Despite the gripes, loss of premier event will be felt
Its time in Ireland has been massively successful by any measure, growing to 100 times the size of the inaugural event, with a 40,000 strong turnout list this year.
The event’s organisers have done little to endear themselves to some people over the past few weeks following the release of correspondence with government officials that lead to claim and counterclaim and continued into this week.
Some of the organisers’ requests in those emails raised more than a few eyebrows, with garda escorts for key speakers one of the most irksome.
Years of patchy or non-existent wifi were, at best, frustrating and at worst embarrassing, while the price of tickets would at times make you question just how accommodating of cash-strapped startups the organisers were.
Add to the mix this week’s €20 lunch fiasco and a lot of the gripes over the Web Summit are entirely understandable.
Despite all this, however, its loss will be keenly felt. Far from being the only string to Ireland’s entrepreneurial bow, the Web Summit has put the country on the map in technology and business circles like little else.
Speak with any random tech entrepreneur in the US and odds are little time will pass without the summit being mentioned.
It is what investors, entrepreneurs, and CEOs know this part of the world for. That intangible benefit is more important than some think.
Finishing an interview with the chief operating officer of Israeli live video messaging startup, Glide, during the week I was not allowed rest my pen until the summit’s role in helping his company succeed was noted, such was his insistence.
An even more tangible benefit is the hundreds, if not thousands, of jobs created in Ireland — like those at Qualtrics — for which Paddy Cosgrave and co can take credit.
“They were super instrumental in us coming over here and helping us. We will create 250 jobs [in Ireland] because of Web Summit,” chief executive Ryan Smith told me yesterday. Uber raised $37m here four years ago and in July announced the creation of 150 jobs in Limerick too.
Nobody is naive enough to suggest these companies are not attracted by the corporation tax regime, but having boots on the ground and letting these entrepreneurs experience Ireland plays an important role too.
For a Government with more Action Plans for Jobs than you can shake a stick at, they’ve dropped the ball by not meeting the organisers’ more reasonable demands and failing to ensure the event remains here.
Neither side has emerged well from the past few weeks, but one has fared much better than the other.
