18 students from the University of Navarra who are part of ThinkTech of the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra have visited the Mobile World Congress 2023. The trip is part of the activities outside the campus promoted by this initiative of the group 'Youth in transition', whose goal is to form a community of university students to reflect on the potential and challenges of new technologies.

In addition, the students have been able to put on internship their skills of work in teamwork, discussion, innovation and communication in a program of the Harbour Space University, with the help of the Princess of Girona Foundation.

Gonzalo Fernández Duval, team member of 'Youth in transition', explains that through the biweekly ThinkTech seminars, students research and reflect on the impact of technology on human beings and society. And through the field activities, "they can see these implications in real and business contexts," he says. This vision gives them, in his opinion, "a very complete training ". 

Irene Iboleón Azcona, from ADE and Bilingual Law, is one of the students who traveled to Barcelona. She says that she and her classmates have been able to develop the skills of work in teams with entrepreneurs invited by the Foundation. "During the first two days we worked in groups around a problem. We were asked to come up with a startup to solve it," she says. Specifically, she worked on the design of one to reduce the withdrawal school, in order to provide solutions to youth unemployment in Spain.

5G: generating connections in cities

Subsequently, during the tour of the Mobile World Congress 2023, the Foundation commissioned them to interview different startups - especially in the field of Education- to learn more about them work. Based on the information gathered, the different groups prepared reports. 

"Some companies explained to us their mission statement, their marketing strategy and the meeting with the client", he assures. He recognizes that this experience has been very useful for him result to see in the internship contents that he is studying in a subject of ADE.

Gonzalo Fernández explains that visit will serve as a starting point to address different topics in the following ThinkTech seminars and that students will also prepare audiovisual content for digital channels.

"For example, we want to address the topic of 5G. We often think of it only in terms of speed, but it goes much further," he says. "It has a huge potential to generate connections between different types of devices," he adds, "which can even contribute to the more autonomous functioning of a city.