Barcelona Baby!

Last week, I attended my first Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  All told, was charming, but the night before the show began, I was pickpocketed on a crowded metro train in town.

It wasn't all that bad, given that the most important thing I lost was taken from my backpack for connections that would do to file stories and surf the Web a portable 3 G dongle.   Theft made me think about how dependent I've become on modern communication technologies.

The pick-pocketing occurred, apparently, while I was standing up and talking with a colleague in crowded subway.  How exited the train occupied, a gentle woman told me in a Spanish accent that my backpack, carried on my back, you unzipped.

When I looked, was right.  In fact, the backpack you unzipped in almost all places where there are hinges, something would never allowed to happen.   To my relief, my laptop was still inside, and I got my ID and wallets stuffed in my front pocket pants.

Do not report anything missing, because I knew that I could understand a backup to send stories about Wi-Fi or Ethernet, the press room with the possibility of purchasing or hiring another dongle from a local wireless carrier.

Still, anyone who has heard my story said that Barcelona was famous for pickpockets.  "Pickpocket capital of Europe," said a colleague. A German journalist said "The pickpocket capital of the world!".

The MWC warned visitors to bring their own bags carefully and do not wear their restraint neck MWC's registered to not attract attention. MWC even offered pickpocket victims in his note welcoming the opportunity to get a ride on a motorcycle to police station to report a theft!

Without the dongle, I discovered that Wi-Fi zones, that I needed to file stories and connect to the Internet were not trivial and that the Newsroom was usually too busy to make an Ethernet connection.

The GSM Association, which runs at MWC, helped me to set a backup using a dongle device Sierra Wireless network Vodafone Spain.  It finally worked fine, but it took three hours to two days to set up, in part because i and my helpers maintained dominating a number of network connections in my Macbook. Still, set-up could be easier, but we all know that just about everything involving technology can be made easier and we're all good Monday morning quarterbacks!

I missed some talks and keynotes at MWC, partly because of theft dongle and partly because of a cold really terrible, that was not helped by the cold and rainy climate in Barcelona almost all week.  It was hard to Miss things, given the excitement in the industry, especially with Smartphones and tablets that are popping up all over the place.  I'm planning to try to write some retrospectives at MWC later in this space.

I don't know how directly related to the theft of backpack and my problems were communications for a meeting I had at MWC with a stranger, but what the alien said made me think.

The story goes like this: I was walking in the rain continued to one of the pavilions rise when a man was holding back the crowd by using a stalemate escalator while making a call on his phone. He was obviously asking for help, but another man next to me laughed and said: "look, he is using his phone to correct the escalator" sort of like a remote control device.

I said back to him, "more technology acting up," only to be friendly.

And the man said to me, "well, we all blame technology for our problems, when there are other people around.  «But it is funny how we blame other people when there are none other than machines around.

People and machines--always battling each other or trying to achieve. Seems to be the driving force in my life these days.