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Web Summit quits Dublin

Kermit.de.frog

wow, major blow to Dublin as a "tech capital".

no doubt this is mostly due to the embarrassing broad band wifi service provided last year by the RDS which really riled the organisers.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2015/0923/729704-web-summit/

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awec

_Jamie_ wrote: »

As a layperson, I'm also confused. What is Websummit exactly?

It's just a big networking event.

It is pitched as a place for startups (who may be very loosely described as a tech startup) to pitch their ideas and meet investors. It's not a tech conference at all, more of a business gathering, but "tech conference" is a much more marketable term.

Startups pay money to get a table / booth, investors pay money to get access to startups. The majority of people go home with nothing other than a few new mates and a hangover.

Muahahaha

ChikiChiki wrote: »

The websummit seems to be doing well by its metrics. Are we too bitter to admit that. Even I was hoping it would go t*ts up but it's a loss for Dublin, let's be honest.

Said that last year too and now it is up to 56,000 entrants, that is a success in anyones book and a big economic loss for Dublin. As much of a twat Paddy is I think the government missed a huge opportunity to market and establish Dublin as a place for these mega conferences that attract 25,000+ people. Having the Web Summit here already proved it could be done, after that it needed someone with vision to carry it off.

suicide_circus

the question is - what % of attendees actually benefit from the experience in a way they could not have done at a free networking event

AlmightyCushion

Muahahaha wrote: »

Said that last year too and now it is up to 56,000 entrants, that is a success in anyones book and a big economic loss for Dublin. As much of a twat Paddy is I think the government missed a huge opportunity to market and establish Dublin as a place for these mega conferences that attract 25,000+ people. Having the Web Summit here already proved it could be done, after that it needed someone with vision to carry it off.

What should the government have done though? The reasons Paddy outlined for it leaving aren't really anything the government can do anything about. WiFi issues at the RDS - nothing to do with the government, apparently WebSummit cheaped out on the WiFi option as well which probably didn't help. Hotel costs - nothing the government can really do about that either and the same thing happened in Lisbon and pretty much anywhere. If you have a lot of people visiting the one place at the same time, hotel costs increase, that happens everywhere.

The other two reasons were that they wanted a traffic management plan and public transport set up like major sporting events. Why does the government need to get involved in this? The major sporting organisations manage this without government involvement so they should be able to as well.

I agree with you that I'd rather the WebSummit was here than in Lisbon as it would be good for Dublin/Ireland but the government didn't drop the ball here.

ChikiChiki

lawred2 wrote: »

It's hardly a surpise that public transport is an improvement... Dublin is third world where public transport is concerned

Aint that the truth!

Muahahaha

Agree that there was nothing that could be done about hotel prices, wifi, etc. But I think if any city knows it is going to have an influx of 30,000 visitors then measures should be put in place like extra buses so those attendees dont end up waiting around for already packed buses that dont pick up. Also any major sporting event has to have an event management plan during which several organs of the state plan out how to run the event smoothly. Entire roads are closed down traffic diverted. Its not a fair comparision and even more so when you consider major sporting events tend to occur at the weekends and not during the working week like the Summit does.

During last years Summit it was patently obvious some sort of traffic management plan/increase in public transport services was badly needed as Dublin was completely jammed with traffic for those few days.

Paddy is no doubt a plonker but at the end of the day if someone with a bit of initiative in the Dept of Tourism and Transport had of grabbed the opportunity to solve the traffic problems then Dublin would have been in a very good position to say that hosting large scale conferences was something the city could handle and actively manage. But instead the message that was sent out to organisers of large scale conferences was that Dublins got traffic problems which will have our delegates frustrated at the choice of venue. Plus the government dept with responsibility for attracting visitors to the country doesnt really seem bothered in at least trying to solve the problems of hosting conferences on this scale.

To put the missed opportunity into perspective just last week the Convention Centre hosted 1,200 delegates for a conference on mobile phone technologies. They will have to do those numbers at 25 more conferences just to make up the 30,000 the Summit was pulling in. Imagine the economic boost to the city if we had 3 or 4 30,000+ conferences a year, it would be huge. But instead of trying to chase that opportunity (as Lisbon has done) our lot just sat on their hands and did nothing.

BMMachine

ZeroThreat wrote: »

Well I was only looking at an old article going back to 2014 the other night and Paddy stated in an interview that the minimum requirements to get an internship with his company at the time was 1.1 from the main unis except for Trinity where a 2.1 was acceptable as Paddy said all the other institutions bar Trinity suffered from massive grade inflation.

He even went as far as to point the finger at Maynooth, claiming it had suffered a ten fold increase in the number of firsts awarded in recent years.

They also said they wouldn't even consider any degree from an IT unless the applicant also had a masters or postgraduate degree.

I guess they may have changed policies since them, but there was a big brughahah about it at the time.

well, the 3 people I know that work there didn't get 1:1's. One went to UCD, the other to DLIADT and another to DIT. there is a strong chance that paddy was talking out of his arse about that. in fact from what im told half the engineers come from IT colleges and most of the design team.

but fyi, most of what is said in this thread is utter bullsh*t (don't look so shocked, its After Hours on boards.ie, hardly the intellectual capital of the internet in Ireland). Just another platform for spiteful males to let it all out

ChikiChiki

Muahahaha wrote: »

Said that last year too and now it is up to 56,000 entrants, that is a success in anyones book and a big economic loss for Dublin. As much of a twat Paddy is I think the government missed a huge opportunity to market and establish Dublin as a place for these mega conferences that attract 25,000+ people. Having the Web Summit here already proved it could be done, after that it needed someone with vision to carry it off.

Genuinely can't understand how people continue to ignore it's obvious success. People are declaring it a failure because the burgers were to dear and the WiFi didn't work well last year. Yet the numbers are up! They're doing something right. The stats don't lie.

Like you I'm off the opinion both Paddy and the Govt acted like petulant kids but the Govt should have seen the bigger picture.

AlmightyCushion

Muahahaha wrote: »

Agree that there was nothing that could be done about hotel prices, wifi, etc. But I think if any city knows it is going to have an influx of 30,000 visitors then measures should be put in place like extra buses so those attendees dont end up waiting around for already packed buses that dont pick up. Also any major sporting event has to have an event management plan during which several organs of the state plan out how to run the event smoothly. Entire roads are closed down traffic diverted. Its not a fair comparision and even more so when you consider major sporting events tend to occur at the weekends and not during the working week like the Summit does.

During last years Summit it was patently obvious some sort of traffic management plan/increase in public transport services was badly needed as Dublin was completely jammed with traffic for those few days.

Paddy is no doubt a plonker but at the end of the day if someone with a bit of initiative in the Dept of Tourism and Transport had of grabbed the opportunity to solve the traffic problems then Dublin would have been in a very good position to say that hosting large scale conferences was something the city could handle and actively manage. But instead the message that was sent out to organisers of large scale conferences was that Dublins got traffic problems which will have our delegates frustrated at the choice of venue. Plus the government dept with responsibility for attracting visitors to the country doesnt really seem bothered in at least trying to solve the problems of hosting conferences on this scale.

To put the missed opportunity into perspective just last week the Convention Centre hosted 1,200 delegates for a conference on mobile phone technologies. They will have to do those numbers at 25 more conferences just to make up the 30,000 the Summit was pulling in. Imagine the economic boost to the city if we had 3 or 4 30,000+ conferences a year, it would be huge. But instead of trying to chase that opportunity (as Lisbon has done) our lot just sat on their hands and did nothing.

Yes, a traffic management plan should be put in place but the government doesn't need to get involved. We have 10,000s of people attending the All Ireland, internation football and rugby games, concerts and other events every year and the government doesn't get involved in creating traffic managements plans. The companies themselves do it, so why can't WebSummit? Don't forget that WebSummit wanted the fees associated in closing roads to be waived as well. Why should they get these fees waived when any one else looking to close down a road for an event has to pay?

lawred2

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Yes, a traffic management plan should be put in place but the government doesn't need to get involved. We have 10,000s of people attending the All Ireland, internation football and rugby games, concerts and other events every year and the government doesn't get involved in creating traffic managements plans. The companies themselves do it, so why can't WebSummit? Don't forget that WebSummit wanted the fees associated in closing roads to be waived as well. Why should they get these fees waived when any one else looking to close down a road for an event has to pay?

Because I'm Paddy and I'm great..

That's pretty much it.

CrabRevolution

Muahahaha wrote: »

Agree that there was nothing that could be done about hotel prices, wifi, etc. But I think if any city knows it is going to have an influx of 30,000 visitors then measures should be put in place like extra buses so those attendees dont end up waiting around for already packed buses that dont pick up. Also any major sporting event has to have an event management plan during which several organs of the state plan out how to run the event smoothly. Entire roads are closed down traffic diverted. Its not a fair comparision and even more so when you consider major sporting events tend to occur at the weekends and not during the working week like the Summit does.

During last years Summit it was patently obvious some sort of traffic management plan/increase in public transport services was badly needed as Dublin was completely jammed with traffic for those few days.

Paddy is no doubt a plonker but at the end of the day if someone with a bit of initiative in the Dept of Tourism and Transport had of grabbed the opportunity to solve the traffic problems then Dublin would have been in a very good position to say that hosting large scale conferences was something the city could handle and actively manage. But instead the message that was sent out to organisers of large scale conferences was that Dublins got traffic problems which will have our delegates frustrated at the choice of venue. Plus the government dept with responsibility for attracting visitors to the country doesnt really seem bothered in at least trying to solve the problems of hosting conferences on this scale.

To put the missed opportunity into perspective just last week the Convention Centre hosted 1,200 delegates for a conference on mobile phone technologies. They will have to do those numbers at 25 more conferences just to make up the 30,000 the Summit was pulling in. Imagine the economic boost to the city if we had 3 or 4 30,000+ conferences a year, it would be huge. But instead of trying to chase that opportunity (as Lisbon has done) our lot just sat on their hands and did nothing.

Add up every Ireland and provincial rugby match, irish soccer match, and inter county match in a year and it would utterly dwarf anything multiple web summits could ever bring in. Yet you don't see the heads of the FAI, GAA and IRFU petitioning the government to treat them as special cases and do all their work for them.

I think the signal the whole web summit affair has sent out isn't "Ireland is bad for major events", it's "no matter how important you reckon you are personally, if you try to bully the state into doing your work for free, you'll be laughed at".

Seth Brundle

In terms of recent irish summits, does anyone roughly know the percent of foreign attendees versus Irish attendees?

Dyr

lawred2 wrote: »

Because I'm Paddy and I'm great..

That's pretty much it.

I had the misfortune of dealing with the colossal twat, and its actually more a case of "I'm paddy and I don't want to pay for anything."

ZeroThreat

Bambi wrote: »

I had the misfortune of dealing with the colossal twat, and its actually more a case of "I'm paddy and I don't want to pay for anything."

Typical farmer

Muahahaha

AlmightyCushion wrote: »

Yes, a traffic management plan should be put in place but the government doesn't need to get involved. We have 10,000s of people attending the All Ireland, internation football and rugby games, concerts and other events every year and the government doesn't get involved in creating traffic managements plans. The companies themselves do it, so why can't WebSummit?

You use sporting events as a comparison but as I said already it is not comparable as they take place on weekends in the summer when Dublin is typically quite dead. You cant compare the event organisation of something like that to what is needed for something like the Summt being held over four working days in Dublin 4 which is already thronged with traffic, people going to work, etc.

But even with GAA events some government decision making takes place. After all it is the DoT who fund Irish Rail whose fares are subsidised by the taxpayer. So when extra trains are put on for GAA events then on some level the DoT needs to give Irish Rail an extra funding to do so. And they do and rightly so. But decisions like that will have input from the Minister for Transport of the day who controls the transport budget.

Likewise with the Web Summit- 30,000 people, the majority of them from abroad and the Govt feels on no level do they have a responsibility to at least help make the event a success in the hope of attracting more of these €100m boosts to the economy ? Why do we even have Failte Ireland if the Minister for Tourism isnt going to harness them to ensure events like this can become the norm for Dublin? Theres no point Failte spending millions on trying to get visitors into the country and then when they get here they face a clusterfcuk of a transport system. Other cities seem to manage this fine but Dublin didnt.

You have also got to remember that Ireland has one of the most centralised power structures in all western democracies. County councillors here are completely powerless to make any of the sort of decisions that could ensure an event this big runs smoothly. They have no say over transport, traffic planning, use of Gardai, etc. That power all lies in the government itself as was seen in 2014 when Garth Brooks went pleading to Enda to have his concert held. It is dumb, I agree but we have a remarkably weak local governement in Ireland that simply doesnt have the power to deal with anything even remotely out of the ordinary

Don't forget that WebSummit wanted the fees associated in closing roads to be waived as well. Why should they get these fees waived when any one else looking to close down a road for an event has to pay?

Agree with you here, Paddy certainly rubbed people up the wrong way and he always seemed to want stuff for free, including paying his employees. Of course he should have to pay but the cheeky pup tried getting it for free. But just because he asks for something for free doesnt mean they couldnt have put a price on it and charged him accordingly. And it doesnt mean he shouldnt have been engaged with to solve the problems and keep the event in Dublin. And thats what happened- lets not forget he sent dozens of emails to the Taoiseachs advisor who led him up a garden path before rustling together a three page report on a traffic management plan when it was obvious that a few scribblings would not solve the chronic traffic problems.

ThisRegard

5rtytry56 wrote: »

Statement of the obvious I know, clearly there are people reading this thread like myself who believe that paddy c got his just desserts the way things worked out for his web summit.
There are also most ardent supporters for paddy and his enterprise reading it and making some positive noise.

Just sayin'

There was a series of tweets yesterday purporting to be from different people, but all somehow managed to capture the exact same photograph and just as miraculously post the same thing, all in praise.

Muahahaha

ChikiChiki wrote: »

Genuinely can't understand how people continue to ignore it's obvious success. People are declaring it a failure because the burgers were to dear and the WiFi didn't work well last year. Yet the numbers are up! They're doing something right. The stats don't lie.

Like you I'm off the opinion both Paddy and the Govt acted like petulant kids but the Govt should have seen the bigger picture.

yeah I think its mainly because Paddy has rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. But if you take a step back from all the noise and look at the bigger picture then you can only come to the conclusion that the Web Summit was good for Dublin and Dublin was good for the Web Summit. It brought 30,000 people into the city from abroad during the tourist off-season, from an economic perspective it had huge upside.

A cursory search of Trivago shows there are 503 available rooms in Dublin for tomorrow night. If the Summit was still here they would have all been sold out months ago instead of going empty as they are now.

gandalf

Muahahaha wrote: »

yeah I think its mainly because Paddy has rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. But if you take a step back from all the noise and look at the bigger picture then you can only come to the conclusion that the Web Summit was good for Dublin and Dublin was good for the Web Summit. It brought 30,000 people into the city from abroad during the tourist off-season, from an economic perspective it had huge upside.

A cursory search of Trivago shows there are 503 available rooms in Dublin for tomorrow night. If the Summit was still here they would have all been sold out months ago instead of going empty as they are now.

TBH yes as an "event" it is a success but a success built on very shady sales tactics directed at cash strapped startups and exploitation of volunteers and over hype.

If I was starting up a digital business I would avoid the web summit as a means to try and secure any sort of funding. It now suffers from too much noise.

With regard to the hotels. They are doing very well these days. If there are 503 rooms available out of an estimated room pool of 19000 rooms that's an occupancy rate of over 97% which is excellent. They don't need the Web Summit based on this calculation.

Personally at this stage the whole thing is a social mediawancfest and provides very little of any substance at all. There is a gap there for a meaningful startup orientated event based out of Ireland still.

Calina

Muahahaha wrote: »

yeah I think its mainly because Paddy has rubbed a lot of people up the wrong way. But if you take a step back from all the noise and look at the bigger picture then you can only come to the conclusion that the Web Summit was good for Dublin and Dublin was good for the Web Summit. It brought 30,000 people into the city from abroad during the tourist off-season, from an economic perspective it had huge upside.

A cursory search of Trivago shows there are 503 available rooms in Dublin for tomorrow night. If the Summit was still here they would have all been sold out months ago instead of going empty as they are now.

TBH, I don't really buy the Web Summit being good for Dublin. Sure Dublin was good for it, because it's where it was born. But from the point of view of someone who should be target audience for it, the key issues I have with the Web Summit is that it was too big to be interesting, far too many of the speakers were not technologists, but tangential to tech. Money more than tech, tbh.

I don't think we typically have the scale to run events like the WebSummit, and I think it was telling that the high profile WebSummit funding successes dated from the early days when its numbers were considerably lower. 30 other smaller scale conferences would bring in the same number of people and potentially, create better networking opportunities. And we do have the wherewithal and facilities to do those things. What they lack is the mass scale PR and publicity which Websummit had. Is this a good thing? Probably.

I wish Lisbon well with Websummit but to be honest, I'm not sure it's a life changing experience for the city here, and I don't think we've lost that much.

Seth Brundle

Muahahaha wrote: »

Likewise with the Web Summit- 30,000 people, the majority of them from abroad and the Govt feels on no level do they have a responsibility to at least help make the event a success in the hope of attracting more of these €100m boosts to the economy ?

Muahahaha wrote: »

the Web Summit was good for Dublin and Dublin was good for the Web Summit. It brought 30,000 people into the city from abroad during the tourist off-season, from an economic perspective it had huge upside.

Just checking, are you sure that 30k people travelled into Ireland from abroad for the WS and if so have you a source?

prinzeugen

Gabriela Spicy Clarinet wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/2016/1107/829929-web-summit/

Opening event in Lisbon

Why are RTE giving this so much time? There are tons of conferences and exhibitions held in Ireland but they never get broadcast live on RTE.

The twat is in Lisbon now so RTE should give it zero airtime.

VinLieger

prinzeugen wrote: »

Why are RTE giving this so much time? There are tons of conferences and exhibitions held in Ireland but they never get broadcast live on RTE.

The twat is in Lisbon now so RTE should give it zero airtime.

Nah im grand with it getting negative attention, sure remember Sharons interview with paddys junior vice president last year? I think that set the tone for all future RTE coverage and rightly so tbh

namloc1980

Food situation in Lisbon getting slated on twitter. Hour long queues. Poor selection and some vendors only accepting cash.....at the bloody web summit! Farce.

mzungu

namloc1980 wrote: »

Food situation in Lisbon getting slated on twitter. Hour long queues. Poor selection and some vendors only accepting cash.....at the bloody web summit! Farce.

Must have been starving waiting that long for a byte to eat.

ZeroThreat

mzungu wrote: »

Must have been starving waiting that long for a byte to eat.

Next up for Paddy is becoming a travelling salesman for monorail.

tinpib

Again taking a quick skim from time to time of #websummit on Twitter I'm not seeing very many complaints at all. In general people talking about the talks and not whinging about things.

BMMachine

tinpib wrote: »

Again taking a quick skim from time to time of #websummit on Twitter I'm not seeing very many complaints at all. In general people talking about the talks and not whinging about things.

no its a disaster and its sh*t. people on after hours on boards.ie said so and that basically means its a fact

[Deleted User]

Paddy Cosgrave is on with Marian "4 hours per week for €300,000" Finucane at the moment.

He said at the start he just called his child "Cloud". Really hard to listen to anything he's saying now. Himself and Geldof need to get a room. Serious gobshíte.

ZeroThreat

Deleted User wrote: »

Paddy Cosgrave is on with Marian "4 hours per week for €300,000" Finucane at the moment.

He said at the start he just called his child "Cloud". Really hard to listen to anything he's saying now. Himself and Geldof need to get a room. Serious gobshíte.

Wicklow farmer ruined by going to Trinners.

Just imagine what Miley would have turned out like.

Seth Brundle

Momma, I'm coming home...
https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/paddy-cosgrave-hopes-for-web-summit-s-return-to-dublin-1.3060716?mode=amp