Conference
Barcelona Activa's career guidance congress, at the DHubwith Barcelona Activa
The second edition of Barcelona Activa's technical congress brought career guidance professionals together at the Disseny Hub to think about how to support people in a changing job market, with live captions on the auditorium screen.
The congress
On 18 June, Barcelona Activa held the II Congrés Tècnic d’Orientació Professional de Barcelona at the Disseny Hub Barcelona (DHub). Its motto, “Orientar avui per construir el treball de demà” (Guiding today to build tomorrow’s work), sums up the thinking behind this edition: with the future so uncertain, career guidance cannot simply follow changes once they have arrived. It has to anticipate them.
Barcelona Activa promotes quality employment, entrepreneurship and the competitiveness of the city’s businesses. Its congress is a meeting point for those who support others along their learning and career paths. It draws on the experience of nine editions of the Jornada Tècnica d’Orientació Professional and follows on from the first congress, also held at the DHub, in 2025.
The programme combined talks, round tables, workshops and spaces for debate on the triple green, digital and demographic transition; generational handover; the shift from guidance centred on occupations to guidance based on skills; and artificial intelligence, with its opportunities and its risks.
The opening keynote, by Dionís Guzmán, framed the future of work not as something to be predicted but as something we all build together. Pedro Moreno da Fonseca, of the International Labour Organization, and Elena Magrini, of Lightcast, also spoke.
In the afternoon, a round table with the Servei d’Ocupació de Catalunya, Barcelona City Council, PIMEC and Barcelona Activa looked at quality employment linked to the extraordinary regularisation process for migrants. New this year, the foyer hosted Canal Orienta, a studio set where local organisations and professionals talked about their projects.
What we set up
In the DHub auditorium we set up Captions: the big screen showed the words spoken on stage as live text, so the room could read them without looking at a phone. In the photo, taken during the round table on the extraordinary regularisation, the Catalan subtitles fill a strip at the bottom, beneath the presentation.
