European Tech Events: The Heatmap

It was beginning of 2017 and I was working with DigitalK conference organizers when we encountered a problem: people were massively refusing to speak at our event due to “other commitments”. And while it does take some convincing to make an oversees flight for an off-the-beaten-track conference, majority were genuinely interested to explore tech scene in Bulgaria. They just seemed not to be able to free up their calendars.

While getting overall frustrated, I checked my personal list of tech events. Thanks to my slight obsession with organization and general interest to track everything tech-related in Europe, the list was growing fast albeit without a clear purpose. Just a neat hobby that in the spring of 2017 told me something I didn't want to hear as conference organizer: within the same week there were other 20 tech events happening in Europe. And those weren't small meetups for local communities. First nine days of June 2017 counted Pioneers Festival in Vienna, MoneyConf in Madrid and Symposium in Stockholm.

This made me curious. What are the busiest weeks in the year for event goers? How many tech events are being organized each month? And where are they all happening?

To find answers I combed through my database that now tracks 738 events from 59 countries in all continents. Well, except Antarctica. And if you have heard of tech events in Antarctica — please drop me a line!

Heatmap: tech events in Europe, first half of 2018

As majority of events for second half of 2018 still haven’t announced their dates, I made a heatmap for the first six months of this year with the focus on European tech ecosystem. Here are the main numbers:

• Out of 431 tracked events in first half of 2018, 272 are happening on European continent.
• Busiest month is March with 77 events, followed up by May with 62 conferences for startups, entrepreneurs and technology enthusiasts.
• Highest concentration of events is on Week 11 (March 12–18) with 28 events and Week 20 (May 14–20) with 22 events.

The award of Most Popular Day goes to March 15th, together with my best wishes for organizers of these events:

1. CLOUDFEST (March 10–16) in Europa-Park, Germany
2. European Robotics Forum (March 13–15) in Tampere, Finland
3. European Payment Summit (March 14–15) in Hague, Netherlands
4. RISK (March 14–15) in Lasko, Slovenia
5. Landing Festival (March 14–15) in Berlin, Germany
6. Tech Startup Day (March 15) in Brussels, Belgium
7. Open Ocean CEO Summit (March 15) in London, UK
8. REWORK AI Assistant Summit (March 15–16) in London, UK
9. REWORK Deep Learning in Finance Summit (March 15–16) in London, UK
10. REWORK Deep Learning in Retail & Advertising Summit (March 15–16) in London, UK
11. inOrbit (March 15–16) in Ljubljana, Slovenia
12. Unternehmertag (March 15–16) in Tegernsee, Germany
13. START Summit (March 15–16) in Saint Gallen, Switzerland
14. SEP Scaleup Summit (March 15–16) in Milan, Italy
15. Internet of Things European Summit (March 15–16) in Brussels, Belgium
16. Startup SAFARY (March 15–17) in Paris, France
17. LEAP Summit (March 15–17) in Zagreb, Croatia

The number of tech events is growing, which aren't great news for organizers who will have to compete more fiercely for speakers and come up with creative strategies to deliver value for their attendees.

The number of tech events is growing, which are great news for startups, investors, innovation scouts and everyone else involved in the tech ecosystem. There will be more opportunities to showcase your products, hunt for ideas and talents, and grow business networks.

It’s getting hot in here, and to help navigate increasingly crowded scene we are putting up this list of tech events online, enabling search functions per city, country or industry of interest. If you are interested, please join re:event mailing list and we will let you know when the service goes live, or just send us a message to SISTER at re:event.