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THERE’S NO DENYING this year’s Dublin Web Summit was a big one.
We had the Taoiseach there to ring the Nasdaq bell, Bono to ring Apple’s and Eva Longoria there for no readily-apparent reason, but she’s beautiful and famous so who cares, right?
And even though there were a few glitches at the event dubbed “Davos for geeks” (itself a deeply geeky reference to the World Economic Forum’s annual conference in Davos), few could begrudge the success of a conference estimated to have pulled some €100 million into the local economy.
So here’s everything we learned from this year’s Web Summit… and a few other bits of news that washed up during week:
Need to know
The Web Summit is really big… but still really Irish
Paddy Cosgrave has undeniably pulled off an impressive coup with the Web Summit. In only five years it has swelled from a small get-together for 500-odd attendees to Europe’s premier tech love-in.
This year over 20,000 people descended on the RDS for the three-day conference where, for an eye-watering €1525 per ticket (or €649 for an early bird), you could hear luminaries from mega firms like Google, Apple and Amazon share their wisdom.
Meanwhile startups from around the world got the chance to rub shoulders with industry heavyweights and make their pitch at the big time, even if some complained the event was heavy on the geekery and light on actual investors.
But quickly the main talking point become the event’s WiFi glitches rather than the pearls of wisdom being spun at the summit, leading one Twitter wag to remark that it was the “most Irish thing ever” for the internet to go down at such a major event.
Who would have thought 20,000-or-so techies would be interested in using the interwebs?
Cosgrave pointed the finger at the RDS for failing to deliver proper broadband, adding a threat that the event “won’t be in this country very much longer” if the problems weren’t sorted out.
But he appeared to have cooled off a bit later as he thanked the RDS for helping pull together a Web Summit that was “the best yet”.
In turn, RDS boss Michael Duffy pitched in to say the venue would fix the problems by “whatever means required” ahead of next year’s event.
So enough about the WiFi, here are a few other notables from the Web Summit:
Nice to know
Now you know
One for the road
We’ve already given it a nod, but it was impossible to resist a repeat of the cringeworthy exchange between the IDA’s Shanahan and Kernan on US television.
It starts off well enough, but just watch and wait as the car crash starts unfolding in slow motion… “You have euros in Ireland? Why do you have euros in Ireland?”
No, dig up stupid!
Originally published 2.08pm
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Pretty ironic that you should make a comment like that regarding eva longoria as she was at the web summit to speak on the difficulties and prejudices faced by women in business !!! You can probably google her achievements in business and with charity work and you should probably in the future refrain from such sexist comments if you dont have your homework done .
No-one’s saying she’s not accomplished Sinead, but a cynic (like me) could argue the reason she was picked to speak at Web Summit was more to do with her celebrity than anything else. AMD microchips, for example, just got its first female CEO so it would make more sense to ask her – or one of the many successful women working in technology – to speak about the difficulties women face in business considering it’s a technology conference.
I believe the word that Sinead is looking for is Touché! Well said Peter.
I think its probably fair to say its more of a technology in businesses conference. And if the CEO of AMD had spoken, i wonder would she have commented on how her salary is substantially less than that of her male predecessor? My point is that if that were the case you probably wouldnt have mentioned that in your summary but you chose to highlight Eva Longorias presence purely based on her looks and fame and not the content of her address.
I think her performance on tonight’s late late speaks for itself…self serving ditz with very little going on between the ears. not that she’s helped much in an interview by tubridy, who is just appalling at what he does
Ringing the bell for Irish emigrants to come home? No way not on your nelly. To much well paid work over here.
(I work in construction btw)
Great to see so many smart Irish start-ups in one place. Good for a bit of networking with overseas heads also.
My favs were Loylap, EnergyElephant, Foodcloud and some german nut who wanted to save the world with a shower head… interesting!
I’m sure a few of these could easily teach Irish Water a thing or two about how to set up a company properly and not p*ss every potential customer off.
I wanted to save the world with an empty plastic bottle … but that’s another story entirely.
Add Jibbr to the list of great Irish start ups.
I thought Loylap gave good pitches as well. Clever idea.
*I agree the LoyLap guys were pretty good. (*=I may be biased :D)
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