Machines will be more intelligent in the manual and operative part, so that humans have to work on creativity and leadership. That sentence sums up my personal learning from my last technological experience: Campus Party Uruguay 2019. First edition of the biggest internet event in the world was celebrated between March 15 and 17 at Punta del Este Convention Center in the department of Maldonado. Fans of technology, entrepreneurship, innovation, creativity and digital world gathered here. The original idea arose in Spain from a Youth Association that decided to make a public invitation to their private celebrations online in 1997. Thanks to the LAPASSION project developed by UDELAR (public University of the Republic of Uruguay), I had the opportunity to attend this international meeting during the weekend. I participated as an audience in talks by professionals as well as user of the experiences available to the visitor for three days.
CAMPUS PARTY URUGUAY STRENGHTS
From my point of view, the strengths were in the contents of the program. Stands offered different activities to interact such as virtual reality glasses or gaming experiences for the user. There were workshops that covered several demands in areas such as astronomy, communication, leadership or design.
My personal discovery was the Chilean Iván Páez Mora, a computer engineer but above all an entrepreneur, who explained the series of misfortunes and failures that lead us to success. "There are no foolish ideas, but fools who do not believe in ideas."
Perhaps, the most controversial speaker was Neil Harbisson who is considered the first cyborg in the world. For me, his exposition of the cyborgism from an artistic perspective is strange and maybe he should talk from a medical perspective that helps improve the quality of life of people. Neil Harbisson made a sarcastic exposition of a subject still in exploratory phase but with great social impact. In fact, his half-joking speech did not convince my Uruguayan colleagues.
I was surprised by the fact that Tinder's greatest source of income was the patent for the design of the movement to slide to the right or to the left. I was interested in the concept of Design Sprint used by companies such as Google Ventures, where the product is tested continuously to optimize the launch times. And I wrote down concepts such as virtual reality, augmented and revealed and proper names as Vitalik Buterin who is related to the future of economic transactions and virtual currencies.
CAMPUS PARTY URUGUAY WEEKNESS
Above all, I perceived problems with the space and comfort of the user that came along several days.
The facilities are new construction and have ample space to distribute the different stands, activities and themes. However, the placement of the scenarios was quite wrong. There were interventions that took place at the same time and the distance among them was scarce, so the acoustics were quite poor. All the activities that made up the Campus Party Uruguay calendar happened in the same space, without taking into account other adjoining rooms.
We had a feeling of suffocation after several hours in the facilities. We spent too many time focused on an activity that happened in a place full of light, music and people in constant movement. Convention Center is a modern place, but built on the outskirts of the city, so it took a 3-kilometer walk to the city center. All in all, the members of the LAPASSION project made a couple of trips to the center of Punta del Este, which turned out to be very oxygenating.
The great paradox of Campus Party was the bad connection to Internet. In the camping pavilion the open connection was null and this for those who come from abroad was a great handicap.
On the other hand, the gastronomic offer was limited and the prices abusive. There were no alternatives nearby outside. As an example, a coffee cost 60 Uruguayan pesos (approximately € 1.60), but if you want to add it milk, its price was 100 (2.7 €).
At organizational level, there was an app of the event that worked very well, but there were changes in the schedules that were communicated late. Moreover, if you ask to the staff for information, they did not know the answers.
Like any event that barely starts, I could appreciate aspects to improve in future editions. Obviously, each user has an opinion about how innovative the content was, but there is no doubt that a technological and participatory event stimulates thought, discussion and curiosity about what the future brings...
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