Talk from the founder of Squirrel AI. Apparently his children (twins)

Web Summit Day 2 — Dashboards, a soft toy claw machine, and Lume

Alexandre Kitching
Nov 6 · 3 min read

Today was all about beating that drum! We were showing Lume at Stand A212 in the AI and Big Data section. We are a B2B solution so our main objective today was to generate leads and make contacts with potential enterprise clients.

The thing with Web Summit is that it is more of a shotgun approach than a sniper approach: Hit and miss and cross your fingers. Personally, I like it; it is as much about understanding people’s problems as it is about pitching your solution. It really is about finding the right balance.

Regardless, here are my takeaways from the mosh pit.

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Day 2 — insights:

  • Dataaa — Data really is an umbrella term to define virtually anything that can be put in a table. It really gets confusing, everyone’s conception of what data means is different and entirely based on experience.
  • Today, data solution/product = Business Intelligence dashboard — the two go hand in hand. Interestingly, dashboards seemed to be expected from upper management however no data team I spoke with was measuring the user engagement of their dashboard and they do little to no onboarding on how to use them. Expected, maybe, but are they actually being used?
  • Business Intelligence overload — I spoke to a BI analyst managing 30 dashboards. What the hell? Huge opportunity there. Btw we have a solution under development for that exact problem. If this is you, get in touch ;)

We were on the stand all day but here is what happened around us:

  • I dipped in and out of a talk from Conde Nast on data. Business Leaders wanted to target Gen Z audiences but looking at the data they realized their audience was a lot older and thus developed Conde Health… I am not sure what my Mum would think about this but that was the logic. Big takeaways from the project in the image/slide below.
  • Conde Nast is working so that their dashboard as insights accessible within 3 clicks said Karthic Bala, Chief Data Officer at Conde Nast
  • SIEMENS cracked it. If you want people to gravitate around your stand all you need is a soft toy CLAW MACHINE! We are definitely trying this next year. Must watch.
So simple. So effective.

Last but not least here are my insights on having a stand

  • Tip 1 — Get people’s attention by calling them by their first name. At Web Summit the name is written in bold on your badge — discretely read it and then say “Hi Pablo” no joke it changes everything! Try it!
  • Tip 2 — Vendors are easy to spot because they hit every single stand one by one. No real person does that.
  • Tip 3 — If you are targeting B2B, I found the most valuable people are often not the ones looking at the stand but the ones just passing through! At the end of the day, everyone is at Web Summit to learn something cool so deep down everyone wants to have chat (at least this is what I kept repeating to myself all day)

Day 3 tomorrow. Stay tuned. If you are around, get in touch!

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