Rashid's Blog: A Place for Inquisitive Souls

In the summer of 2000, I did my MBA internship with a management consultancy company based in Barcelona – level of 34 of this building, actually.

I was part of a multi-national team advising a major telecommunications company bidding for third-generation (3G) mobile-phone licenses across Europe. That year, several governments had been auctioning 3G licences and values reached fever pitch – for instance, the auction in the UK, raised the equivalent of 2.5% of the Gross National Product.

While a large proportion of the population was, by then, using a mobile phone, the trend was for small phones. Indeed, if our focus groups were anything to go by, no one would ever find any use for a camera on their mobile phone. Ever! Yet, recently published statistics reveal that nearly 9 in 10 children aged 12-15 year-olds, in the UK, now own a smartphone. And 1 in 5 mobile…

The 2012 T2M Transportation and Mobility Conference was held in Madrid — since this was my first time attending I would have to say I would definitely go back. It was a very cozy and even intimate conference with a conversational feel, sessions were well attended and discussion was lively. Each year they take what I would call a ‘class photo’ above you can see the photo from this year. Usually there are optional excursions highlighting the theme of the conference — the one I went on was a tour of the ‘ghost station’ Chamberi in Madrid that is open to those interested, now as a museum of sorts–not to be confused with the Railway Museum / Museo del ferrocarril, which was the conference’s central location (Delicias). The session comprised by Susan Larson, Araceli Masterson and myself was framed as a way of blending trains/transportation with culture in general terms…