We brought the first Xprize event held in Spain to Madrid

How to prolong human life and how to provide basic educational services to out-of-school children formed the basis for the first meeting of the think tank Xprize held in Madrid (Spain). This international organization based in California (USA) aims to connect people from the field of technology and entrepreneurialism to address the greatest challenges for humankind. To this end, Xprize has organized debates and discussion groups in different cities around the world. Xprize selected us as their partner to organize their events in the Spanish capital city. The first of these events was celebrated at Opinno´s offices on September 23rd, and was attended by 30 people.

How to prolong human life and how to provide basic educational services to out-of-school children formed the basis for the first meeting of the think tank Xprize held in Madrid (Spain). This international organization based in California (USA) aims to connect people from the field of technology and entrepreneurialism to address the greatest challenges for humankind. To this end, Xprize has organized debates and discussion groups in different cities around the world. Xprize selected us as their partner to organize their events in the Spanish capital city. The first of these events was celebrated at Opinno´s offices on September 23rd, and was attended by 30 people.

Madrid thus joins the 10 cities already working locally to address these global challenges. This aim was highlighted by the CEO of Opinno and cofounder of Xprize Madrid, Pedro Moneo, who gave the opening, keynote speech: "We are at the beginning of an exciting new path, and no one knows where it will lead us."

We have initiated this journey with the objective of achieving greater human longevity, and to this end the Xprize event included the participation of two renowned experts in the community of innovation and technology that Opinno has been curating for years.

Bruce Duncan presented the Life Naut initiative for which he serves as director. This project allows anyone to upload personality traits to the cloud in the form of video or audio content, text and photos to create a digital archive that will outlive them. The consultant and professor at the EOI Business School Antonio Fontanini, who has collaborated with us on numerous occasions, offered a more everyday solution to human longevity. The self-proclaimed Chief Optimistic Officer (COO, in contrast with the acronym CEO, Chief Executive Officer), Fontanini explained the foundations of positive psychology, a discipline developed by Martin Seligman based on optimism and a positive outlook to face and overcome problems.

No child without education

The other important theme of this event was access to education for underprivileged children. The Global Learning Xprize initiative has been created as a competition which seeks to devise the most viable solution that would fill the educational gap for the 58 million children worldwide who, according to the UN, remain unschooled. The winning idea will receive 10 million dollars (approximately 8.9 million euros) in funding.

Xprize Madrid has decided to get involved in this challenge and a few ideas have already been proposed, like the distribution of tablets to children who lack access to a formal education or the collaboration with Internet.org, Facebook´s project to bring affordable internet access to underdeveloped countries.

In future editions, which will be held once a month, Xprize Madrid will apply innovation methodologies like design thinking to address the challenges at hand. We will continue to remain involved in the process as one of the founding and driving actors of this initiative in Spain.

The project coordinator and our Director of Culture & Engagement, Alejandro Briceño, explains: "We couldn´t be more proud that our offices hosted the first event and served to drive this movement in Spain." Innovation, technology and entrepreneurialism make up our DNA and what better than to use it to tackle mankind´s greatest challenges?