Web Summit Announces International Expansion Plans and more Speakers

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Speakers Francois Hollande, Al Gore and more confirmed to attend

On a muggy morning in Dublin a group of intrepid reporters show up suited and booted at the Web Summit HQ in Tramway House.  With reporters travelling from near and far starting to chow down into the warm food and sinking down the odd coffee, the feeling of anticipation grew.

After making small talk for a few minutes and taking our seats, we assembled in a small, curtained off area and waited for the start.  First up was Ronan Mooney @ronanmooney who explained his journey with Web Summit in the past few months.  His role is Talent Acquisition and he has been spending most of the Summer filling 45 slots for roles within the organisation in key locations like San Francisco and Hong Kong.  He also announced a FURTHER 40 roles are now being promoted, this time within Ireland at the Dublin, Dartry office. 

Then the main team got on the floor and explained their background:  

Tom O’Reilly Sales Person / Exhibition Team. He is among one of the first people you would speak to if you are going to exhibit with Web Summit.

Anna O’Hare Head of Content. Anna is the social media contact you interact with along with her team of 7 others.  Their strategy is helped this event grow and go viral each year.

Sarah Massicotte Data Science Associate. Her role since moving over from Canada has been to analyse all digital and content that comes from the event.

Mike Sexton Chief Marketing Technology Officer. Drives the growth of the event with Business Intelligence and Digital Marketing.

Then Paddy Cosgrave sat down and confirmed that the Web Summit team had grown again and now had around 160 total employees with 135 currently in Ireland.  The average age of the staff was around 30 now, which he felt was due to the growth of the company and that they had now moved out “start-up” stage.  With the further increase of another 40 staff in the coming 6 months this event has started to grow exponentially.

Today Paddy confirmed Francois Hollande, former President of France, Al Gore, for VP of United States of America and Margrethe Vestager of the European Commission will all be speaking this November in Lisbon.  A list of the speakers currently confirmed can be found here.

Interestingly enough, he also stated that after having a chat with some Transition Year students earlier in this year that he met who were travelling to Fatima, he decided to offer 50 tickets to every Secondary School in Ireland so they can come over on more of a “tech pilgrimage” to Lisbon this November.  He hopes to see as many as he had seen at past events which was around 5,000 each day.

With more than 60,000 attendees from over 170 countries flying in to Lisbon in 2017 which includes 20,000 companies, 7,000 CEO’s and 2,000 International Journalists, Web Summit is the forefront, global technology conference.  Still time to get your Full Attendee Early Bird Tickets.