Last week, the city of Barcelona hosted a new edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress , the world's largest and most influential event on urban innovation. The fourteenth edition of the Smart City Expo World Congress brought together a successful ecosystem made up of international business leaders, government representatives and members of strategic organizations that drive real change. The event revolved around urban mobility, energy efficiency, sustainable development and digital transformation and featured the presentation of innovative technologies, disruptive strategies and transformative projects. In this framework, the Secretariat for Digital Policies of the Generalitat de Catalunya held two activities.
As part of the National Pact for Digital Talent in Catalonia, on Tuesday 4 November, the working session 'The promotion of women's digital talent and the reduction of the gender gap' was organised, which included the participation of award-winning women and female finalists in the latest editions of the DonaTIC Awards. In small working groups, ideas, actions, measures and strategies were proposed to achieve the great challenge: balancing the supply and demand of people in the digital field in Catalonia and promoting that 50% of new hires are women. Sandra Ruiz Peralta, general director of Digital Economy and Society, gave the institutional welcome and explained the main strategic lines of the National Pact for Digital Talent in Catalonia and the desire of the project, shared with entities, to increase the number of people with ICT studies, attract talent from other sectors to the digital sector and reduce the gender gap.
The following day, the 'TechFabLab' day was held, where fifteen projects promoted by companies that had benefited from subsidies from the Secretariat of Digital Policies were presented: Lagertha Project, Hypatia, All Women Digital Leaders, Factoria F5, GlobalCoders, FemFrame, Kloosiv, WHI Institute, Nuraframes, Clic Recycle, DianaTool, Einna, Notebloc Scanner, Causal Foundry and Carring. The activity sought to be a meeting space for all those organizations that had been part of the subsidies from the Secretariat of Digital Policies. Maria Galindo, Secretary of Digital Policies, and Mònica Acebo, Head of the Digital Inclusion and Training Service, gave the institutional welcome and announced that the subsidies from the Secretariat of Digital Policies had been able to finance nearly 100 projects and nearly 1800 training courses, as well as talking about the Digital Catalonia Alliance, an essential support to consolidate companies, help businesses and open doors.