After attending Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, I wanted to write down some of my thoughts on the event so I don’t forget them before I think about attending again.
To sum it up, the amount of organization that went into it must have been enormous, but not really what I expected out of the event.
It was plagued with corporate people speaking on things they didn’t know about, mainly AI, AI, AI, and more AI. And there was a lot of agenda pushing.
I was expecting more technical talks, but I guess that’s not what the event is about.
The good
- The event was very well organized, queues to get into the event were not too long
- There was food and water available everywhere
- There was free coffee
- The internet was fast and reliable
- The app was very useful to find talks and navigate the event
- The wristbands made sure we could strike up conversation throughout the whole city with other attendees
- The night events were very cool
The bad
- The talks were not very technical
- The developers’ lounge was smaller than the women in tech lounge (I’m jealous tbh)
- There were a lot of talks on sustainability and women in tech that just screamed agenda pushing
The odd
- Cristina Ferreira speaking in portuguese when most of the audience was not portuguese
- The amount of startups solving exactly the same problem
- The amount of bullshitters talking about AI
Overall it was a pretty enjoyable event for the experience, but I don’t think I’ll be attending again unless I’m looking for funding.
Here are some more random thoughts and experiences I had during the event:
- I met some people doing cool stuff in FE, BE development and platform orchestration (1 person each)
- A startup trying to convince us that the slowness of the app was due to the internet connection and not the calls to openai GPT-4 API
- A startup trying to convince us that they can generate tests with AI, but when asked about maintenance of the tests, the answers were very vague. Also they had no internal developers (???). They were solving a problem no one inside the company had
- A startup using “AI” to measure time spent per app (???)
- In the pitch finals, the judges asking “how do you make sure your data is secure” and the answer being “we use the cloud” (???)
- Having to pay 1€ for a “reusable” cup, but not being able to get a refund for it. Asking the staff to please not pour a coke can into a plastic cup, and being told “organization rules”. Using “sustainability” as a profit center was not cool
- Throughout the whole event, during the day and in the night summit, bathrooms were disgusting
- Public transport was not prepared for the amount of people attending the event
- We walked about 20k steps per day, scooters or something similar inside the venue would have been nice
- Security from prosegur was not intimidating at all (they seemed like high school volunteers), contrary to Strong Charon’s security, which actually seemed professional
- I got a Big brother feeling when scanning the badge everywhere
- Night summits were very cool but the amount of queues was too damn high, we stood in line for more than 2 hours on the second night trying to get in
- The opening ceremony had a very limited amount of seats, we had to stay outside watching it on the phone or on 1 available screen
- Everyone seemed like an expert until they got asked difficult questions
- Even in the Q&A with Signal’s president, people only seemed to care about AI
- The amount of developers was very low, I would estimate it at less than 5% of the attendees
- The food inside the venue was too expensive
- Even a more technical discussion on RAG (with LLMs) was just about saying that contextual.ai is doing RAG 2.0 which is not “frozen” with more feedback loops, but no proper technical discussion
- Many pitches, questions from investors, discussions on stages and so on were cringe worthy
Word of the day: AI, AI, AI, AI