I had in mind for a while to write this article but time was not by my side so here I am now with more details about Web Summit.
I was there two years in a row and I loved it. Hopefuly everything will be back to normal and will have the opportunity to go back there again.
There were 50 thousand people like investors, media, startups and established companies. Shortly, besides the speakers and guests, were a series of stands for startups and growing companies. The stands and companies were separated into ‘Alpha’, ‘Beta’ and ‘Start’ segments. ‘Alpha’ was for companies with an idea and maybe an end product, ‘Beta’ was for companies that had a product and were growing, and ‘Start’ was for companies who are well on their way with customers and looking to become leaders in their industry. Both Alpha and Beta were looking for investors.
So it’s a great opportunity for new partnerships or clients.
The speakers were founders, co-founders or CTOs of those big companies (Google, Amazon, Facebook,…) and they were talking about programming, security, social media but the common themes were Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence.
It was interesting to hear how each company should hire a hacker, in this way their product will be safer. Or how people with repetitive jobs have to look for a more creative job because soon they will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence.
Also, an alpha company who have a wireless pen that allows users to draw in mid-air and it plays the image on a screen. Another company developing glasses for blind and partially sighted people that recognizes objects and reads descriptive text out to them (like what coins you have in your hand, or what banknotes you have, or telling you what other object is in front of you).
In addition to all the above, there are also interesting conferences about IT, programming, Social media, security, but the most common topics were Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality.
You can find many opportunities for new partnerships or clients at Web Summit. All in all I do recommend going there if you are interested!