I first attended the Web Summit in 2016. I had just left my corporate role and was starting my new life. It was an exciting moment, a thrill to push a door onto an unknown world. I attended again in 2017, skipped 2018. I had no intention to go back when two friends, CEO and co-founder of the start-up Mixity asked me to join them. I enjoyed the summit as you should with people committed to change the world.

Three years later, my book “think Digital Ecosystems” published, I found back all the good things I love about the Summit as well as the validation of my chapter on the Tribes of the Digital Ecosystems. First, the city of Lisbon is magnificent, the lisboetas are super friendly despite the huge disruption 70K visitors create in their city. Second, the Summit is truly a place by and for the start-ups. It is impossible for me to meet them all. The startups founders, the core builders of the ecosystem, present their success on stage. They are front and center of the value chain and the web summit gives them credit unlike other events where big corporations own the show. Their speeches are refreshing in comparison with the very polished corporate talks.

The Web Summit is a large generalist event. Exhibiting start-ups rotate on a daily basis. Unless you come with a team of people it is impossible to explore all avenues. The agenda and schedule offer specific topics you can focus on, which I did. I subscribed to the YouTube channel but did not find all the conferences I wanted to catch-up with. A kind note to the Web Summit management team I would be happy to pay an extra fee to watch videos in the comfort of my home. Did you think of selling them to Netflix ?

In the mass of information I was confronted with I decided to make a very partial choice reflecting my personal findings and surprises.

A diverse event

I was impressed by how gender diversity had improved in this Summit. Women were present in all aspects of the event. The female speakers owned the stage and were key value content contributors. Kristen Garcia Dumont, CEO of Machine Zone was not shy of breaking the prejudices as the leader of mobile video war game company. They were not standing there to tick some gender diversity box. They were powerful, insightful and inspiring. I think the web summit this year killed once and for all the poor excuse for any event or panel : “we could not find women for our event”. Open your eyes and ears. Women are here and raising their hand.

Likewise the Women In Tech lounge hosted by booking.com was vibrant and large. You could not miss it. The positive energy flowed in all directions.

At the Women In Tech award, I discovered an amazing crowd of trail blazers, male and female from all horizons and generations. Quite a few women ambassadors (France, Philippines) handed the award, showing the world diplomacy is transforming.

The side conferences were as interesting if not more than the main stage

I enjoyed greatly some of the main stage conferences especially the contents from the start-ups founders. I happily queued to listen to some key guests such as Edward Snowden. I am a Michel Barnier’s fan and I appreciated his contribution (read in the section on Brexit and people of the web). I was also captivated by the speakers and panelists presenting in the side conference rooms.

I attended a Q&A session on “Let’s talk about taxes, baby” with Niels Johannesen.

Believe it or not it was anything but dry and boring. I realised how much our tax system is impacted by the digital transformation. Should we tax robots, where should we tax shareholders ?

I wished that the talk on the open web with Rafael Laguna from Open-Xchange and Katharina Borcher of Mozilla had lasted couple more hours.

AI is not an autonomous subject

AI is not a focus in itself but it is expected to be embedded in every solution. AI whether it is ML, face recognition,… has to create unique value and differentiation. This is particularly relevant for start-ups based on data. Unlike the previous editions I saw a rising presence of startups drilling data for specific purpose such as lead generation with granular output, presales, AdTech.

FinTech, by nature one of the most funded innovation area was very present integrating an AI and/or a crypto component.

People of the web are getting worried

In only two years the mood has changed dramatically. The optimistic days of the free open internet are over. It is not all doom and gloom but the level of trust has definitely dropped. The attendees answered a very low tech survey by placing red dots on a four square map answering the question “Are you more careful with your data than you used to be ?” the answer “It’s almost impossible to fully protect your data” was definitely gathering momentum. This insiders’ growing awareness can be comforting. I personally hope that their brilliant brains will define smart ways of protecting data and people privacy.

The large crowd, ready to make a long queue to listen to Ed. Snowden, proved the willingness of the actor of the web to think and act. While not a complete Snowden’s fan, I was impressed by his clear thoughts and his realistic view of citizen privacy in the current internet world. I would recommend to watch his interview

I cannot help staying an optimist. Listening to the conference “What’s next for the open web ?” with both CEOs of Mozilla and Open-Xchange somewhat comforted me.

UK Tech will not be bothered by Brexit

Living in Brussels, surrounded by Eurocrats, Brexit is for me a subject. Based on the attendance for Michel Barnier’s speech this is a topic of interest and concern for many. We all could feel that Michel Barnier is more familiar with the political corridors of the European commission than with a crowd of geeks, hipsters and innovators. He did not make a show, he read a well built speech. His strong statement about maintaining peace in Europe was met with enthusiastic applause. We were all warned that January 2020 is only a beginning of a series of painful negotiations. I am personally sorry that Europeans have to spend so much energy on undoing rather than focusing on pressing issues such as building strong AI capabilities.

On the other hand the investors comforted my personal views that Brexit will NOT impact the leading position of the UK tech, on the contrary :

foreign investors come to Europe via the UK and London will grow as the major innovation VC hub
the tech world is borderless and Brexit will not change this situation
UK may escape the impact of growing protective EU laws on data sovereignty, privacy and taxes
visas will be granted to engineers, developers, who will continue to be attracted by the world renown universities and generous salaries.

Nobody owns the crystal ball and future will tell however there was little fear that Brexit would temper the growth of the British start-up nation.

Despite using the very well designed app I met very few voice startups which was a disappointment as this is subject of professional interest.

Will I go back next year. I would love to speak about what is really a digital ecosystem, what’s the buzz word about and why it is important to understand them and navigate in them.

Stay tuned !

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2019 Back to the WebSummit !