The Lisbon Web Summit 2018: A story of technology, queuing and getting caught with my trousers down.
Article originally published November 10, 2018
It was a quarter to midnight, in my Lisbon hotel room I was standing by the bed taking my trousers off, then the door to my room opened and he was in. A bleary-eyed Portugese businessman, given the same room as me, looked at me disbelievingly as I quickly hitched my trousers up and ushered him out. He raised his eyes in frustration as I told him to ‘go and have a word’ with reception and off he went to hopefully secure another room. To be honest I didn’t sleep well that night, probably worried that others may stumble into my room unannounced, I needed to sleep as I was in Lisbon for the gargantuan Web Summit technology conference, it’s fair to say I was going to need my rest as what laid ahead was a full-on but amazing and immersive four days.
The yearly Web Summit, co-founded by Irish entrepreneur Paddy Cosgrave is billed by Forbes as ‘the best technology conference on the planet’. It’s the first tech conference I’ve attended, so couldn’t really argue with that but what I can say that it’s overwhelmingly impressive and the stats and facts really do support this. There were 69,304 attendees, over 1,800 start-ups, more than 1,200 international speakers and 2,600 media professionals were in attendance. The average attendee walks 13.5 km during its duration (meaning combined, we all reached the moon twice). Organisers of the Web Summit have just announced that the event has committed to staying in Lisbon, setting up camp at the O2-sized Altice Arena and the FIL exhibition centre next door to it, until at least 2028 following a €110m deal with the Portuguese government.
I was there with a bunch of like-minded work colleagues, we had all scoured the impressive schedule, marking on the app which talks and events we’d like to see and hear. Every day we took the busy Metro to the event, endured queues to get in and get through security, battled our way through crowds of people to get from A to B, queued to get a bite to eat at lunch, queued to go to the loo, queued to get in and out of stage areas, but despite the busyness of it all, it was a thoroughly impressive feat of organisation and people management.
There were several highlights for me: First was learning that actor, writer and comedian David Schneider (of ‘I’m Alan Partridge’, ‘The Day Today’ and ‘The Death of Stalin’ fame) is co-founder and creative director of social creative agency ‘That Lot’. He gave an engaging insight into the future of social and how they are working with clients such as Channel 4, PG Tips, The Big Bus Company, B&Q and IHG to help them create shareable, innovative and strategy-informed content that really cuts through. He also chaired an irreverent and comedic main-stage event called ‘How to fix your shitty pitch’, relevant to me as I’m often pitching for work and while this session was investor-pitch specific, there were several parallels which my colleagues and I could all relate to. The next highlight was a talk on the Creatiff stage from FCB Global’s Global Chief Creative Office, Susan Credle titled ‘I’m with stupid’, a 30 minute discussion on how the best creative ideas come to the fore through collaboration, client-empathy and being generous as a creative leader; ‘don’t hire brave people but create a brave culture’ and ‘don’t make ideas scary but make them buyable’ all soundbites that resonated heavily. Equally impressive was listening to Brad Smith, President of Microsoft on the human cost of nation-state sponsored cyber-attacks and the steps Microsoft and industry partners are taking to address this growing threat — a very powerful session which had his audience of 10,000+ people captivated. Lastly, I personally really enjoyed listening to Tony Blair, former Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party who told the Lisbon audience that he will do ‘everything he can’ to stop Brexit and if it does happen, it will be either ‘painful or pointless’ which got applauses and cheers from around the arena.
Other notable talks were from Graham McDonnell, creative director at The New York Times on the power of persuasive design, a presentation from Jens Riegelsberger, UX director at Google called ‘People, products and jetlag: Creativity through empathy’ on the evolution and future of Google Maps and a discussion on how brands have evolved through history and what does the future hold for brands from Sairah Ashman, Global CEO of Wolff Olins. Finally, the prize for the most bizarre but slightly spell-binding conversation went to a session called ‘How long until robots rule the world?’, where Ben Goertzel, a wizard (literally) of everything AI spoke to Sophia The Robot and Han The Robot, two social humanoid robots developed by Hong Kong based Hanson Robotics.
Of course, my colleagues and I were never able to see all the talks and events, by Thursday afternoon we were happily suffering from information overload, but I have to say the week I spent at Web Summit was a really valuable experience, most of the talks and indeed many of the people on stage were inspirational and uber interesting, I have to say hats-off to the organisers as the organisation and logistics behind it all is mind-blowing. Not forgetting being at the event with some great colleagues and enjoying the great Lisbon hospitality was the cherry on the cake for me. If you do get the chance to go, I suggest you do, it’s well worth the outlay, time and effort.
As to the tired-looking chap who stumbled into my room as I was about to drop my kecks, I never saw him again otherwise I think I may given given him a cheeky wink, however if he attended the Web Summit, he’ll no doubt be able to go away and tell a story of a great few days and how he nearly saw a British man with his trousers down.
Additional viewing (YouTube links to full presentations):
- ‘How to fix your shitty pitch’ with David Schneider: https://youtu.be/mrEC8pEsk44
- ‘Creativity and the secret with paid social’ with David Schneider: https://youtu.be/-zKl6FKLXIw
- ‘I’m with Stupid’ with Susan Credle: https://youtu.be/rCaAk8KxQPE
- ‘Digital peace and the age of cyber-threats’ with Brad Smith: https://youtu.be/d-k5U2Bd3PQ
- ‘How long until robots view the world?’ with Ben Goertzel: https://youtu.be/XReaTqdY0fo
- ‘People, products and jetlag: Creativity through empathy’ with Jens Riegelsberger: https://youtu.be/svRHgLGpL6s
- Tony Blair in conversation: https://youtu.be/42FsgaEuy2U
- ‘Designing the brands of 2050’ with Sairah Ashman: https://youtu.be/KQnaqhNSvC0
