My Web Summit 2018 Notebook
What I watched, thought and noted during 2018’s top technology event.
I finally made it! After years of postponing, 2018 was the year that I attended the Web Summit, hopefully for the first time! I arrived in the rainy Lisbon on a Sunday morning, together with five colleagues from Beat. We found a city fully prepared to welcome 70.000 people for the most prominent technological event in Europe.
Lisbon is an amazing city. The well-preserved medieval architecture, along with the modern infrastructure, creates a promising combination for Lisbon to achieve its ambition: become a significant global start-up centre. Built on a hilly next-to-the-sea site of Portugal, it is a place that you would love to arrive hungry for new ideas and pictures. The perfect set-up for putting together people from different countries, disciplines, and industries and give them the platform for an enormous creative discussion.
The Opening night
The opening ceremony was astonishing. On the main stage, Paddy Cosgrave, Web Summit’s CEO, welcomed an impressively big audience. The moment became spectacular, when everyone turned on their smartphone’s flashlights, as Paddy asked.
But the big moment of the night came immediately after that. Tim Berners-Lee, the person who helped, as very few, to turn this world in a more open and equal place, the person who set-up the basis for a new way to share information, communicate and offer value, went up on stage.
What it followed was an extensive standing ovation for the inventor of the World Wide Web.
He thanked the audience obviously moved, and he talked about the challenges that the web is facing nowadays, and introduced his new initiative, #ForTheWeb, aiming for “a free, open and fair web for everyone”.
The night continued with many interesting talks, including those of Lisa P. Jackson, Apple’s VP of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives, who presented her company’s commitment to sustainability, and Daren Aronofsky discussing how new technologies impact storytelling. It was an enthusiastic opening!
Highlights
During the three following days, I was constantly running from one stage of this enormous venue to the other, in order to catch as many as feasible of the unstoppable presentations, workshops, and discussions of the enormous event agenda. I am summarizing here the highlights of those I was interested and managed to watch.
A significant part of this year’s Web Summit was dedicated to the evolution of urban mobility. The AutoTech conference’s stage hosted many exciting discussions. At the center stage, Lime’s Caen Contee and Taxify’s Markus Villig talked about their companies’ efforts to grab the multi-billion market of the on-demand electric scooters. At the start-ups pitching finals, two companies with entirely different approaches for the driverless cars upcoming future (Wayve & lvl5) was fought to persuade the investors’ team and the audience for their visions. Working at Beat, the ride-hailing company which aims to become the most significant player in Latin America, I was more than excited to listen to so many perspectives which are trying to shape the future of how people and goods will move in cities in the near visible future.
User research is for years now a much-discussed topic. Companies still find it hard to implement it in their product development processes and extract the expected value from it. Jens Riegelsberger, Google UX Director, gave significant examples from Google Maps evolution since its initial launch in 2005, relying on the effort of their UX team with constant user research from outside Google’s offices in California to the streets of India. He also highlighted the importance of user research on achieving Google’s product development principles:
- Simple Design
- Focused Utility
- Crafted execution
Since their initial launch, Pinterest has managed to adopt and applies new technologies with admirable consistency and speed, delivering an amazing platform for creative ideas and inspiration. Therefore, I was more than excited listening to Ben Silbermann, Pinterest’s Founder and CEO, talking about the future of visual search. Their current effort focuses on image context and aesthetics recognition along with the understanding of human feelings when seeing images. Cannot wait to see their next steps.
Brach.io’s Mada Seghete became my new growth and marketing hero. She gave two different presentations on the same day, and I was lucky enough to attend both. At the first one, she explained how branch.io built a mobile growth community to attract the audience that would become later a significant source of customers. In her second presentation, she gave insights on how to create a successful growth strategy for a mobile app, summarizing their extensive mobile growth e-book.
The title “The social evolution of wealth” sounded more than promising. Yoni Assia, eToro’s co-Founder and CEO, explained the failure of modern societies to achieve the basic income’s vision. He supported that the rise of cryptocurrencies gives a new opportunity for an equal distribution of wealth. That precisely aims to accomplish through the initiative gooddollar.org that he announced during his insightful talk.
The best workshop I attended was by far Saalim Chowdhury’s from 500 Startups. He was talking about startup growth while dancing and throwing tiny unicorns to the participants. So many insights in so little time and a fantastic performance from a guy with extensive start-up experience. During his presentation, a growing audience was concentrating outside the workshop’s small area, having the opportunity to experience one their best moments in the Summit.
I spent a significant part of my days there strolling around the start-up stands. Loved talking with so many people who are putting their entire efforts to turn new ideas into products. I really liked many ideas, like the interest-based pricing of Artupia’s marketplace for emerging artists at affordable prices. What else I realized was how many companies spent their one line product description starting with the “AI-powered platform” commodity expression. In any way, the discussion with all those young teams was one of the most insightful experiences of the entire Summit for me.
In summary
The entire Web Summit experience was really met my expectations. What I found there was a mix of amazing talks, admirable people and companies, fresh ideas, and an opportunity for constant discussions on innovation, creativity, technology, and business. Even though I aim to be there next year again, 2018 will be marked as my very-first year at this top-notch technology event. See you soon Lisbon.
Thanks for reading! If you liked this article do not forget to tap the ❤. I would also love to read your opinion at the comments!
