The traffic in Barcelona is a dissonant symphony. A member of the Guardia Urbana is directing the traffic snarl caused by 50,000 descending on Placa Espanya for the Mobile World Congress, and drivers halted on Taragona despite a green light arguing in their favour are expressing their dissatisfaction with a united chorus of car horns, the most musical complaint I’ve heard since the Helsinki Complaints Choir.

(My YouTube search for “complaints choir” returns a list that suggests a number of other cities have followed Helsinki’s lead, including Birmingham, U.K., Singapore, St. Petersburg and Chicago. This clip combines the complaints of listers to CBC Radio’s As It Happens, apparently. I’ve not had time to listen to it, so don’t blame me if it’s crap and/or offensive. But I digress).

Yes, it’s Day 3, and conference fatigue is setting in, not just among the denizens of Barcelona whose patience we are trying with our incursion. (A likely lad in Parc Joan Miro asked, with a sneer, if I was Americano. “No, Canadiano,” I replied. “Canadese,” he corrected wearily, like he just didn´t have enough energy to hate a Canadian anymore, though he might make the effort for a Yank.)

No, you can also see it in the faces of some of the conference attendees. There are the terminally chipper types, of course, who keep a smile on their faces regardless of jet lag and sales rejection. (If you’re one of those types, stay upwind of me.) But the majority fall into categories like sleepy-eyed, but still happy to be here; grimly determined to carry on despite weariness and frustration; tired, depressed and just about ready to call it a conference; brutally hungover; or — and I swear I have seen many of these people – literally on the verge of tears. (I think they’re trying to find a washroom.)

I´m firmly in the first camp — my body clock never got straightened out, but Barcelona is an incredible city (¡Mi cora as Catalana!, or  something like that), and the excitement of the people here who aren’t weeping is catching. These people have drunk the kool-aid. There’s a firm belief that the future is wireless, wireless broadband to be specific, and that there’s a business model in it for everyone.

The catch is, of course, that in Canada, we lag developments in Europe by many months to many years. Nokia’s ovi, a developing platform for wireless social networking on the fly and “circular entertainment” — wherein we go out for a night on the town, I post a video clip, you add a soundtrack and that guy we pretend to be friends with but really gets on our nerves edits the whole thing together and we think, well, actually he’s pretty cool — is rolling out, application by application, in Europe over the next year or so. We don’t have the infrastructure for those applications, we still don’t have the realistic data rates (though they’re much better than a year ago).

 That said, generally, we get there, if a little after Europe and Asia. There’s a bit of chicken-and-egg: Who’ll supply the applications if there’s no demand? And how do we generate demand if we don’t have the applications?

There’s been a lot of green talk here this year, which seems less cynical and more credible in Europe, where things green tend to be taken more seriously than in North America. And a lot of talk about mobile broadband’s impact in developing countries, which will leapfrog a wired infrastructure to bring wireless voice and Internet to many of the millions (600 to 700 million in India alone) who have never heard a dial tone.

Exciting times … no wonder I’m worn out. Had an invitation to the Budda Bar for the evening — it’s Flamenco Night — but my feets is failin’ me. Adios, Catalunya. I’ll be back next year.