The president of Catalonia, Salvador Illa, will inaugurate the International Radio Congress, to be held on 15 and 16 November at the CaixaFòrum in Barcelona. Over 100 speakers from ten different countries will participate in the congress. Attending the inauguration on 15 November will be rector of the UAB, Javier Lafuente; executive president of PRISA Media, Carlos Núñez; and vice president of PRISA, Pilar Gil. The opening conference will be given by journalist Iñaki Gabilondo.
The congress, entitled "Present and Future of Audio", is organised by the Cadena SER radio station and the UAB Faculty of Communication Studies. It will be made up of six thematic areas and 21 conference tables on subjects such as artificial intelligence, new consumption models, proximity radio, the effectiveness of advertising, music radio stations, audience measurement, the future of the industry, public radio stations around the world, the evolution of narratives, and the importance of radio journalism. The International Radio Congress will form part of the events commemorating 100 years since the birth of Cadena SER and this media form in Spain.
The congress is aimed at professionals in the radio industry, both media channels and journalists and communicators, lecturers and researchers of the radio sector, media managers and executives, advertisers and technology service providers, etc. Jaume Serra, delegate of PRISA Media in Catalonia, director of the Cadena SER Centenary and co-director of the congress, points out that "the programme covers the most innovative aspects and keys to the future of radio, both in terms of content and the application of disruptive tecnologies that citizens are applying in their daily lives". Enric Marín, dean of the UAB Faculty of Communication Studies and co-director of the congress, highlights the value of universities in the radio of the future: "The congress is of great interest to professionals, researchers and scholars of the radio media because, not only will the main lines of work, present and future, be presented, but there will also be a debate on how the radio will be in the next decade, which will surely be very different from now".
In addition to Cadena SER and the UAB, the organising committee of the congress is composed of the Government of Catalonia, the Barcelona City Council, the Barcelona Provincial Council, the Spanish Association of Commercial Radio (AERC), the Catalan Radio Association (ACR), the Association of Universities with Degrees in Information and Communication (ATIC), the Audiovisual Cluster of Catalonia, the Association of Telecommunications Engineers, the Association of Journalists of Catalonia, the Audiovisual Council of Catalonia (CAC), the Coordination of University Communication Studies of Catalonia, the Catalan Corporation of Audiovisual Media (CCMA), the Spanish Radio and Television Corporation (RTVE), the Federation of Local Media of Catalonia (FMCLcat), the Latin American Federation of Communication Faculties (FELAFACS), the Institute of Catalan Studies (IEC) - Catalan Society of Communication, the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), and the Local Audiovisual Network (XAL).
