainsworth, expert in marketing, communications and entrepreneurship, will focus her presentation on how new companies can bring social value to the islands.
Another prominent speaker will be Kate Brown, Executive Director of the Global Island Partnership, the UN association that promotes inter-island collaboration in fields such as nature conservation and sustainability. Brown will participate, along with Davon Baker, Director of IT of the island of Granada (the second smallest country in the world), in a lecture that will address the relations of the islands with the sea: related economic activities, energy production or fishing industry, amongst other topics.
Also relevant will be the dialogue between Luis Gerardo Rivera Marín, Secretary of State of Puerto Rico, with the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Spain, Miguel Ángel Moratinos, as well as the lecture on cooperation between islands, with the outstanding participation of the Secretary of State of the European Union, Jorge Toledo.
The fourth industrial revolution will also have its space in the congress with a panel that will reflect on the challenges the islands face before the digitalisation of industrial processes, with the participation of the professor and coordinator of the SmartDestination group of the University of the Balearic Islands, Bartomeu Alorda; the consultant and specialist in Thermal Sciences, Aleksandar Ivancic, or the director of the Department of Renewable Energies of the Technological Institute of the Canary Islands, Salvador Suárez.
The second edition of the Smart Island World Congress will have an outstanding presence of international institutional representatives. Amongst them, the consultant of the Directorate General of Energy of the European Commission, Brendan Devlin, who will take part in the panel on the "Energy transition towards decarbonisation". As well as the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands (New Zealand); the mayors of Mindelo (Cape Verde), Zanzibar (Tanzania), Port Louis (Mauritius), the Greek islands Tinos, Milos and Tilos (the first island in the Mediterranean that will operate exclusively with renewable energies); or the deputy mayors of Ajaccio (Corsica) and Hvar (Croatia).
Smart cities, smart islands
Smart Island World Congress, which has the support of the World Bank, UN-Habitat, Global Island Partnership and Dafni Network, is the leading global event on smart islands that offers insular territories a space for debate where they can jointly face future challenges in the field of technology, innovation and own resources. The congress takes advantage of the consolidated experience at the international level of the Smart City Expo World Congress, organised by Fira de Barcelona since 2011 and consolidated as the world leader in the smart cities sector.
