Websummit 2022 lines, crowds, noise
Conferences are for making connections, listening to great speakers, and enjoying the food and swag. Websummit 2022 only had the first. Swag ran out first day. Totally overcrowded and mismanaged, there were lines for everything. Hours of lines to get in, people missed sessions. Impossible to get coffee and forget lunch. All paid to unless you wanted to stand in line for the coffee machine. All of the stages were open formats and they were just too many people for that, it was chaos and you could barely hear let alone how distracted the speakers were by the audience transience. Even connections were very difficult unless you were setting up structured meetings. Without group lunches no way to meet anyone. Just not fun. All of the information from the sessions is the daily diet on Twitter anyways. Nada new. The whole thing felt like a bad airplane ride.
Completely agree, queue after queue to get anywhere, and all you got once in the sessions were platitudes and a marketing push for the speakers product. No depth to the sessions and the talk titles were completely misleading, most barely even touched the promised context. Walked away with 0 net new knowledge. Will not be returning next year. On the subject of bad airplane ride - That opening ceremony when a spider camera fell from the roof nearly killing spectators below and left a huge speaker hanging precariously from the rigging. That could have been it for Websummit and Paddys legacy.
Agreed, no depth to the sessions, I get more out of a daily Twitter read
The founder Paddy Cosgrave is a nutcase with a big chip on his shoulder about the Irish Government. What tech conference needs to hear him get on a political soapbox launching personal attacks on Irish ministers, most non Irish wouldn’t even know/care about. Arrogant piece of work and it’s no wonder the event is getting worse by the year despite record attendances The business model is great, employers are the ones to pay for the tickets and write it off as an expense while the employees get to leave the office for their jollies.