Takeaways from Web Summit 2017
Web Summit started as a simple idea in 2010 with the goal of connecting the technology community with all industries, both old and new. It seemed to resonate. Web Summit has grown to become the “largest technology conference in the world”. No conference has ever grown so large, so fast. This year, attendees had access to 25 mini-conferences with more than 1,200 speakers.
60.000 tech people met up in beautiful Lisbon last week. And so did Team Komfo — five different people with five different agendas. It was a great opportunity to get some insights and get updated on the latest trends in tech and web.
Pros:
- 60.000 people in tech — that calls for networking and provides a great opportunity to book meetings.
- One conference location — you have it all under one roof
- Value for money — cheap hotels, food, and a beautiful sunny city
- Speakers from all over the world — still, a better program in 2016 than in 2017
- A huge start-up focus — you can have your own “table” and pitch your ideas to investors. So, if you want to get more into the startup scene, go here.
Cons:
- 20–25 min sessions — a lot of sessions. Great to get a taste of what’s next, but not ideal for in-depth insights. Imagine a 25-minute panel with four people.
- Like all big conferences, it’s crowded — you need to be ready for queues. If you want to sit down for a special session, join the session beforehand to save your seat
- Why haven’t I heard about “Forum”? Forum is an invite-only gathering of 500 top global decision makers for more intimate sessions. Here you can meet the speakers, eat a great buffet without the queues, and much more. Please note that a single private-sector ticket to Forum costs €24,950 :)
- I miss more networking opportunities. At SXSW, you know where to go to meet the speakers (Comcast Social Media Lounge, Four Seasons Hotel Austin in the evening, etc.
- Web Summit does not focus enough on their exhibition area. If you’re expecting the latest technology in action, I would suggest visiting another conference where the exhibition area stands out. At DMEXCO in Cologne or SXSW in Texas, for example, you can visit a huge house like Mashable’s, test a virtual museum or visit exciting stands where you can try out gimmicks, test AR, try a car simulator etc.
Besides these reflections, I have summarized my personal important takeaways from this year.
The Future of Voice
I was so lucky to enter one of the roundtable sessions. 30+ people in a circle of chairs moderated by Werner Vogels, Amazon’s chief technology officer. It was great to have the opportunity to discuss the area in more depth with a group of knowledgeable people and there is no doubt that this session was one of my best sessions at the Web Summit. We started with technology and accepted the commands of tech and we are now ready for the next level. People want to interact with tech like humans and tech is finally mature enough for that. We don’t need to read a recipe on the phone if we can ask Siri to tell it to us. We don’t need to see a weather forecast if Alexa can tell us what kind of weather we should expect while we are dressing up. People use Voice for every mundane task possible because it’s effortless.
But why did it happen now and why is it going so fast? Two drivers: the devices and the addiction. A lot of companies are introducing “voice devices”: Apple HomePod, Google Home, and Amazon’s Alexa are driving a need, but also an addiction.
However, Amazon doesn’t want the world to confine itself to its devices:
The device itself isn’t that smart. All of that lives in the cloud. Alexa is a voice service based on a platform that does all the work. (…).Polly converts text to life-like speech. It can be fully managed, it has 47 voices and speaks 24 languages. Duolingo, the language learning app is based on Polly. (…) It can be used to build voice chatbots, not just Alexa.
Amazon has a clear dream for the future: digital human interfaces. It, therefore, comes as no surprise that they are channeling their efforts for developing Voice. The last advice served by Vogels was to get started now — the creative companies that start now will win. Slack is one example of a successful company that has already integrated Voice in their software. We will definitely also look into this great opportunity. Human interfaces are needed in software in order to enable more meaningful conversations and also help clients deliver world-class customer service. “50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020”, according to comscore. No doubt!
Oh yes and also robots, flying cars & Trump’s digital campaign manager
At Web Summit, there was a lot buzz around robots. To sum it up, I need to mention what the robot Sophia, a Hanson Robotics creation, says: “We can be your friends and helpers”. And why not?
Actually, you should maybe discover her for yourself. In my opinion, she’s one of the most human robots ever. One of my colleagues even met Sophia in a bar at the popular Night Summit. No doubt that robots are going to become an integrated part of our lives.
Another cool and very interesting keynote was the talk from Uber’s Jeff Holden about flying cars. Uber is planning to launch flying cars in LA in 2020 — only 1 year after the Blade Runner prediction, as Jeff Holden, Uber’s CEO, mentioned. They will be autonomous emission-free cars that will travel at a speed of 150–200mph, initially between designated ‘skyports’. That being said, Holden’s vision is that, in the future, only hobbyists will own cars, as it will be both cheaper and more convenient to use Uber self-driving vehicles. I want to try one — with or without a pilot.
Brad Parscale, who served as digital director for Trump’s campaign last year, was also really interesting to listen to. Parscale credits Facebook for helping the campaign raise $280 million with ads that yielded high results and low impression costs. The campaign was running as many as 150,000 different pieces of creative online. They had multiple programmatic buyers running across Facebook, optimizing based on user preferences for video versus text, long form versus short form. Certain types of messages were also targeted in various parts of the country. For example, he said Trump’s plans to improve the nation’s infrastructure was key in some regions. Parscale also concluded that Trump needs to continue tweeting to make winning easier in 2020.
Facebook is not only important for presidents. There’s more good news for many businesses. The recent announcement was made by Messenger’s head of product stan chudnovsky on the Web Summit stage:
“Introducing Messenger Platform 2.2:
New Customer Chat and Improved Engagement Tools
One of our most highly requested features is the ability to extend Messenger experiences onto a business’s website. With customer chat plugin, people can chat with businesses on their websites and in Messenger (across web, mobile or tablet) and transition back and forth seamlessly without losing the conversation’s history and context. This makes it easier for customers to continue the conversation with a business whenever and wherever it’s most convenient for them.”
Source
These were my key insights from the 2017 edition of Web Summit. At Komfo, we are looking forward to digging deeper into these exciting technologies to continue creating solutions that are meaningful for our customers. We are particularly interested in creating a voice API. It would also be great to get to get an Uber flying car to next year’s Web Summit!
I owe Claus Christoffersen from FutureLink and the Danish Ambassador Michael Suhr a big thank you for inviting me to a very interesting networking dinner. Komfo will definitely support this initiative next year.
