Elon Musk was last year’s biggest draw to Web Summit
By Will Goodbody, Science & Technology Correspondent
If technology isn’t your thing then you should probably head off on holiday for the next few days. Because Web Summit is back, and it’s bigger than ever. Which means that over the coming week you are going to be hearing an awful lot about it. About what the next big things in the world of technology are likely to be. About which company is next likely to be bought or floated on the Nasdaq for billions of dollars. About which scruffy young fella in jeans and a t-shirt is likely to be the next tech multimillionaire. And a lot of sentences beginning with, “So…”
The phenomenon that is Web Summit has seen massive changes since its birth four years ago. Not only has it changed its name several times – from Dublin Web Summit to Web Summit to The Summit and back to Web Summit again – but it has grown. Exponentially.
In 2010, 400 people attended the event which (save for a few high-profile names) barely registered on the national, let along European or global consciousness. Four years later it is preparing to welcome 20,000 visitors from over 100 countries to the RDS in Dublin over three days. That’s twice the number that attended last year, which means among other things that the conference is now spread across two sites – the RDS main hall area and the Simmonscourt across the road. It’s also a day longer than in 2013.
It’s also morphed into more than just a conference about pure web based technologies. This year, in a continuation of developments that tentatively began last year, there’s a Builders summit (not breakfast rolls and overalls, but software development), an Enterprise summit (less the star-ship, and more technology for business), the Machine summit (where that ‘ting’ the “Internet of Things” will be discussed), as well as a Marketing, Food, Night (a.k.a. party time), Sport, Film and Music Summits. There is also the first mini Web Summit for start-ups in Belfast, ahead of the main event in Dublin.
Since year one, the Web Summit has somehow managed to attract big names in technology. So it is almost a given in year four that we can expect a selection of top tech CEOs, chairmen, CTOs, investors and founders among the 600 speakers. This year, headline grabbers will include Brendan Iribe, founder of virtual reality headset maker Oculus which was sold to Facebook for $2bn; Peter Thiel – the so-called don of the Paypal mafia, who not only co-founded the payments service, but was also the first outside investor in Facebook; John Sculley, who was the CEO of Apple when Steve Jobs left the company in the mid-80s; and John Collison – the Limerick born co-founder of payments firm Stripe, which is now valued at over $1.75bn. There will also be a range of speakers who are known less for their interest in technology and more for their other pursuits – like actress Eva Longoria, Bono and soccer star Rio Ferdinand.
While the Web Summit is essentially a conference, a talking shop, a get together for geeks, on the margins some real business will actually be done. At breakfasts, lunches, dinners, pub crawls and private meetings, attended by some of the 700 investors who may or may not be feeling generous. Vying for a slice of the action and keen to make an impression will be over 2000 startups, from 85 countries. And there are plenty of opportunities for them to shine – in the Pitch and the Spark of Genius competitions for example.
Last year the organisers took a bit of a hammering for the under representation of women at the event. This year, they’ve taken some steps to redress the balance. 15% of the speakers will be female, which is still a pretty poor proportion, but an improvement nonetheless. They’ve also given out €250,000 worth of free tickets to women in technology, apparently. Though with ticket prices ranging from €500 to €1455, they could probably afford to give away a few tickets for nothing.
So what else can we expect from this year’s event? There will probably be a slew of tech job announcements from companies timed to tie in with the event. On Tuesday evening there will be a student summit attended by 2,000 young people from across the country. There will be lots of press coverage nationally and internationally, with 1200 media people from 70 countries accredited to cover proceedings. That’s more than covered Queen Elizabeth’s visit to Ireland in 2011. There will be plenty of politicians too – all trying to look hip, cool and current among members of the most vibrant and quickly evolving sector of the economy. And hopefully after a wifi disaster last year, we can expect better internet connectivity!
RTÉ, which is a Global Media Partner of the Web Summit, will be providing comprehensive coverage from the event throughout the week. RTÉ News will be covering the main news events as they happen on TV, radio, online and mobile. RTÉ News now will be offering live and recorded coverage of the Centre Stage across the week on its dedicated channel, online and the News Now app.
On Tuesday, RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland and RTÉ One TV’s Six One news will both be co-presented from the RDS. Morning Edition will have coverage from the event across all three days, while on radio, News at One, Drivetime and Today with Sean O’Rourke will also report on the main events.
On Twitter, a constant stream will be provided through the @RTÉdigital account, with updates also via @RTÉ and @RTÉPlayer over the course of the three days. There will also be a rolling blog on the RTÉ Digital blog page, while dozens of one-to-one interviews with tech leaders will be available on the RTÉ News website and the RTÉ Digital YouTube channel as they happen.
If you can’t be there, then stay with RTÉ for the best available coverage of what promises to be an extraordinary few days.
Comments welcome via Twitter to @willgoodbody