How to Crack the Web Summit 2015: Tips & Advice from Attendees

By Simon Cocking

The Web Summit Dublin 2015 takes place on 3 to 5 November 2015, centred on the RDS in Ballsbridge, Dublin, with satellite venues across the city. Now in its fifth year, Web Summit Dublin 2015 expects to host 21 themed summits, 1,000 speakers and 30,000 attendees from over 100 countries. This is an unofficial guide to a unique event where fantastic opportunities exist for you to initiate, grow, fundraise, connect and sell your business to investors, customers and the world’s media. Simon Cocking has watched the Web Summit on TV, covered it as a member of the media, photographed it, interviewed 100s of C-suite executives, founders, investors, inventors and dreamers, moderated discussion panels, and put together and managed media teams to cover the event. Having written about it, evaluated it, hyped it, growth-hacked it, and been on his bike to achieve maximum value and minimum time footslogging between different stages, his Insider’s Guide to the Web Summit Dublin 2015 now offers you the chance to get the most out of your precious time at the Web Summit. He has shared a series of shortcuts, tips and ideas to help you maximise the impact of your time there. Some of these are tactical, some strategic and some esoteric; all are aimed at putting you in the right headspace to really get the maximum benefit out of your time at the Web Summit. He also asked key attendees over the last four years for their insights on making the most of the Web Summit. Strategically placed across the book, these insights bring real practical value to your Web Summit strategy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oak Tree Press
• Release date: Sep 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781846211676

Simon Cocking

Simon Cocking is Senior Editor with Irish Tech News and Winner of Irish Web Awards 2014, best Science & Technology category.

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INTRODUCTION

The Web Summit Dublin 2015 (websummit.net) takes place on 3 to 5 November, centred on the RDS in Ballsbridge, Dublin, with satellite venues across the city. Now in its fifth year, Web Summit Dublin 2015 expects to host 21 themed summits, 1,000 speakers and 30,000 attendees from over 100 countries. This ebook is an unofficial guide, aimed at helping you to get the most out of your visit to the Web Summit, a place where fantastic opportunities exist for you to initiate, grow, fundraise, connect and sell your business to investors, customers and the world’s media.

We have shared with you a series of shortcuts, tips and ideas to help you maximise the impact of your time there. Some of these are tactical, some strategic and some esoteric; all are aimed at putting you in the right headspace to really get the maximum benefit out of your time at the Web Summit.

We also asked key attendees over the last four years for their insights on making the most of the Web Summit. Strategically placed across the book, these insights bring real practical value to your Web Summit strategy.

Twitter recurs as an invaluable tool for contacting and pitching your idea to these contributors and many others. With their permission, we have included their Twitter handles (where possible) – this may help you to line up useful encounters with investors, gurus, technical whizzes and anyone else that might be able to help you get your awesome idea / product / story out to the world. Just what you’re attending the Web Summit 2015 to achieve!

BEFORE

Web Summit is, intentionally, like going to Glastonbury [Woodstock, Montreux or your local festival]

At the Web Summit it is, by design, impossible to see everything. It is designed to allow you to achieve serendipitous encounters by deliberately not holding everything in one place. It is partly the great swelling of people, in and out of different tents, different stages, and different events that creates the opportunity for random encounters. You may think the Glastonbury comparison is stretching it, but when we asked Paddy Cosgrave (@paddycosgrave) last year he confirmed that the music festival was the vibe the Web Summit aspired to replicate in a tech event.

Ask yourself ‘What do I want to get out of the Web Summit?’

Why are you coming to the Web Summit? Do you just love the smell of freshly-opened computers in the morning? Or seeing the fear in people’s eyes before they go on stage to pitch their possibly excellent or perhaps ill-conceived concept to a critical audience? These may seem like silly questions, but asking yourself a series of ‘Why?’ questions may help really drill down to the reason you are coming to Dublin.

Maybe it’s to just listen and be inspired by dynamic and interesting people. If so, then map out where you need to be and when to catch all the people you really want to hear.

Most people who attend the Web Summit are looking to make connections that they wouldn’t be able to make otherwise. The Web Summit is a three-day networking event, with lots of opportunities to connect.

Do your homework two weeks out – minimum. Identify from the Speakers’ list