Personally, I think the Dublin Web Summit has grown too fast. From 400 to 22,000 attendees in just four years. It's a marketing triumph, which is great for the founders who I met in Paris around the time they were starting out, and LeWeb was number one.
But now, it means a lot of sales pitches to sift through to find the interesting talks. They have also cut the length of the interviews so much that no-one really goes in to depth. I think that's a shame. Quality not quantity, especially because the main attraction of the summit is not the commercial keynotes - it's the live networking with start-up companies which you cannot do from home.
But now, it means a lot of sales pitches to sift through to find the interesting talks. They have also cut the length of the interviews so much that no-one really goes in to depth. I think that's a shame. Quality not quantity, especially because the main attraction of the summit is not the commercial keynotes - it's the live networking with start-up companies which you cannot do from home.
The interview with Tony Fadell was interesting. I note that he doesn't really talk about his early days at Philips. He didn't stay long trying to persuade them to make a personal music player. Instead, he went to Apple, who brought out the iPod. Now he's the person behind NEST, which is turning out to be much more than an intelligent thermostat. In the interview he describes the challenges of trying to role out to other countries - there are a myriad of standards.
