Web Summit quits Dublin

Sofiztikated

Are people bitching about hotels charging more when there is a high demand on rooms?

Are people not aware that this happens around the world, it's generally how hotels operate.

Try price a room in Dublin on the All Ireland weekend.

Try price a room in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival.

Christ, look at the price people were paying for a room in Vegas for the McGregor fight.

Bringing 20K people into a city with 18,000 hotel beds, demand exceeds supply, and so higher prices can be charged. And with most attendees charging them on expense accounts, why not?

As for the financial loss? Sure, I could see it being that amount. There's food, drinks, hotels, transport (public and private), cleaning, security, IT, electrical, events, staffing, etc etc. We recently had an event in work where 70 people came for a 3 day sales conference, from around the world, and their total bill came to €90k with us. Not including what they paid for airport transfers by coach (and local taxis costing €180 a go, multiple times) and so on.

Events like these can be either fluff or substance. It seems that this event was more fluff than substance, but the fluff is where the craic usually is, and by god, people come to Ireland for the craic.

techdiver

Look at the price of hotels in Cardiff and the surrounding areas during the rugby world cup. You can easily pay €2,000 per night.

StonyIron

There's one major issue though - the RDS is not really a suitable venue for a major event like this and we have almost no alternatives on a big scale.
We need a purpose built, very large scale conference centre if we're going to get and keep those kinds of events.

If you have regular big events, you'll have hotels to cope with them. If they're one off and sporadic, you can't really expect hotels to have sufficient capacity all the time. A big conference venue, that is in regular use (the important bit) will generate its own ecosystem of hotels.

Dublin has the potential to be a major conference venue, mostly because it's extremely well connected by air.

The WiFi issue was a local issue with the actual on-site WiFi. It has nothing, whatsoever to do with Irish broadband speeds (which incidentally are not that slow in urban areas - we've on average faster speeds available than the UK has - it's just that 62% of Irish people live in cities / towns vs close to 80% of the UK).

I heard a debate on RTE Radio One this morning, Marian Finucane show where the contributors were talking about "the state of our WiFi" and not even seemingly realising that WiFi isn't anything to do with infrastructure other than locally in a building and people going on about not being able to get reception in Georgian buildings on the South Mall in Cork (via probably stone and very serious amounts of brick). You can't make radio waves penetrate granite and thick brick no matter what you do, unless the building itself installs leaky feeders to carry the signals thorough.

There is tons of connectivity available around the RDS including plenty of fibre, if someone's willing to pay for it.

The WiFi issue was most likely caused by congestion of the WiFi channels in the actual venue due to huge amounts of use and not enough clear channels. If you put thousands of heavy data users and tens of thousands of devices onto a WiFi network, you will run out of channels because there simply aren't enough to cope. That applies in Tokyo, Dublin, Dingle, Lisbon or anywhere else. WiFi is actually limited in capacity and tends to choke up because of limitations of the technology itself.

It's unlicensed spectrum and has relatively narrow bandwidth. It was never designed to cope with that number of devices.
On top of that, you've got the fact that in a European context, people won't generally have access to their own mobile data unless they're locals, so everything hangs off the conference WiFi.

No amount of infrastructural investment will solve that. You just need tons and tons of WiFi routers located very locally in the building to create a dense mesh to attempt to cope.

Blaming the state for bad WiFi at a private venue is utter nonsense.
It's like blaming the Department of Communications because you put your cordless phone base station too far away from your home office and you can't get a signal.

StonyIron

If you want to build a serious conference centre - it really should be at the end of the Dublin Port Tunnel - easy access from Dublin Airport for conferences with international focus and easy access from the M50 for Irish-focused events.

It would need a major multi-storey carpark capable of parking several thousand cars and busses and all the on-site infrastructure to cope.

The other alternative is build it on cheaper land North of Dublin City on the M1.

The "infrastructure" is conference infrastructure. It's nothing to do with telecoms issues in rural areas or residential broadband.

Eugene Norman

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

What good is the DART if you are coming from the airport? Country is run by gombeen country TD's that don't give two hoots about the capital, only their own seats and voters. Not that many of the natives do either but anyway. It really is a disgrace the way Dublin is run and managed. A national embarrassment that has us on a par with Newcastle, Hull or Sheffield instead of the capital of a modern country.

It is not even the big things Dublin does not get right - it's the simple things.

It's not the job of country TDs to run Dublin. In fact it's not the job of TDs to run Dublin. TDs run Ireland.

kippy

Eugene Norman wrote: »

It's not the job of country TDs to run Dublin. In fact it's not the job of TDs to run Dublin. TDs run Ireland.

TDs run nothing, the truth be told.

Dyr

Eugene Norman wrote: »

It's not the job of country TDs to run Dublin. In fact it's not the job of TDs to run Dublin. TDs run Ireland.

You're right... dublin needs a directly elected mayor and its own tax raising ability. Too much power vested into non dubs in this country

StonyIron

Ireland's entire system of local government is a total joke.
We should have a situation where the cities have directly elected mayors or an executive council with a mayor. That way they'd have some sense of accountability and vision.

Meanwhile, you've a government contemplating merging Cork City with County Cork which is a rural area the size of half of Northern Ireland that contains some of the most remote rural parts of this island! How exactly is that going to work out for what is supposed to be our 2nd city?! It's like proposing to merge Dublin with The Pale or something. Just because the two entities are called Cork doesn't actually mean they've anything in common in terms of socio-economics or administrative needs.

I also do not agree with this ridiculous idea of scrapping town councils. We should have town councils in *all* towns. They needn't be expensive to run but they are absolutely essential if a town is supposed to have some kind of sense of identity and vision for development. You can't just expect the local tidy towns committee to run the place.

They froze the town councils as they were in 1921 - so really large new towns like Tallaght, Swords, Ballincollig, Carrigaline etc etc never had any councils at all, while small towns that existed pre 1921 did.
Instead of reforming it, the government idiotically scrapped the whole system, leaving towns without any focus.

I can't think of *any* other developed country that would do something so idiotic.

We are one of the least urbanised countries in the developed world (only about 60%) and we've a government that seems to have a vendetta against towns and cities and idealises unsustainable quasi-rural developments.

Public policy here has always been about pulling power into the centre and removing any local autonomy and about scattering investment to the four winds instead of creating several counterbalancing regional hubs.

Ireland should look more like New Zealand in terms of development. Dublin should be as large as Auckland and Cork should be as large as Wellington and so on.. Instead, we've this thin, spread mess of what is rural housing that thinks its urban.

It's why we've large numbers of homes with an inability to access broadband (no density which makes it uneconomic). It's why we had cryptosporidium infections in water supplies in Galway City - too many one-off septic tank systems draining into water tables.

1 in 3 Irish homes doesn't even have a unique address !?! This is a problem you normally encounter in the developing world, not Western Europe.

Interesting things and economies happen in cities. We can idealise rural Ireland all we like, but if we don't actually put the scale of investment in things like public transit and proper zoning for housing, large apartments etc into place in our cities, we are going to always be second rate as a location.

Also, we need to stop thinking about sky-high house prices as a sign of a good economy - it's a sign that we're being asset stripped by speculators!

boobar

Well it did bring in a lot if cash to the Dublin hotel and restaurant business.

The WiFi debacle at the RDS was beyond embarassing.

But sure we have to continue to big up the country and the benefits it holds for tech firms...even though broadband countrywide is pure crap.

Say it as it is and you're set upon for saying that the emperor has no clothes.

awec

StonyIron wrote: »

There's one major issue though - the RDS is not really a suitable venue for a major event like this and we have almost no alternatives on a big scale.
We need a purpose built, very large scale conference centre if we're going to get and keep those kinds of events.

If you have regular big events, you'll have hotels to cope with them. If they're one off and sporadic, you can't really expect hotels to have sufficient capacity all the time. A big conference venue, that is in regular use (the important bit) will generate its own ecosystem of hotels.

Dublin has the potential to be a major conference venue, mostly because it's extremely well connected by air.

The WiFi issue was a local issue with the actual on-site WiFi. It has nothing, whatsoever to do with Irish broadband speeds (which incidentally are not that slow in urban areas - we've on average faster speeds available than the UK has - it's just that 62% of Irish people live in cities / towns vs close to 80% of the UK).

I heard a debate on RTE Radio One this morning, Marian Finucane show where the contributors were talking about "the state of our WiFi" and not even seemingly realising that WiFi isn't anything to do with infrastructure other than locally in a building and people going on about not being able to get reception in Georgian buildings on the South Mall in Cork (via probably stone and very serious amounts of brick). You can't make radio waves penetrate granite and thick brick no matter what you do, unless the building itself installs leaky feeders to carry the signals thorough.

There is tons of connectivity available around the RDS including plenty of fibre, if someone's willing to pay for it.

The WiFi issue was most likely caused by congestion of the WiFi channels in the actual venue due to huge amounts of use and not enough clear channels. If you put thousands of heavy data users and tens of thousands of devices onto a WiFi network, you will run out of channels because there simply aren't enough to cope. That applies in Tokyo, Dublin, Dingle, Lisbon or anywhere else. WiFi is actually limited in capacity and tends to choke up because of limitations of the technology itself.

It's unlicensed spectrum and has relatively narrow bandwidth. It was never designed to cope with that number of devices.
On top of that, you've got the fact that in a European context, people won't generally have access to their own mobile data unless they're locals, so everything hangs off the conference WiFi.

No amount of infrastructural investment will solve that. You just need tons and tons of WiFi routers located very locally in the building to create a dense mesh to attempt to cope.

Blaming the state for bad WiFi at a private venue is utter nonsense.
It's like blaming the Department of Communications because you put your cordless phone base station too far away from your home office and you can't get a signal.

Is that not the convention centre on the quays?

the dark phantom

boobar wrote: »

Well it did bring in a lot if cash to the Dublin hotel and restaurant business.

The WiFi debacle at the RDS was beyond embarassing.

But sure we have to continue to big up the country and the benefits it holds for tech firms...even though broadband countrywide is pure crap.

Say it as it is and you're set upon for saying that the emperor has no clothes.

Agree, Doing things the "Irish way" must be protected at all costs, Even if it leads to shíte organisation shíte transit shíte internet and paying over the odds for shíte services. :pac:

Eoin

awec wrote: »

Is that not the convention centre on the quays?

Not for the sort of numbers that the Web Summit think they can grow to - they can only hold a few thousand people per event. I don't think people appreciate how big a venue it takes to cater for conferences of 50,000 people.

boobar wrote:

But sure we have to continue to big up the country and the benefits it holds for tech firms

Again, this should not be a reflection on Ireland as a place for technology companies, despite what the hand-wringers and all the self-loathing Irish say. Smaller and more useful events will fill the vacuum if the demand is there.

Eugene Norman

Eoin wrote: »

Not for the sort of numbers that the Web Summit think they can grow to - they can only hold a few thousand people per event. I don't think people appreciate how big a venue it takes to cater for conferences of 50,000 people.

Could London even host that in one hall and have enough spare room capacity? San Francisco? New York? It seems you need a moderate sized city off season, or one like Las Vegas that depends on conferences, with a humongous conference centre. Or two.

Again, this should not be a reflection on Ireland as a place for technology companies, despite what the hand-wringers and all the self-loathing Irish say. Smaller and more useful events will fill the vacuum if the demand is there.

The number of people who think that congested wifi = bad broadband is beyond a joke. It's been explained already in this thread. Dublins broadband is pretty good. Coming from the uk two years ago I upgraded from 2mb/s to 100mb/s.

MadsL

You'd think a websummit could figure out something that doesn't involve gathering a bunch of people in one place. Oh, the shattered dreams of the telecommute generation!

Wompa1

MadsL wrote: »

You'd think a websummit could figure out something that doesn't involve gathering a bunch of people in one place. Oh, the shattered dreams of the telecommute generation!

You, sir are a crazy man! How can you partake in the circle jerk from your stuffy old office or home!?

StonyIron

awec wrote: »

Is that not the convention centre on the quays?

That's more of a conference venue:

"The building can hold up to 8,000 people in 22 meeting rooms, which include a 2,000-seat auditorium and a 4,500 square metre exhibition and banqueting space"

What you need is a really large purpose built exhibition centre capably of hosting huge events like the NEC in Birmingham or ExCeL in London.

NEC
13,928 seated
15,643 standing

ExCeL is 100,000 sq meters.

wicklowwonder

StonyIron wrote: »

That's more of a conference venue:

"The building can hold up to 8,000 people in 22 meeting rooms, which include a 2,000-seat auditorium and a 4,500 square metre exhibition and banqueting space"

What you need is a really large purpose built exhibition centre capably of hosting huge events like the NEC in Birmingham or ExCeL in London.

NEC
13,928 seated
15,643 standing

ExCeL is 100,000 sq meters.

When would we use it? The Point fits: 9,500 all seated or 14,500 seated + standing. Dublin is a small city in the grand scheme of things. We don't need a conference centre as big as the ExCel and we won't ever host the Olympics. Both would be a complete waste of money. Our public transport system does need additions but we definitely do not need to build a white elephant to see it never used.

StonyIron

wicklowwonder wrote: »

When would we use it? The Point fits: 9,500 all seated or 14,500 seated + standing. Dublin is a small city in the grand scheme of things. We don't need a conference centre as big as the ExCel and we won't ever host the Olympics. Both would be a complete waste of money. Our public transport system does need additions but we definitely do not need to build a white elephant to see it never used.

Well, in that case you also won't host the Web Summit or anything similar once it gets to that kind of scale.

If you want to make Dublin into a major conference venue, it needs to think far beyond local markets. It's an extremely well connected city, most due to Ryanair and Aer Lingus and actually a very handy conference centre form that point of view.

It's got a potential to be a major conference destination for UK centric and European conferences, but if it only thinks small and local, well then don't expect to host big conferences as you don't have the infrastructure to do so.

You can't host a GAA All Ireland Final in Dingle either.

No point in moaning about it, it's a civic choice. Either build one, or don't.

The only downside to Dublin as a venue for major conferences is that it's bloody expensive to get large equipment in and out of due to being on an island. You actually add very significant transport costs and time lag as everything has to go by ferry. For a major conference, somewhere like Belgium or NL actually makes more sense for Europe.

grundie

StonyIron wrote: »

There's one major issue though - the RDS is not really a suitable venue for a major event like this and we have almost no alternatives on a big scale.
We need a purpose built, very large scale conference centre if we're going to get and keep those kinds of events.

If you have regular big events, you'll have hotels to cope with them. If they're one off and sporadic, you can't really expect hotels to have sufficient capacity all the time. A big conference venue, that is in regular use (the important bit) will generate its own ecosystem of hotels.

The RDS is actually a pretty decent venue. During the horse show something like 20,000 people pass through each day, and that's with half the site taken up with horse storage stuff and lots of exhibitors taking up space. Plus being close to the city centre is a major draw for organisers.

It might not be the size of the NEC, but that was built to handles potentially hundreds of thousands of people attending multiple exhibitions every day.

Strumms

A statement from Cosgrave, interesting reading...


http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/web-summit-founder-cosgrave-lays-into-government-says-dutch-french-danes-brits-and-portuguese-are-way-better-at-infrastructure-planning-31612456.html

MrMorooka

Strumms wrote: »

A statement from Cosgrave, interesting reading...


http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/web-summit-founder-cosgrave-lays-into-government-says-dutch-french-danes-brits-and-portuguese-are-way-better-at-infrastructure-planning-31612456.html

It's more informative to read the correspondence they released. https://static.rasset.ie/documents/news/web-summit-correspondence.pdf Primary source ftw.

Got to love our government.

Paddy, have this and the document received on Friday. Will be back to you. Nick
Sent from my iPhone

9 days and 2 more emails sent later with no other response ...

Paddy, in France on trade mission at moment. I will be back to you. Nick
Sent from my iPad

Martial9

They have leaked their back and forth correspondence with the government. They really wanted to keep it in Dublin but just needed some basic assurances and a plan in place from our government.

https://files.websummit.net/correspondence.pdf

CatFromHue

Why are they asking the office of the Taoiseach for a traffic plan in Dublin, public transport changes in Dublin, and to give out about the Wifi that the RDS have in place?

Edit

As requested by the Taoiseach please find attached a concise overview of the offerings from a
number of other countries. Our absolute preference is to stay in Ireland. We've had an incredibly
positive experience over the last five years and I know the Taoiseach is adamant that any offer
can be matched.

I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

listermint

CatFromHue wrote: »

Why are they asking the office of the Taoiseach for a traffic plan in Dublin, public transport changes in Dublin, and to give out about the Wifi that the RDS have in place?

Edit



I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

Id imagine the 100Million Euro that it breaths into the Economy you know may be of interest. And setting ourselves on the International Stage in such a high profile event may be of interest.

But sure the response and attitude that you read there is persuasive at all levels of Government which is very telling in the contempt they have for Start Ups and Entrepreneurs. The Budget does everything to push more folks to go abroad, be it the West Coast of the States or the UK.

Innovative Ireland..... Having a laugh. FG Labour see Innovation and technology as a hot grenade that know one in their midst knows what to do to with.

Oh and the Dept of Taoiseach were probably meant to liase with the relevant Departments to retain it. Im sure that was the reasoning.

MrMorooka

CatFromHue wrote: »

I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

Oh yeah, it's completely obvious. Lots of their emails read like they were written to be published like this But the thing is, they got great offers and engagement from the likes of Lisbon, who (it can be inferred from Appendix 2) were offering to pay for the venue, all transport, wifi, deal with hotels, etc out of government funds. In comparison, Ireland did basically nothing and just gave off the attitude they couldn't be bothered.

As for why they are asking the Taoiseach- it seems they had direct engagement from PMs of other countries, and it can be expected that if the PM is pushing for something, it will be made to happen, heads pushed together etc. But I don't think we do that kind of leadership here, instead everything is its own little fiefdom that barely connects to other parts of the state and just wants to get by with as little effort as possible.

grundie

I don't think this helps Mr Cosgraves case.

He's asking people at ministerial level to help him with stuff that he really should be dealing with himself.

Traffic issues? Speak to the Guards just like the FAI, GAA would do when planning a big game.

Public transport issues? Speak to CIE or private operators and be willing splash the cash to lay on extra services.

WiFi issues? Nothing to do with the government.

Hotels? Do what any other big conference organiser would do and negotiate competitive prices at specially selected hotels. Refuse to list any hotel on the summit website if they refuse to agree not to raise prices for the conference.

I read it as "I have all these problems that I really should be dealing with, but I want you to wave a magic wand and make them go away"

markpb

Depressing stuff but not exactly surprising.

seamus

CatFromHue wrote: »

Why are they asking the office of the Taoiseach for a traffic plan in Dublin, public transport changes in Dublin, and to give out about the Wifi that the RDS have in place?

Edit



I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

There's definitely a certain amount of arrogance here in terms of, "We're not going chasing all of these people ourselves, I want the office of the Taoiseach to do it for me".

I'd be curious as to why they didn't go to the county councils about this. The four things they were requesting a plan for are all outside of the remit of the Taoiseach and arguably outside of the Dáil's remit.

This is in fact the exact kind of, "I want a TD to give me a dig out with the paperwork so I don't have to do it myself" stuff that's ruined our local government.

Dyr

Look lads it's probably this simple, the government figured out that this golden goose only lays eggs for Paddy and Co. so it wasn't worth the drama and cost of dealing with these boyos. Lisbon will learn in time

Strumms

grundie wrote: »

I don't think this helps Mr Cosgraves case.

He's asking people at ministerial level to help him with stuff that he really should be dealing with himself.

Traffic issues? Speak to the Guards just like the FAI, GAA would do when planning a big game.

Public transport issues? Speak to CIE or private operators and be willing splash the cash to lay on extra services.

WiFi issues? Nothing to do with the government.

Hotels? Do what any other big conference organiser would do and negotiate competitive prices at specially selected hotels. Refuse to list any hotel on the summit website if they refuse to agree not to raise prices for the conference.

I read it as "I have all these problems that I really should be dealing with, but I want you to wave a magic wand and make them go away"

He was looking for the support of the Government. Not help with it and not for people to do it for him. That support was offered from a multitude of other governments. Do you know anything about event planning ? Do you expect Web Summit to start ringing around hotels ? Also do you expect the IRFU just to organize the world cup bid without the support of the government or just do everything on their own ? With government support and backing it would have brought all stakeholders together and the issues would have been easily solved had there been the will. The communication from the office of the Taoiseach and lack there of it proves that there really wasn't.