Caitlin Read , Paddy Cosgrave ( on screen )
Digital disruptor
Paddy Cosgrave says digital events are all “ smoke and bullshit ” Co-founder of the world ’ s largest technology conference Web Summit and Collision Paddy Cosgrave navigated his business through the global pandemic by moving his events online and building Web Summit ’ s proprietary conference software .
Web Summit ’ s platform hosted 140,000 people online and was licensed to The United Nation , its first-ever software deal . Web Summit returned to an in-person conference in Lisbon , in November 2021 .
His events have now grown to into “ pilgrimages ” driven by data science he said .
Speaking at the AEO Conference , Cosgrave said : “ We started organising a small 150 person event with no background in events and it grew from there . Obviously you aspire to do great things , I wanted to build the best technology conference in the world and made a few mistakes .”
As an amateur software developer in college Cosgrave started his event after attending a couple of technology conferences that were “ very poor ” he said .
So decided to start his own , a 150 person event . It was not until 2012 that international attendees started to turn up , he said .
Despite his technology-driven vertical , Cosgrave said he remained unconvinced about the value of digital event , saying he had shares in Hopin but was “ very lucky to have cashed out before they crashed .”
Explaining his disdain for digital he explained : “ The underlying tech has existed for decades . If it was any good it would have taken over sooner . Online events are complete smoke and bullshit .”
Cosgrave confesses using his own geekiness to drive Web Summit ’ s success .
He hired software engineers and physicists , rather than event planners , and made network science central to everything they do . By developing their own in-house software to power their events they remained in control of the data of their growing thousands of attendees .
Cosgrave told the AEO conference is was “ obsessing over the tiniest details ” like the font size on name badges .
By taking his event badgeless , and forcing attendees to download his app to gain admission , Cosgrave said they ensured the entire events was data driven and every movement of each of their housands of attendees was tracked .
The latest Collision conference in Toronto in June attracted 35,000 visitors and their 2021 revenue has grown 83 % on 2020 he said . EN
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