How a session in Barcelona is put together
Every keynote is tailored after a briefing call, and the larger engagements start before the day: a diagnostic of the client's own people, so the audience hears its own evidence. Whatever the people there agree is written down.
What that has looked like: about 1,500 people joining a session run hybrid from central London at short notice, for a technology business changing AI tools faster than its people could absorb, which became executive coaching for the transformation lead; and an agency business convening Asia, Asia-Pacific, EMEA and North America into one event, where the work was naming the recurring situations nobody had vocabulary for, and the company took that wording into its strategy.
Six of the seven engagements published on this site produced further work after the session ended. The seven are set out in full at case studies, each with a line saying what it does not show.
How to read these examples. They are published to show how the work is put together, not as a client list for Barcelona. Most engagements are covered by confidentiality and are described without naming anyone; where a client is named anywhere on this site, it is with their agreement.
Oversight with a number attached
Barcelona city council publishes a register of the AI systems it operates, and the entries are current: the record for its municipal registration assistant is dated 3 September 2026.
Two things in it are worth an audience’s attention. The scope statement is explicit about what the system does not do: no presenta sol·licituds, no resol el tràmit, no pren decisions administratives i no substitueix l’atenció del personal municipal. It does not submit applications, does not resolve the procedure, does not take administrative decisions and does not replace municipal staff.
And under human supervision, a number: cada mes es revisa una mostra de 50 converses, each month a sample of fifty conversations is reviewed, to detect imprecise, incomplete or unclear responses.
Fifty a month is auditable. Somebody can be asked whether it happened, and the answer is either yes or no. Set that against the phrase appropriate human oversight as it appears in most corporate AI policies and the difference is the entire subject of these keynotes. The general argument is at what is meaningful human oversight.
A municipal strategy that puts supervision first
In March 2026 the council adopted a governing measure on the ethical, democratic and sustainable adoption of AI. Supervisió humana is guiding principle number one, ahead of reliability, privacy and transparency, and the wording specifies that systems must be supervisable de manera real i efectiva by authorised people amb competències to identify the risks.
That last phrase is the one this research keeps arriving at from other directions. Not authorised. Competent. The question of whether the authorised person could actually do the work is at who supervises work they cannot do.
Barcelona has also required, since 2022, a paid external algorithmic impact study for high-risk procurement, whose mandated contents include identifying who is responsible should a problem arise. And the Catalan data protection authority has published a fundamental-rights impact methodology with an official English edition, which is rare enough to be worth knowing.
One correction for anyone citing Barcelona from older material: the Barcelona Ethical Digital Standards site no longer exists and every path returns the municipal error page. Pages still linking to it are linking to nothing.
What this city is not, and why that is honest
The systems on Barcelona’s register are assistants and chatbots. There is no consequential-decisions case here comparable to Amsterdam’s welfare model or Norway’s benefits systems, and this page does not pretend otherwise.
What Barcelona demonstrates is something narrower and, for a corporate audience, more immediately usable: how to write an oversight commitment that can be checked. Most of the organisations that book this keynote are not operating high-risk decision systems either. They are operating assistants, and they have written no number down at all.
Who books this in Barcelona, and who should not
Boards and executive committees, the technology and telecoms audience around Mobile World Congress, municipal and Catalan government, pharmaceutical and industrial headquarters, and the international conference circuit the city hosts. Delivery is in English.
If your event needs Spanish or Catalan, say so early and you will get a straight answer, including a recommendation elsewhere where that is the right one.
A city that put a number on oversight
Fifty conversations a month. Barcelona's city council reviews that many and publishes the figure on a public register, under a governing measure from March 2026. Most organisations talk about oversight without ever counting it, and the council has made that gap visible. I have advised companies across Europe on building review that can be measured. A Barcelona session, delivered in English, ends with a number for your organisation and the name of whoever checks it each month.
Rahim brings Box of Amazing, the free weekly letter he has written since 2017, to advisory engagements and keynotes across Europe. Keynotes · Advisory · Box of Amazing
The three keynotes on offer in Barcelona
Keynotes run 30 to 90 minutes, in person or virtual. A 30-minute main-stage version of each talk is available for conferences, and the full talk runs 45 to 60 minutes. The sector examples are chosen for each audience, around the same argument. All three, with the showreel, are at keynotes, and the programme copy is at the speaker pack.
Drift versus Design is built from your room. Your audience answers five anonymous questions beforehand, their answers shape the talk, and afterwards you get a one-page readout with the three decisions to look at first.
Also speaking nearby: Madrid · Paris · Geneva.
Drift versus Design
Drift versus Design: why most organisations hand their judgement to AI without deciding to, and how to design your way through instead.
Barcelona's council counts its oversight: fifty conversations reviewed each month. An executive team asks what number would describe its review of AI, then designs supervision it can measure.
We Are Superheroes
We Are Superheroes: AI is the suit. The human decides.
Curiosity carries the Barcelona version: the habit of checking what the machine said, and why, long after the checking becomes routine. The council's monthly review is the example.
WTH (What the Human)
WTH (What the Human): a live test of a leadership team's own judgement.
The city publishes how many conversations it reviews. A short board session drafts the equivalent figure for the organisation, then decides whether that number would survive being made public.
Where these sessions happen in Barcelona
- Fira Gran Via
- 240,000 square metres across eight halls, and where Mobile World Congress happens. Trade scale, and the room is never the constraint.
- Fira Montjuïc
- 150,000 square metres in the city rather than at the edge of it. The older research, and better connected for a delegate staying centrally.
- Centre de Convencions Internacional de Barcelona
- 100,000 square metres, 15,000 delegates and forty-six rooms, with the Auditori Fòrum seating 3,082. Managed by Fira de Barcelona since 2021, and the city's purpose-built congress centre rather than an exhibition hall.
Mobile World Congress runs 1 to 4 March 2027. MWC26 closed with nearly 105,000 attendees from 207 countries, 2,900 exhibitors and over 1,700 speakers, which is the scale to have in mind when a March date is proposed for anything else in this city. Integrated Systems Europe has moved here from Amsterdam and runs 2 to 5 February 2027, drawing 92,170 visitors in 2026. Smart City Expo World Congress runs 3 to 5 November 2026.
One to leave off a list: IOT Solutions World Congress appears to have folded, with its site now redirecting to the Barcelona Cybersecurity Congress.
