Guadalajara (Jalisco, Mexico), the place where Mexican traditions as widely known as tequila and mariachis were born, the second city of the country in population, did also place itself as a leading Mexican city in terms of technology from the 23^rd to the 26^th of July 2015. As Sao Paulo (Brazil) did in February 2015, during those days Guadalajara hosted Campus Party Mexico 2015 and gathered an audience much bigger than expected. Longing to see some of the participants such as Rodolfo Neri Vela (first Mexican astronaut), Zach King (Vine star) or Bruce Dickinson (lead vocalist of Iron Maiden), campuseros could also live a true FIWARE experience! Do you want to know what we did there? Keep on reading and discover it all!

Right next to Palco Luna, the FIWARE logo brightened with a blue light and in strong contrast to the white that dominated the place. Among other reasons, this year, FIWARE attended Campus Party México 2015 to present the new FIWARE node that is to be open and that will become the biggest node in Latin America, thus strengthening the role that FIWARE plays in Mexico and achieving technological autonomy for the country. This node was presented earlier that week in Mexico D.F. in collaboration with Infotec and the Mexican Technology Platform (MTP). This will allow Mexico, as Juanjo Hierro stated during Campus Party, to be the first Latin American country to deploy FIWARE and its acceleration programmes.

Participants in Campus Party Mexico 2015 could attend both an introductory speech by Juanjo Hierro, Hugo Estrada and Juan Manuel Romero in Palco Tierra and detailed workshops by technology experts to learn how to use FIWARE to make the most out of their ideas. Juan Manuel Romero did also present his own project, Cares, and his own experience as FIWARE entrepreneur, finalist of a FIWARE hackathon in other Campus Party and winner of the FIWARE Smart Society Challenge. But not only that! Attendees could also participate in the #FIWAREIoT competition. They only needed to follow FIWARE on Twitter and tell us what they would connect to the Internet of Things. The best answers got a FIWARE T-Shirt!

Let’s be honest, all of that is great, but the truth is that, if there was something that drew everybody’s attention, it was the FIWARE Smart Apps hackathon, whose prize climbed up to 170,000 pesos (about 10,000 €). Pedro Pablo Rodríguez won the first prize with the project HugTeddy, which allows busy parents to watch for their little children and not to miss out any detail of their growth. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? Stay tuned because we will soon post more information about the three projects that got the three prizes, so that you can learn how they used FIWARE to develop their own projects.

In short, Campus Party Mexico was, as it always is, a great and funny experience both for the FIWARE team and all the developers that participated in our activities. The only thing we can say is… see you soon, campuseros!