Spectacle Over Substance: Setting the Scene
As professionals in the Data Engineering and Governance sector, we often measure the value of an event not by the glossy brochures or the quality of the catering, but by the density of actionable insights we can take back to our clients. On the 29th of October, I attended HUAWEI CONNECT 2025 · MADRID, held under the ambitious banner of “All Intelligence, Greener Europe.”
Having just attended the vibrant Madrid Tech Show at IFEMA, my mind was already primed for high-level business discourse. I arrived at the Palacio Municipal de Congresos de Madrid with high expectations. The venue itself was undeniably striking—a beautiful architectural feat that I had not visited before. However, as I navigated the halls and sessions, a contrasting reality began to settle in. What I found was a stark reminder that in our industry, a robust exterior cannot hide a fragile strategic interior.
A Tale of Two Cities: Paris vs. Madrid
To understand my perspective, you must understand my baseline. I attended the previous iteration of this event in Paris in 2023. That summit was formidable—massive in scale, overflowing with diverse attendees, and buzzing with an energy that felt like the cutting edge of the industry. It set a high bar.
In Madrid, the contrast was palpable. It was immediately evident that the budget and scope had been significantly reduced. The exhibition zone—usually the heartbeat of such summits where engineers get their hands on the tech—felt sparse. While the venue provided a grand stage, the content filling it felt dangerously thin. It raised an immediate red flag for me: is the company retreating, or simply changing its tactic?
The Demographic Disconnect: One-Way Communication
One of the most telling indicators of an event’s health is the audience it attracts. At the Madrid Tech Show earlier that week, I was surrounded by C-level executives, fellow senior consultants, and decision-makers from across the European business landscape. The conversations were peer-to-peer, focused on shared challenges in Data Governance and AI implementation.
At Huawei Connect, the dynamic was inverted. I noticed a massive influx of university students, bussed in by the organisers. While I am a staunch advocate for education and youth in tech, filling an auditorium with students creates a specific atmosphere. It signals a lack of convening power among enterprise peers.
The event felt less like a forum for exchange and more like a broadcast. It was “one-way communication”: a global giant speaking at a young European audience, rather than engaging with the local industry leaders. The decision-makers on stage were predominantly non-European, reinforcing the feeling that the strategy is decided elsewhere, with Europe merely viewed as a passive consumer rather than an active partner.
The Geopolitical Elephant in the Room
We must be intellectually honest: Huawei has excellent technology. From a purely technical standpoint, their solutions are robust and competitive. However, in my role delivering solutions for major banking clients like BBVA, technical capability is only one pillar of the architecture. The other pillar is long-term viability and trust.
The theme “All Intelligence, Greener Europe” felt like a carefully calculated slogan designed to appease local narratives, rather than a deep-dive into the energy costs of AI models. But the bigger issue is the geopolitical reality. We have already witnessed the complications European telecom operators faced during the 5G rollout.
For a Data Governance consultant, the risk profile is simply too high. Enterprises cannot build their future on foundations that might be politically ring-fenced tomorrow. Success in our field requires a guarantee of continuity, something that is becoming increasingly difficult for firms caught in cross-border tensions to provide.
Why I Double Down on the GCP Ecosystem
Leaving the Palacio Municipal, I felt a renewed appreciation for my daily work within the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) ecosystem. The contrast in value proposition is stark. When I engage with the GCP community, I am not just hearing a sales pitch; I am entering a continuous loop of “live learning.”
With GCP, the ecosystem is alive. We have:
- Active global communities testing and breaking things in real-time.
- Transparent roadmaps that align with industry needs, not just political necessities.
- Peer-to-peer validation, where I can see how other major financial institutions are solving the same governance puzzles I face.
My clients pay for certainty and innovation, not just hardware. They need to know that the pipeline I build today will be supported, compliant, and cutting-edge five years from now.
Conclusion: Substance Over Spectacle
I went to HUAWEI CONNECT 2025 · MADRID to learn, and in a way, I did. I learned that branding cannot substitute for a thriving business ecosystem. While I enjoyed the architecture of the venue, I left without the “aha!” moments that drive my consulting practice forward.
For now, I am pausing my attendance at such broad-spectrum events to focus on where the real value is being generated: deep, technical execution using trusted cloud partners. In the world of Data Governance, we cannot afford to be swayed by a nice facade; we must always inspect the foundations.
Let’s continue the conversation. Are you noticing similar shifts in the tech events you attend? I share regular insights on Data Engineering, Governance, and the reality of cloud implementations.
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