Web Summit quits Dublin

MadsL

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I haven't been following the scene for a while now, but the Digital Hub's goals used to be to create an affordable space for start ups to grow in order to create jobs. And it worked for a long time.

It was set up with the aim to have 2000 jobs housed at the Hub. In 2006 there were 500 employees at the Hub, in 2007 - 740, In 2008 - 857 people, 2009 - 840, 2011 - 800. Today there are approx 700 jobs - well short of the target in 10 years of existance.

I know one company, (who are sadly gone now) that wouldn't have existed if it weren't for the Digital Hub that went on to employ about 100 people, the operated for about 6/7 years before they shut down. Back of the envelope calculations say that during that time those employees alone went on to pay at least 10m in PAYE probably closer to 20m, plus all the other taxes the company would have paid with regards to actual sales and profits. That one company well paid back the tax payer for the subsidised rent it received in it's first year and cover that of many others. And that's just one example of a company that ultimately failed.

What did the Hub do for them other than charge commercial rate rent? Seriously, if the Hub didn't exist then surely that company would have still started, boomed and perhaps not failed.

You can't track the success of these things in just how much money the Digital Hub themselves are taking in, you need to look at the tax revenue raised from the companies that ultimately go on to be successful.

Companies whose success is probably not attribrited to the Hub.

It's quite possible the company is now rotten to the core and is no longer operating efficiently (or maybe it never was), but the concept of providing subsidised rents to start ups at it's core can a pretty effective way of generating jobs and therefore tax revenue. It only takes 1 successful company to cover the costs of many failed ones.

The rents are not subsidised, numerous companies, including one I worked for, moved out because the rents were overpriced and there was little advantage other than some misguided cachet in a Digital Hub address. Vanity money being charged basically.

Do you disagree with the concept of the government spending money on encouraging start ups?

No, I don't. But I don't think paying 187k a year to the Chair of a board to be a landlord is a sound basis for spending that money, nor allowing them to try and build Trump Towers on the land with taxpayers money is a wise use of such funds.

I'm not going to touch the property speculation stuff as I have no idea about it and I have no idea how government funded property speculation is even remotely relevant in a thread about the tech industry

It is relevant because the money thrown at DHDA has largely been spent on vain attempts to create a mini Manhatten on the site, which wisely ABP rejected as unsustainable planning.

Recent planning documents from 2013 show that the DHDA has not given up its primary function as a property development agency

The Digital Hub
The Digital Hub has 9 acres of brownfield sites on both sides of Thomas Street close to St James’ Gate. DHDA have a 10 year development plan in place that will target investment through sale of some sections of the site to fund development on others.

The idea that the DHDA are in the business of subsidising startups is a smoke and mirrors trick.

Pac1Man

No more Eva Longoria?

kippy

Streetwalker wrote: »

Big blow for Dublin and another indication of the weakness of the "recovery".

How do you link the two?
To add, this move is completly down to profit margins for the business that runs the event and Ive no issues with that.
As for all the other reasons trotted out here you will find that dublin manages to cater for major events on a regular basis.

FloatingVoter

€35m is the loss. The World Scrabble Championship would bring in similar. With less fuss. As usual with anything web based its smoke and bull****. Those hotel rooms and bar bills will be taken up by tourists who actually own things other than refused credit cards and bad manners.

deisedude

I know a few people who have worked for Paddy and while they are all in agreement he is a very smart man they all said he was a nightmare to work for.

His tactics seem to be to scare and intimidate suppliers to drive the price down until he gets his way. Looking for money from the government by threatening to leave Ireand eventhough his private event is raking in cash is just the latest example in a long list.

I've attended Web Summit and the conference is all style over substance. I attended for the markting sessions and I took absolutely nothing of value from last years event. Sales pitches and buzz words were the order of the day.

Having worked for and attended international events across a number of different countries its not uncommon for the wifi to go down when thousands of nerds using multiple devices try to access it at the same time. However that doesn't excuse throwing your toys out of the pram, going on stage and complaining that its someone elses fault

Aoibhinn_C

If you think about it most of the biggest websites like Facebook and Google have headquarters in Dublin anyway so why do they need to have a summit to see each other anyway. Maybe they moved it over to Portugal because they just wanted a little sunshine after the piss poor summer we've had...

Tiddlypeeps

MadsL wrote: »

What did the Hub do for them other than charge commercial rate rent? Seriously, if the Hub didn't exist then surely that company would have still started, boomed and perhaps not failed.

Companies whose success is probably not attribrited to the Hub.

The rents are not subsidised, numerous companies, including one I worked for, moved out because the rents were overpriced and there was little advantage other than some misguided cachet in a Digital Hub address. Vanity money being charged basically.

I dunno about these days but back then rents in the Hub were way cheaper than commercial rates. It's possible the company I mentioned would have gotten by regardless but they came pretty close to the wire cash flow wise multiple times in the early days so it's impossible to say for sure.

Still not really sure what the whole property speculation thing has to do with anything but either way it's not my area of expertise so I can't comment.

MadsL

Tiddlypeeps wrote: »

I dunno about these days but back then rents in the Hub were way cheaper than commercial rates. It's possible the company I mentioned would have gotten by regardless but they came pretty close to the wire cash flow wise multiple times in the early days so it's impossible to say for sure.

Still not really sure what the whole property speculation thing has to do with anything but either way it's not my area of expertise so I can't comment.

All I can say to you is that the company I worked for moved out of the Hub because the rents were poor value.

Perhaps you can answer my question, even though you have no "expertise" in property speculation - should taxpayers be funding speculation by an "agency" supposedly set up to assist start-ups?

The status of some of those start-ups is suspect anyway...Etsy, Amazon, Eventbrite??

PARlance

Really bad call on their behalf.

A lot of the success of it was down to the fact that it was a good excuse for a p1ssup, and no better place than Dublin. The Summit itself was all frills and no knickers. Can't see half the crowd attending by Yr2. It'll be a dead duck by Yr3.

Reiver

Buona Fortuna wrote: »

They may have just seen this thread

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057497217

All this time I thought I was doing good on boards I was in fact serving the dark side

Eoin

I was at last year's one (courtesy of work) and found it completely useless and dull. No wonder everyone was trying to connect to the internet all day. It wasn't worth a drive across town, let alone a flight to Lisbon. I doubt many attendees really got much out of it - and smaller and more relevant & focussed events will and are already filling the vacuum where needed.

Anyway that's beside the point - this news doesn't mean that Dublin is not a place to do business, technology etc. It just means that we're not a city for large conventions.

The places that can cater for the numbers he wants to get to are absolutely massive, and often in the arse end of nowhere where you won't get a train from the airport any easier than you would in Dublin.

I've been to a few in the US that can hold about 6000 in the one room, and the buildings are several hundreds of thousands of square footage (about twice the size of IKEA in exhibition/meeting space alone). One in Vegas where it was a 20 minute walk from my room to the convention room, and that was without leaving the building. And there were a few internet issues too - but we just got on with it.

I don't know if there's really much shame in saying that we're just not set-up for that kind of thing. A lot of the comments here just sound like that strange compulsion to moan about ourselves and the country.

The 100m figure sounds a bit high - was it broken down at all? That's over 4.5K each for 22,000 attendees, unless my maths is terrible. That's more than what SalesForce estimated that their "Dreamforce" event was worth to the local area, with 130,000 attendees.

FloatingVoter

^ A lot of the kids coming over will have been inflating their expenses and bigging themselves up. They know they'll be back flipping burgers in Boise when the killer app sinks. So anybody saying the spend was 100m is like the cops talking about the street value of their drugs seizures. "Not on the street where I buy my drugs" as Sgt. Gleeson reminded us.

Sunnyisland

When news of the Web Summit's decision to leave Dublin for Lisbon started to surface, many people assumed it must be for big bucks. €5m? €10m? How much had Portugal promised to prise away an event so indelibly linked with Dublin away?

€1.3m. And that was it.

In other words, it wasn't a lack of state funding that got the Web Summit to ditch Dublin. It was Dublin itself.
Company organisers have long griped about the capital's creaking infrastructure, rollercoaster hotel stock and lack of transportation.
Yesterday, they finally acted on it.

The Web Summit was moving away, said the company's official statement,"for our attendees to get the best experience possible".
Decoded, that means no gridlocked streets around suburban venues. It means no hoteliers who jack prices up from €75 to €600 for the week of the conference. And it means no more worrying about getting people around the city on time.

Instead, the Web Summit will now have a sparkling convention facility that can host up to 50,000 people. It will have a venue that has a metro stop all to itself. And it will have an event that's not located in the middle of a residential neighbourhood.
In fairness, there is an alternative explanation. The Web Summit may have simply outgrown Dublin. After all, what used to work as a boutique event designed as a charming antidote to regular conferences is closer to being the original global thing now. Pub crawls down narrow streets with Bono may no longer be a substitute for fibre-backed wifi.

So maybe it's time for the Web Summit to find a bigger home where it can accommodate its ambition. For many, it's a shame that Ireland can't be that home.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/its-not-you-its-us-why-web-summit-ditched-dublin-for-modern-lisbon-31554024.html


If the above is true it is a shame .

BoJack Horseman

realies wrote: »

no gridlocked streets around suburban venues. It means no hoteliers who jack prices up from €75 to €600 for the week of the conference. And it means no more worrying about getting people around the city on time.

It is annoying that Dublin is the only city with traffic & exploitative hotel prices.

Wompa1

A very non-technical tech conference. Seemed more like a big circle jerk...better off without it.

kippy

realies wrote: »

When news of the Web Summit's decision to leave Dublin for Lisbon started to surface, many people assumed it must be for big bucks. €5m? €10m? How much had Portugal promised to prise away an event so indelibly linked with Dublin away?

€1.3m. And that was it.

In other words, it wasn't a lack of state funding that got the Web Summit to ditch Dublin. It was Dublin itself.
Company organisers have long griped about the capital's creaking infrastructure, rollercoaster hotel stock and lack of transportation.
Yesterday, they finally acted on it.

The Web Summit was moving away, said the company's official statement,"for our attendees to get the best experience possible".
Decoded, that means no gridlocked streets around suburban venues. It means no hoteliers who jack prices up from €75 to €600 for the week of the conference. And it means no more worrying about getting people around the city on time.

Instead, the Web Summit will now have a sparkling convention facility that can host up to 50,000 people. It will have a venue that has a metro stop all to itself. And it will have an event that's not located in the middle of a residential neighbourhood.
In fairness, there is an alternative explanation. The Web Summit may have simply outgrown Dublin. After all, what used to work as a boutique event designed as a charming antidote to regular conferences is closer to being the original global thing now. Pub crawls down narrow streets with Bono may no longer be a substitute for fibre-backed wifi.

So maybe it's time for the Web Summit to find a bigger home where it can accommodate its ambition. For many, it's a shame that Ireland can't be that home.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/its-not-you-its-us-why-web-summit-ditched-dublin-for-modern-lisbon-31554024.html


If the above is true it is a shame .

Decoded the organisers make more money. If only they'd be honest enough to admit it.

sabat

realies wrote: »

It means no hoteliers who jack prices up from €75 to €600 for the week of the conference.

And where does he think the knowledge and technology that enables hoteliers to perfectly judge supply vs demand and maximise rates comes from? That's right- computer applications-programs and companies that probably advertise at events just like the Web summit. When someone like Uber does this it's fine though cos they're like disrupting old industries and stuff... If he thinks this won't happen in Lisbon he's in for a bit of a surprise.

Princess Consuela Bananahammock

BoJack Horseman wrote: »

It is annoying that Dublin is the only city with traffic & exploitative hotel prices.

Pretty sure this is meant sarcastically, but it's also actually true compared to cities of similar size.

Dyr

realies wrote: »

When news of the Web Summit's decision to leave Dublin for Lisbon started to surface, many people assumed it must be for big bucks. €5m? €10m? How much had Portugal promised to prise away an event so indelibly linked with Dublin away?

€1.3m. And that was it.

In other words, it wasn't a lack of state funding that got the Web Summit to ditch Dublin. It was Dublin itself.
Company organisers have long griped about the capital's creaking infrastructure, rollercoaster hotel stock and lack of transportation.
Yesterday, they finally acted on it.

The Web Summit was moving away, said the company's official statement,"for our attendees to get the best experience possible".
Decoded, that means no gridlocked streets around suburban venues. It means no hoteliers who jack prices up from €75 to €600 for the week of the conference. And it means no more worrying about getting people around the city on time.

Instead, the Web Summit will now have a sparkling convention facility that can host up to 50,000 people. It will have a venue that has a metro stop all to itself. And it will have an event that's not located in the middle of a residential neighbourhood.
In fairness, there is an alternative explanation. The Web Summit may have simply outgrown Dublin. After all, what used to work as a boutique event designed as a charming antidote to regular conferences is closer to being the original global thing now. Pub crawls down narrow streets with Bono may no longer be a substitute for fibre-backed wifi.

So maybe it's time for the Web Summit to find a bigger home where it can accommodate its ambition. For many, it's a shame that Ireland can't be that home.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/comment/its-not-you-its-us-why-web-summit-ditched-dublin-for-modern-lisbon-31554024.html


If the above is true it is a shame .

The hotels were charging 600 smacks for a room. My god, you could buy a ticket to the web summit with that sort of money :rolleyes:

Anyone who says they can find good hotel accommodation in dublin for 70 lids is talking a load of balls

I'm amazed the government has'nt built a conference centre with dart link and zeppelin sized ego landing pad just because paddy cosgrave threw his rattle out of the pram

jem hadar

What was the actual point of the Web Summit?

Sofiztikated

Are people bitching about hotels charging more when there is a high demand on rooms?

Are people not aware that this happens around the world, it's generally how hotels operate.

Try price a room in Dublin on the All Ireland weekend.

Try price a room in Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival.

Christ, look at the price people were paying for a room in Vegas for the McGregor fight.

Bringing 20K people into a city with 18,000 hotel beds, demand exceeds supply, and so higher prices can be charged. And with most attendees charging them on expense accounts, why not?

As for the financial loss? Sure, I could see it being that amount. There's food, drinks, hotels, transport (public and private), cleaning, security, IT, electrical, events, staffing, etc etc. We recently had an event in work where 70 people came for a 3 day sales conference, from around the world, and their total bill came to €90k with us. Not including what they paid for airport transfers by coach (and local taxis costing €180 a go, multiple times) and so on.

Events like these can be either fluff or substance. It seems that this event was more fluff than substance, but the fluff is where the craic usually is, and by god, people come to Ireland for the craic.

techdiver

Look at the price of hotels in Cardiff and the surrounding areas during the rugby world cup. You can easily pay €2,000 per night.

StonyIron

There's one major issue though - the RDS is not really a suitable venue for a major event like this and we have almost no alternatives on a big scale.
We need a purpose built, very large scale conference centre if we're going to get and keep those kinds of events.

If you have regular big events, you'll have hotels to cope with them. If they're one off and sporadic, you can't really expect hotels to have sufficient capacity all the time. A big conference venue, that is in regular use (the important bit) will generate its own ecosystem of hotels.

Dublin has the potential to be a major conference venue, mostly because it's extremely well connected by air.

The WiFi issue was a local issue with the actual on-site WiFi. It has nothing, whatsoever to do with Irish broadband speeds (which incidentally are not that slow in urban areas - we've on average faster speeds available than the UK has - it's just that 62% of Irish people live in cities / towns vs close to 80% of the UK).

I heard a debate on RTE Radio One this morning, Marian Finucane show where the contributors were talking about "the state of our WiFi" and not even seemingly realising that WiFi isn't anything to do with infrastructure other than locally in a building and people going on about not being able to get reception in Georgian buildings on the South Mall in Cork (via probably stone and very serious amounts of brick). You can't make radio waves penetrate granite and thick brick no matter what you do, unless the building itself installs leaky feeders to carry the signals thorough.

There is tons of connectivity available around the RDS including plenty of fibre, if someone's willing to pay for it.

The WiFi issue was most likely caused by congestion of the WiFi channels in the actual venue due to huge amounts of use and not enough clear channels. If you put thousands of heavy data users and tens of thousands of devices onto a WiFi network, you will run out of channels because there simply aren't enough to cope. That applies in Tokyo, Dublin, Dingle, Lisbon or anywhere else. WiFi is actually limited in capacity and tends to choke up because of limitations of the technology itself.

It's unlicensed spectrum and has relatively narrow bandwidth. It was never designed to cope with that number of devices.
On top of that, you've got the fact that in a European context, people won't generally have access to their own mobile data unless they're locals, so everything hangs off the conference WiFi.

No amount of infrastructural investment will solve that. You just need tons and tons of WiFi routers located very locally in the building to create a dense mesh to attempt to cope.

Blaming the state for bad WiFi at a private venue is utter nonsense.
It's like blaming the Department of Communications because you put your cordless phone base station too far away from your home office and you can't get a signal.

StonyIron

If you want to build a serious conference centre - it really should be at the end of the Dublin Port Tunnel - easy access from Dublin Airport for conferences with international focus and easy access from the M50 for Irish-focused events.

It would need a major multi-storey carpark capable of parking several thousand cars and busses and all the on-site infrastructure to cope.

The other alternative is build it on cheaper land North of Dublin City on the M1.

The "infrastructure" is conference infrastructure. It's nothing to do with telecoms issues in rural areas or residential broadband.

Eugene Norman

Kermit.de.frog wrote: »

What good is the DART if you are coming from the airport? Country is run by gombeen country TD's that don't give two hoots about the capital, only their own seats and voters. Not that many of the natives do either but anyway. It really is a disgrace the way Dublin is run and managed. A national embarrassment that has us on a par with Newcastle, Hull or Sheffield instead of the capital of a modern country.

It is not even the big things Dublin does not get right - it's the simple things.

It's not the job of country TDs to run Dublin. In fact it's not the job of TDs to run Dublin. TDs run Ireland.

kippy

Eugene Norman wrote: »

It's not the job of country TDs to run Dublin. In fact it's not the job of TDs to run Dublin. TDs run Ireland.

TDs run nothing, the truth be told.

Dyr

Eugene Norman wrote: »

It's not the job of country TDs to run Dublin. In fact it's not the job of TDs to run Dublin. TDs run Ireland.

You're right... dublin needs a directly elected mayor and its own tax raising ability. Too much power vested into non dubs in this country

StonyIron

Ireland's entire system of local government is a total joke.
We should have a situation where the cities have directly elected mayors or an executive council with a mayor. That way they'd have some sense of accountability and vision.

Meanwhile, you've a government contemplating merging Cork City with County Cork which is a rural area the size of half of Northern Ireland that contains some of the most remote rural parts of this island! How exactly is that going to work out for what is supposed to be our 2nd city?! It's like proposing to merge Dublin with The Pale or something. Just because the two entities are called Cork doesn't actually mean they've anything in common in terms of socio-economics or administrative needs.

I also do not agree with this ridiculous idea of scrapping town councils. We should have town councils in *all* towns. They needn't be expensive to run but they are absolutely essential if a town is supposed to have some kind of sense of identity and vision for development. You can't just expect the local tidy towns committee to run the place.

They froze the town councils as they were in 1921 - so really large new towns like Tallaght, Swords, Ballincollig, Carrigaline etc etc never had any councils at all, while small towns that existed pre 1921 did.
Instead of reforming it, the government idiotically scrapped the whole system, leaving towns without any focus.

I can't think of *any* other developed country that would do something so idiotic.

We are one of the least urbanised countries in the developed world (only about 60%) and we've a government that seems to have a vendetta against towns and cities and idealises unsustainable quasi-rural developments.

Public policy here has always been about pulling power into the centre and removing any local autonomy and about scattering investment to the four winds instead of creating several counterbalancing regional hubs.

Ireland should look more like New Zealand in terms of development. Dublin should be as large as Auckland and Cork should be as large as Wellington and so on.. Instead, we've this thin, spread mess of what is rural housing that thinks its urban.

It's why we've large numbers of homes with an inability to access broadband (no density which makes it uneconomic). It's why we had cryptosporidium infections in water supplies in Galway City - too many one-off septic tank systems draining into water tables.

1 in 3 Irish homes doesn't even have a unique address !?! This is a problem you normally encounter in the developing world, not Western Europe.

Interesting things and economies happen in cities. We can idealise rural Ireland all we like, but if we don't actually put the scale of investment in things like public transit and proper zoning for housing, large apartments etc into place in our cities, we are going to always be second rate as a location.

Also, we need to stop thinking about sky-high house prices as a sign of a good economy - it's a sign that we're being asset stripped by speculators!

boobar

Well it did bring in a lot if cash to the Dublin hotel and restaurant business.

The WiFi debacle at the RDS was beyond embarassing.

But sure we have to continue to big up the country and the benefits it holds for tech firms...even though broadband countrywide is pure crap.

Say it as it is and you're set upon for saying that the emperor has no clothes.

awec

StonyIron wrote: »

There's one major issue though - the RDS is not really a suitable venue for a major event like this and we have almost no alternatives on a big scale.
We need a purpose built, very large scale conference centre if we're going to get and keep those kinds of events.

If you have regular big events, you'll have hotels to cope with them. If they're one off and sporadic, you can't really expect hotels to have sufficient capacity all the time. A big conference venue, that is in regular use (the important bit) will generate its own ecosystem of hotels.

Dublin has the potential to be a major conference venue, mostly because it's extremely well connected by air.

The WiFi issue was a local issue with the actual on-site WiFi. It has nothing, whatsoever to do with Irish broadband speeds (which incidentally are not that slow in urban areas - we've on average faster speeds available than the UK has - it's just that 62% of Irish people live in cities / towns vs close to 80% of the UK).

I heard a debate on RTE Radio One this morning, Marian Finucane show where the contributors were talking about "the state of our WiFi" and not even seemingly realising that WiFi isn't anything to do with infrastructure other than locally in a building and people going on about not being able to get reception in Georgian buildings on the South Mall in Cork (via probably stone and very serious amounts of brick). You can't make radio waves penetrate granite and thick brick no matter what you do, unless the building itself installs leaky feeders to carry the signals thorough.

There is tons of connectivity available around the RDS including plenty of fibre, if someone's willing to pay for it.

The WiFi issue was most likely caused by congestion of the WiFi channels in the actual venue due to huge amounts of use and not enough clear channels. If you put thousands of heavy data users and tens of thousands of devices onto a WiFi network, you will run out of channels because there simply aren't enough to cope. That applies in Tokyo, Dublin, Dingle, Lisbon or anywhere else. WiFi is actually limited in capacity and tends to choke up because of limitations of the technology itself.

It's unlicensed spectrum and has relatively narrow bandwidth. It was never designed to cope with that number of devices.
On top of that, you've got the fact that in a European context, people won't generally have access to their own mobile data unless they're locals, so everything hangs off the conference WiFi.

No amount of infrastructural investment will solve that. You just need tons and tons of WiFi routers located very locally in the building to create a dense mesh to attempt to cope.

Blaming the state for bad WiFi at a private venue is utter nonsense.
It's like blaming the Department of Communications because you put your cordless phone base station too far away from your home office and you can't get a signal.

Is that not the convention centre on the quays?

the dark phantom

boobar wrote: »

Well it did bring in a lot if cash to the Dublin hotel and restaurant business.

The WiFi debacle at the RDS was beyond embarassing.

But sure we have to continue to big up the country and the benefits it holds for tech firms...even though broadband countrywide is pure crap.

Say it as it is and you're set upon for saying that the emperor has no clothes.

Agree, Doing things the "Irish way" must be protected at all costs, Even if it leads to shíte organisation shíte transit shíte internet and paying over the odds for shíte services. :pac:

Eoin

awec wrote: »

Is that not the convention centre on the quays?

Not for the sort of numbers that the Web Summit think they can grow to - they can only hold a few thousand people per event. I don't think people appreciate how big a venue it takes to cater for conferences of 50,000 people.

boobar wrote:

But sure we have to continue to big up the country and the benefits it holds for tech firms

Again, this should not be a reflection on Ireland as a place for technology companies, despite what the hand-wringers and all the self-loathing Irish say. Smaller and more useful events will fill the vacuum if the demand is there.

Eugene Norman

Eoin wrote: »

Not for the sort of numbers that the Web Summit think they can grow to - they can only hold a few thousand people per event. I don't think people appreciate how big a venue it takes to cater for conferences of 50,000 people.

Could London even host that in one hall and have enough spare room capacity? San Francisco? New York? It seems you need a moderate sized city off season, or one like Las Vegas that depends on conferences, with a humongous conference centre. Or two.

Again, this should not be a reflection on Ireland as a place for technology companies, despite what the hand-wringers and all the self-loathing Irish say. Smaller and more useful events will fill the vacuum if the demand is there.

The number of people who think that congested wifi = bad broadband is beyond a joke. It's been explained already in this thread. Dublins broadband is pretty good. Coming from the uk two years ago I upgraded from 2mb/s to 100mb/s.

MadsL

You'd think a websummit could figure out something that doesn't involve gathering a bunch of people in one place. Oh, the shattered dreams of the telecommute generation!

Wompa1

MadsL wrote: »

You'd think a websummit could figure out something that doesn't involve gathering a bunch of people in one place. Oh, the shattered dreams of the telecommute generation!

You, sir are a crazy man! How can you partake in the circle jerk from your stuffy old office or home!?

StonyIron

awec wrote: »

Is that not the convention centre on the quays?

That's more of a conference venue:

"The building can hold up to 8,000 people in 22 meeting rooms, which include a 2,000-seat auditorium and a 4,500 square metre exhibition and banqueting space"

What you need is a really large purpose built exhibition centre capably of hosting huge events like the NEC in Birmingham or ExCeL in London.

NEC
13,928 seated
15,643 standing

ExCeL is 100,000 sq meters.

wicklowwonder

StonyIron wrote: »

That's more of a conference venue:

"The building can hold up to 8,000 people in 22 meeting rooms, which include a 2,000-seat auditorium and a 4,500 square metre exhibition and banqueting space"

What you need is a really large purpose built exhibition centre capably of hosting huge events like the NEC in Birmingham or ExCeL in London.

NEC
13,928 seated
15,643 standing

ExCeL is 100,000 sq meters.

When would we use it? The Point fits: 9,500 all seated or 14,500 seated + standing. Dublin is a small city in the grand scheme of things. We don't need a conference centre as big as the ExCel and we won't ever host the Olympics. Both would be a complete waste of money. Our public transport system does need additions but we definitely do not need to build a white elephant to see it never used.

StonyIron

wicklowwonder wrote: »

When would we use it? The Point fits: 9,500 all seated or 14,500 seated + standing. Dublin is a small city in the grand scheme of things. We don't need a conference centre as big as the ExCel and we won't ever host the Olympics. Both would be a complete waste of money. Our public transport system does need additions but we definitely do not need to build a white elephant to see it never used.

Well, in that case you also won't host the Web Summit or anything similar once it gets to that kind of scale.

If you want to make Dublin into a major conference venue, it needs to think far beyond local markets. It's an extremely well connected city, most due to Ryanair and Aer Lingus and actually a very handy conference centre form that point of view.

It's got a potential to be a major conference destination for UK centric and European conferences, but if it only thinks small and local, well then don't expect to host big conferences as you don't have the infrastructure to do so.

You can't host a GAA All Ireland Final in Dingle either.

No point in moaning about it, it's a civic choice. Either build one, or don't.

The only downside to Dublin as a venue for major conferences is that it's bloody expensive to get large equipment in and out of due to being on an island. You actually add very significant transport costs and time lag as everything has to go by ferry. For a major conference, somewhere like Belgium or NL actually makes more sense for Europe.

grundie

StonyIron wrote: »

There's one major issue though - the RDS is not really a suitable venue for a major event like this and we have almost no alternatives on a big scale.
We need a purpose built, very large scale conference centre if we're going to get and keep those kinds of events.

If you have regular big events, you'll have hotels to cope with them. If they're one off and sporadic, you can't really expect hotels to have sufficient capacity all the time. A big conference venue, that is in regular use (the important bit) will generate its own ecosystem of hotels.

The RDS is actually a pretty decent venue. During the horse show something like 20,000 people pass through each day, and that's with half the site taken up with horse storage stuff and lots of exhibitors taking up space. Plus being close to the city centre is a major draw for organisers.

It might not be the size of the NEC, but that was built to handles potentially hundreds of thousands of people attending multiple exhibitions every day.

Strumms

A statement from Cosgrave, interesting reading...


http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/web-summit-founder-cosgrave-lays-into-government-says-dutch-french-danes-brits-and-portuguese-are-way-better-at-infrastructure-planning-31612456.html

MrMorooka

Strumms wrote: »

A statement from Cosgrave, interesting reading...


http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/web-summit-founder-cosgrave-lays-into-government-says-dutch-french-danes-brits-and-portuguese-are-way-better-at-infrastructure-planning-31612456.html

It's more informative to read the correspondence they released. https://static.rasset.ie/documents/news/web-summit-correspondence.pdf Primary source ftw.

Got to love our government.

Paddy, have this and the document received on Friday. Will be back to you. Nick
Sent from my iPhone

9 days and 2 more emails sent later with no other response ...

Paddy, in France on trade mission at moment. I will be back to you. Nick
Sent from my iPad

Martial9

They have leaked their back and forth correspondence with the government. They really wanted to keep it in Dublin but just needed some basic assurances and a plan in place from our government.

https://files.websummit.net/correspondence.pdf

CatFromHue

Why are they asking the office of the Taoiseach for a traffic plan in Dublin, public transport changes in Dublin, and to give out about the Wifi that the RDS have in place?

Edit

As requested by the Taoiseach please find attached a concise overview of the offerings from a
number of other countries. Our absolute preference is to stay in Ireland. We've had an incredibly
positive experience over the last five years and I know the Taoiseach is adamant that any offer
can be matched.

I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

listermint

CatFromHue wrote: »

Why are they asking the office of the Taoiseach for a traffic plan in Dublin, public transport changes in Dublin, and to give out about the Wifi that the RDS have in place?

Edit



I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

Id imagine the 100Million Euro that it breaths into the Economy you know may be of interest. And setting ourselves on the International Stage in such a high profile event may be of interest.

But sure the response and attitude that you read there is persuasive at all levels of Government which is very telling in the contempt they have for Start Ups and Entrepreneurs. The Budget does everything to push more folks to go abroad, be it the West Coast of the States or the UK.

Innovative Ireland..... Having a laugh. FG Labour see Innovation and technology as a hot grenade that know one in their midst knows what to do to with.

Oh and the Dept of Taoiseach were probably meant to liase with the relevant Departments to retain it. Im sure that was the reasoning.

MrMorooka

CatFromHue wrote: »

I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

Oh yeah, it's completely obvious. Lots of their emails read like they were written to be published like this But the thing is, they got great offers and engagement from the likes of Lisbon, who (it can be inferred from Appendix 2) were offering to pay for the venue, all transport, wifi, deal with hotels, etc out of government funds. In comparison, Ireland did basically nothing and just gave off the attitude they couldn't be bothered.

As for why they are asking the Taoiseach- it seems they had direct engagement from PMs of other countries, and it can be expected that if the PM is pushing for something, it will be made to happen, heads pushed together etc. But I don't think we do that kind of leadership here, instead everything is its own little fiefdom that barely connects to other parts of the state and just wants to get by with as little effort as possible.

grundie

I don't think this helps Mr Cosgraves case.

He's asking people at ministerial level to help him with stuff that he really should be dealing with himself.

Traffic issues? Speak to the Guards just like the FAI, GAA would do when planning a big game.

Public transport issues? Speak to CIE or private operators and be willing splash the cash to lay on extra services.

WiFi issues? Nothing to do with the government.

Hotels? Do what any other big conference organiser would do and negotiate competitive prices at specially selected hotels. Refuse to list any hotel on the summit website if they refuse to agree not to raise prices for the conference.

I read it as "I have all these problems that I really should be dealing with, but I want you to wave a magic wand and make them go away"

markpb

Depressing stuff but not exactly surprising.

seamus

CatFromHue wrote: »

Why are they asking the office of the Taoiseach for a traffic plan in Dublin, public transport changes in Dublin, and to give out about the Wifi that the RDS have in place?

Edit



I kinda get the feeling that they were planning on leaving anyway

There's definitely a certain amount of arrogance here in terms of, "We're not going chasing all of these people ourselves, I want the office of the Taoiseach to do it for me".

I'd be curious as to why they didn't go to the county councils about this. The four things they were requesting a plan for are all outside of the remit of the Taoiseach and arguably outside of the Dáil's remit.

This is in fact the exact kind of, "I want a TD to give me a dig out with the paperwork so I don't have to do it myself" stuff that's ruined our local government.

Dyr

Look lads it's probably this simple, the government figured out that this golden goose only lays eggs for Paddy and Co. so it wasn't worth the drama and cost of dealing with these boyos. Lisbon will learn in time

Strumms

grundie wrote: »

I don't think this helps Mr Cosgraves case.

He's asking people at ministerial level to help him with stuff that he really should be dealing with himself.

Traffic issues? Speak to the Guards just like the FAI, GAA would do when planning a big game.

Public transport issues? Speak to CIE or private operators and be willing splash the cash to lay on extra services.

WiFi issues? Nothing to do with the government.

Hotels? Do what any other big conference organiser would do and negotiate competitive prices at specially selected hotels. Refuse to list any hotel on the summit website if they refuse to agree not to raise prices for the conference.

I read it as "I have all these problems that I really should be dealing with, but I want you to wave a magic wand and make them go away"

He was looking for the support of the Government. Not help with it and not for people to do it for him. That support was offered from a multitude of other governments. Do you know anything about event planning ? Do you expect Web Summit to start ringing around hotels ? Also do you expect the IRFU just to organize the world cup bid without the support of the government or just do everything on their own ? With government support and backing it would have brought all stakeholders together and the issues would have been easily solved had there been the will. The communication from the office of the Taoiseach and lack there of it proves that there really wasn't.