I went to see Lionel Messi’s brother give a talk at a tech conference - and things got weird

• Lionel Messi’s brother was seemingly in Armenia to give a speech at the WCIT conference.
• A man we were told was Rodrigo spoke to the audience - but I couldn’t see if it was him or not.
• He is apparently older than Lionel and is described as an “internet personality”.

When I heard that the guest of honour on the final day of the World Congress on Innovation & Technology would be Lionel Messi’s brother, my first thought of course was - he has a brother?

I can’t say that in the English speaking world the elder Messi is as famous as the Barcelona legend - and even their father Jorge has been mentioned in the press on a handful of occasions.

But down to the main hall at the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concert Complex in Yerevan, Armenia, I went and I can’t say what expectations I had in mind - perhaps he’d be promoting a football company of sorts, or an NFT or crypto currency. I couldn’t have imagined what would happen next.

Catching the tail end of a discussion on the role of music industry, the host for the weekend a fellow British journalist in Mike Butcher took to the stage and started to hype up the arrival of Messi’s brother. Asking who in the audience “had heard of Lionel Messi”, he then introduced two other guests who were decidedly not the footballer’s older brother.

One of the panel members of the “fireside chat” started by reading a message from Elon Musk about SpaceX and Armenia. I remember turning to one of my colleagues and asking what the odds would have been that the Tesla owner actually wrote it or if some poor staff member back in the US had to put a prompt into an AI-chatbot - which would have been fitting given the setting.

The chat continued with a heavy focus on the guest’s experiences with Elon Musk. Which left most of us in the audience pretty bemused - and the WCIT staff who have been our guides quickly hurried off to find out what was actually happening.

After about 30 minutes or so of chit chat on the stage, Rodrigo Messi finally made an appearance. Or so we were told - I can’t say for sure if it was him, it could have been any person speaking Spanish.

The camera feed which usually shows the panellist or speaker who is talking at that moment on the big screens for those who are further back in the venue just cut out - instead showing the logo for the weekend’s conference.

A person spoke in Spanish and it was translated into English, but if you put a gun to my head I would not be able to tell you 100% that it was Messi’s brother who said the words. If you are wondering whether anything interesting was said, it was not.

The “Messi” brother did not at least try to sell anything like a NFT or cryptocurrency, instead offering a few vague platitudes about being happy to be in Armenia. Then it ended and went back to the two people on stage and that was that.

Apparently the last time the conference was held in Armenia Kim Kardashian was the guest of honour - I was left wishing that they’d managed to get her back for this year. Or maybe one of the robots that was mentioned in the Nvidia talk from the first day.

Who is Rodrigo Messi?

To be honest, if you’ve read the story so far, I am as in the dark as you are. A quick Google has him down as an “internet personality”, he is 44 years old (apparently) and has about 250,000 followers on Instagram.

Rodrigo was seemingly in Armenia, but as mentioned I did not see him with my own eyes or on a big screen. And we were told that he was heading to the DigiTech expo to potentially invest in some Armenian companies - but none of this was mentioned in his “speech”.

I am at the World Congress on Innovation and Technology from 4 October to 7 October. You can find all my stories from the event here. You can get in touch with me by emailing: [email protected]