Best of LinkedIn: Tech Show Madrid 2025

00:00:00: This episode is provided by Thomas Allgaier and Frenos, based on the most relevant LinkedIn post about TechShow Madrid, twenty twenty five.

00:00:07: Frenos supports ICT enterprises with market and competitive intelligence, decoding emerging technologies, customer insights, regulatory shifts and competitor strategies.

00:00:17: So product teams and strategy leaders don't just react, but shape the future.

00:00:24: Welcome back to The Deep Dive.

00:00:25: Today we are really immersing ourselves in the insights from Texas of Madrid, twenty twenty five.

00:00:30: It felt like more than just a conference this year.

00:00:32: Oh, absolutely.

00:00:33: It was a real snapshot of where Spain's digital ecosystem is putting its energy, wouldn't you say?

00:00:38: Definitely.

00:00:39: And our source material pulled from some key LinkedIn posts by leaders who are there.

00:00:43: It paints a clear picture.

00:00:45: It really does.

00:00:45: The conversation seems to have firmly moved past the what if stage.

00:00:48: Straight into.

00:00:49: how do we do this now?

00:00:50: Exactly.

00:00:50: We're going to distill the concrete strategies, the.

00:00:54: the critical points that kept coming up, what attendees were calling the decisive success factors for actually turning these digital pilots into real measurable business value.

00:01:03: Across AI, cloud, cybersecurity, data, the whole stack.

00:01:09: Precisely.

00:01:10: Okay, so let's kick off with the big one.

00:01:12: AI.

00:01:14: The dominant feeling wasn't if AI is important anymore.

00:01:17: That's settled.

00:01:18: Right, the huge challenge now is implementation.

00:01:21: It's that journey from a cool proof of concept to making it work systemically across the whole business.

00:01:27: Getting it out of the lab and into the wild.

00:01:29: Yeah, that scaling anxiety was almost... palpable in the discussions.

00:01:35: Nelson Rodriguez, Mavares, and others really zoned in on avoiding this thing.

00:01:39: they called the syndrome of the eternal pilot.

00:01:41: Ah,

00:01:42: the eternal pilot.

00:01:43: I like that.

00:01:44: Seen a few of those.

00:01:44: Haven't

00:01:45: we all?

00:01:45: Companies prove AI can do something neat, but then it just stalls.

00:01:49: It doesn't get integrated properly.

00:01:50: So what's the fix?

00:01:51: The core lesson hammered home was enforce purpose.

00:01:55: You absolutely have to define the business problem you're solving and how big you intend this to be before you even think about the tech stack.

00:02:01: Makes sense.

00:02:02: If you don't know the why, the how is just tech for tech's sake.

00:02:05: Exactly.

00:02:06: Don't start the how.

00:02:07: if the why isn't crystal clear and measurable.

00:02:10: Okay, but here's what really jumped out at me from the sources.

00:02:13: The biggest blocker to scaling isn't the tech itself.

00:02:18: It's not compute power.

00:02:19: Yeah.

00:02:20: It's people.

00:02:20: It's culture.

00:02:22: Leaders like John Trociaula, Cruz Slegee, and Stephanie Light were really quite forceful on this.

00:02:27: They said, cultural readiness and team enablement Those are the make or break factors.

00:02:32: That rings true.

00:02:33: Cultural readiness isn't just, you know, having engineers who know Python.

00:02:36: It's much deeper.

00:02:38: Like what?

00:02:38: It's about the organization actually being willing to trust these autonomous systems to genuinely change how work gets done and critically to upskill their teams fast enough.

00:02:49: Because if the people on the ground don't buy in or don't know how to use the tool.

00:02:53: then the pilot dies.

00:02:54: Doesn't matter how technically brilliant it was.

00:02:56: Which I guess leads straight into the ethics and governance piece, right?

00:02:58: Because you can't have that cultural buy-in without trust.

00:03:01: Precisely.

00:03:01: Angelus, Sebastianelli, and Gabriel and Antonio Valverde Castilla made that point very clearly.

00:03:06: AI governance is absolutely critical.

00:03:08: And it's not just code deep.

00:03:10: No, the ethics aren't just magically baked into the algorithm.

00:03:13: They're in the choices made by the humans deploying and managing that system every single day.

00:03:18: That's a key distinction.

00:03:19: Frank Jane Navarro really drove that point home too, didn't he?

00:03:22: Arguing AI needs to be demonstrably fair.

00:03:25: Yes, fair.

00:03:26: Not just blindingly efficient, because the risk is huge.

00:03:29: You could just end up scaling hidden biases, making them worse, all under this, this veneer of technical neutrality.

00:03:37: Scary thought, but... On a more practical note, we did see some solid use cases emerging.

00:03:42: Oh, yeah.

00:03:42: Michelle River mentioned generative AI being used pretty effectively for optimizing complex back office stuff.

00:03:48: Ah, the back office, that makes sense.

00:03:50: The scale there means you can often see the ROI quite quickly.

00:03:54: Less glamour maybe, but real value.

00:03:56: So looking ahead, where does all this point?

00:04:00: There were hints of some pretty massive ambition beyond just making processes more efficient.

00:04:04: You're thinking of Juan Coro's concept.

00:04:06: Exactly.

00:04:07: Moving from a smart city to an agentic city.

00:04:09: What on earth does that mean in practice?

00:04:11: Well, it's kind of the ultimate expression of autonomy, isn't it?

00:04:14: An agentic city wouldn't just use AI for insights, it would rely on AI agents.

00:04:20: Economist entities.

00:04:21: Yes, programmed to manage city infrastructure dynamically, proactively.

00:04:26: Imagine traffic control that doesn't just react to jams but predicts them.

00:04:30: Rerouting energy, water, waste, autonomously.

00:04:34: Just to keep the whole system balanced.

00:04:36: Wow,

00:04:36: that's a leap.

00:04:37: It's a fundamental shift.

00:04:39: From human in the loop optimization to AI just... running things, which obviously needs incredible levels of trust and crucially super low latency.

00:04:48: Okay,

00:04:49: low latency, high trust.

00:04:51: That brings us neatly to the infrastructure side of things.

00:04:53: Cloud and data centers.

00:04:54: Yep, you can't have these advanced AI solutions, especially not at scale without the right foundation.

00:04:59: Michelle Ribber was quite blunt about it.

00:05:01: If you want resilience, if you want to scale, a multi-cloud strategy isn't just nice to have anymore.

00:05:06: She called it the only viable foundation.

00:05:08: Pretty much.

00:05:09: And it's not just about flexibility.

00:05:10: It's about the total cost.

00:05:11: People are finally looking beyond the upfront price tag.

00:05:14: Factoring in security, maintenance, compliance across different regions.

00:05:18: Right.

00:05:19: And when you add all that up, the holistic cloud approach often ends up being more economical and more secure than trying to do everything on premise.

00:05:27: But this need for speed, especially for things like that agentic city idea, that puts the spotlight back on physical infrastructure, doesn't it?

00:05:36: Edge data centers.

00:05:37: Absolutely.

00:05:38: Jose Luis Gomez Pardo made a really strong case for this.

00:05:41: He argued that real AI adoption, the kind that needs that low latency, happens where you have strategically placed edge data centers.

00:05:49: Close to the action.

00:05:49: Plus to the action, providing single-digit latency.

00:05:53: He actually boiled the success formula down to three things.

00:05:56: Power, peering, and place.

00:05:58: Power, peering, place.

00:06:00: Okay,

00:06:00: yeah.

00:06:00: The sheer size of the data center isn't the be all and end all.

00:06:04: What matters more is reliable power, neutral interconnection.

00:06:07: that's the peering and being in the right physical location, the place to cut down data travel time.

00:06:13: That's vital for things like AI inference at the edge.

00:06:16: And this whole infrastructure conversation, you couldn't escape the green IT angle, could you?

00:06:21: Not at all.

00:06:21: It's intrinsically linked, no.

00:06:23: People like Marco Mayor Martinez, the team from Huawei Digital Power Spain, they were intensely focused on energy efficiency and sustainability within these, let's face it, power hungry environments.

00:06:35: It has to be part of the equation.

00:06:37: It's become a mandate.

00:06:38: Juan Jose Navarro Morales summed it up nicely.

00:06:40: Phenops is meeting green ops.

00:06:42: So managing cloud costs and cutting your carbon footprint.

00:06:46: They're two sides of the same coin now.

00:06:48: You can't claim to be optimizing your budget if you're ignoring your energy consumption.

00:06:53: It's insufferable.

00:06:54: Were there concrete solutions being shown?

00:06:56: Yeah, Data Center World had exhibits focused on this.

00:06:59: Too Sewed was showing strategies for compliant, sustainable deployments.

00:07:03: And John Cockrell had tech for advanced cooling and, interestingly, heat recovery systems, finding ways to reuse that waste heat.

00:07:11: Smart.

00:07:12: OK, so we have efficient, sustainable infrastructure.

00:07:15: But it needs to be secure.

00:07:17: that brings us to cybersecurity

00:07:18: a massive priority.

00:07:19: clearly and the conversation is definitely broad and beyond.

00:07:22: just you know Firewalls and tech.

00:07:24: it felt much more about culture and compliance.

00:07:26: this time Daniel Romano Ascaras Highlighted a really interesting shift in perspective.

00:07:32: What was that

00:07:33: that compliance frameworks think ISO?

00:07:36: Zero one or the big one now NIS to cross the EU.

00:07:42: they're starting to be seen not as burdens, but as accelerators.

00:07:46: accelerators

00:07:46: that is a shift

00:07:47: right instead of an obstacle course.

00:07:49: They're being treated like a structured roadmap for implementing good security.

00:07:54: Following the framework actually simplifies the process.

00:07:56: that makes a lot of sense when you put it that way.

00:07:58: And the vendors, of course, are stepping

00:08:00: up.

00:08:00: Cutting-edge stuff.

00:08:01: Definitely.

00:08:02: We saw Palo Alto Networks, Tarium II, Selinda Kursabyek was involved there, showcasing tech really focused on that real-time endpoint visibility and control, which is crucial when your systems are spread across multiple clouds.

00:08:14: You need to see everything.

00:08:15: But beyond the tech, the word that kept echoing everywhere was...

00:08:19: Trust.

00:08:20: Digital Frost, yes.

00:08:22: Luis Villanueva from SGS Digital Trust, he didn't mince words.

00:08:25: He called it the essential enabler of transformation, not just important, essential.

00:08:30: And it wasn't just consultants speak, was it?

00:08:32: It felt like a genuine business imperative everyone was grappling

00:08:35: with.

00:08:35: Remofita echoed that really strongly.

00:08:38: He basically said, look, in Spain, if you don't have Digital Trust, you simply won't have digital growth.

00:08:43: Full stop.

00:08:43: Which raises the million dollar question.

00:08:45: Yeah.

00:08:46: If trust is the absolute key, especially with more autonomous systems coming online, how do organizations actually build and maintain it?

00:08:54: It's the core challenge.

00:08:55: And this is where the analysis took a really unexpected turn, I thought.

00:08:58: Ah, you mean Rizzo Jimenez's point.

00:09:00: Yes.

00:09:01: The idea that criminology should be part of digital security design, I have to admit that initially sounded counterintuitive.

00:09:09: It does sound a bit left field at first, doesn't it?

00:09:11: But when you think about it...

00:09:12: Go on.

00:09:13: Well, what do criminologists specialize in?

00:09:15: Behavior analysis, understanding motivation, risk anticipation, how systems and people can be exploited.

00:09:23: They focus on the why and the how people commit fraud or breach security.

00:09:28: Whereas

00:09:28: the tech teams focus on the what and where the vulnerabilities.

00:09:31: Exactly.

00:09:32: So bringing in that behavioral expertise, that understanding of the human element, the motivations behind attacks, it could significantly boost resilience.

00:09:42: especially against complex fraud.

00:09:43: It's about securing the people and the processes, not just the perimeter.

00:09:47: Fascinating angle.

00:09:49: Okay, let's switch gears a bit to the customer-facing side.

00:09:52: Retail, e-commerce.

00:09:54: Right.

00:09:55: AI is definitely... being positioned as a wealth driver there, but wisely, Delio Diaz Garcia offered a reminder.

00:10:02: Tech is great, but the fundamentals still rule.

00:10:05: Good product, good experience, clear purpose.

00:10:07: Precisely.

00:10:08: You can't AI your way out of a bad product or a confusing business model, and the challenges are still huge.

00:10:13: Like returns.

00:10:14: Oh yeah.

00:10:15: Zigzag launching officially in Spain really highlighted this.

00:10:19: They dropped their annual recurrence report, Spain, twenty twenty five.

00:10:22: Get this, they're projecting.

00:10:23: online returns will talk thirteen point three billion

00:10:26: billion.

00:10:27: Wow, that's a massive operational headache.

00:10:29: Huge, especially dealing with what they call serial returners and slow returners.

00:10:33: That's a problem.

00:10:34: crying out for better data analysis, maybe even AI to manage.

00:10:37: And with that kind of cost involved, the metrics people track have got to change,

00:10:42: right?

00:10:42: They have to.

00:10:43: Marta Segura Verdeel's panel on app marketing really hammered this.

00:10:47: The message was, stop obsessing over vanity metrics like sheer download numbers.

00:10:53: Focus on what actually matters.

00:10:54: Yes, retention KPIs, things like churn rate, and crucially, lifetime value LTV.

00:11:02: Are you keeping customers?

00:11:04: Are they valuable over time?

00:11:05: If not, that growth is probably just leaky bucket syndrome.

00:11:09: Makes sense.

00:11:10: And it's not just the metrics.

00:11:11: The whole marketing strategy is having to adapt, isn't it?

00:11:13: Because of AI and platform changes.

00:11:15: Absolutely.

00:11:16: Raquel Trigarro Del Castillo shared some really valuable insights from Lorena Romero-Abril over at PUMA.

00:11:23: The takeaway on SEO was fascinating.

00:11:25: Not just keywords anymore.

00:11:27: Far from it.

00:11:28: Modern SEO, she argued, demands community engagement, depth context, really understanding the long-tail searches.

00:11:34: It's much more nuanced.

00:11:35: And the geographical part was striking, too.

00:11:36: Wasn't it?

00:11:37: She stressed that the geo component, local context, is now weighted incredibly heavily, like, eighty percent importance.

00:11:43: Eighty percent, so content can't just be translated anymore.

00:11:47: No, it needs to be truly localized.

00:11:49: written for that specific community, that specific place, that requires a hyper-local digital strategy, which is a big shift for many global brands.

00:11:59: Okay, so let's try and pull these threads together.

00:12:01: We've got AI needing purpose and trust, cloud needing to be multi-cloud and sustainable.

00:12:07: security needing to build trust, maybe even with criminology, and marketing needing hyperlocalization and real retention metrics.

00:12:15: What does this mean for actually measuring the ROI on all this tech investment?

00:12:20: It means you need a dual focus.

00:12:22: Luis Marino Gonzalez and others talked about needing both short lights and long lights.

00:12:26: Short

00:12:26: lights and long lights.

00:12:27: Yeah,

00:12:27: short lights are the immediate wins, the efficiency gains you can measure right now.

00:12:32: But you also need the long lights, the vision for future transformative value, even if it's harder to quantify today.

00:12:39: The key is defining measurable business outcomes first before you chase that long term sustainable scale.

00:12:45: So it all comes back to purpose and measurable outcomes.

00:12:48: It

00:12:48: seems to.

00:12:49: We've certainly covered a lot of critical ground today from edge data centers enabling low latency AI potentially for those agentic cities.

00:12:57: Right.

00:12:57: All the way to the absolute necessity of ethical purpose driven AI that's built on a foundation of organizational

00:13:03: trust.

00:13:04: The main message feels pretty clear, doesn't it?

00:13:07: Competitive advantage isn't just about being more efficient.

00:13:11: in your little silo anymore.

00:13:12: No, it's about building these integrated scalable systems and they have to be fundamentally rooted in compliance and sustainability and overarching everything in digital trust.

00:13:22: The innovation we saw, it felt as much cultural and human as it did technological.

00:13:27: Couldn't agree more.

00:13:28: The Spanish tech scene feels vibrant, practical.

00:13:31: focused on getting things done.

00:13:32: Lots

00:13:32: of collaboration, too.

00:13:34: If you enjoyed this deep dive, just a reminder that new episodes drop every two weeks.

00:13:38: Also, check out our other editions on cloud insights, sustainability in green ICT, digital products and services, health tech, defense tech, ICT and tech insights, and artificial intelligence.

00:13:48: Thank you for joining us for this deep dive into TechShow Madrid, twenty twenty five.

00:13:53: And we'll leave you with a final thought to chew on considering that shift we talked about from a smart city to potentially an agentic city.

00:14:01: Take a look at your own organization.

00:14:03: Which complex but repeatable business process do you genuinely believe an AI agent could take over entirely and successfully?

00:14:10: Right now, based on the data and infrastructure you already have, something to think about, subscribe so you don't miss our next deep

00:14:17: dive.