Largest ever Web Summit at capacity limit, concerns about future
"Web Summit is back, on a scale that we've never operated before, it's on the edge," said the co-founder and executive chairman of what is considered the world's largest tech summit.
The CEO of Web Summit said on Thursday that this year’s edition of the tech summit “is at its limit” and that he has “concerns about the future”.
Paddy Cosgrave was speaking to journalists at a press conference on the third day of the tech summit, which has been held in Lisbon since 2016.
“Web Summit is back, on a scale that we’ve never operated before, it’s on the edge,” said the co-founder and executive chairman of what is considered the world’s largest tech summit.
On Wednesday, the organisation announced that the seventh edition of the event in Lisbon had reached its maximum capacity with 71,033 attendees from 160 countries, with the highest ever number of ‘startups’ and investors.
“We are using all the available space in the area”, the crowd “is incredible”, but “we definitely have concerns about the future”, he said, noting that 18 months ago he could not imagine the return of the face-to-face event with so many participants, at the time even conceding the possibility of the event disappearing.
“I am worried about the limit of the venue,” he said, referring to the need to be “careful” not to exceed the safety limit, as the number of participants is “intensive,” he continued.
The expansion of the FIL venue was planned for this year. The Web Summit, which was born in 2010 in Lisbon, will be held in Lisbon until 2028.
Paddy Cosgrave highlighted that Lisbon is a “boom city” for technology, stressing that the Portuguese capital “is becoming the California of Europe”.
In fact, “I would like to say that the Web Summit made Lisbon, but I think Lisbon made the Web Summit, the ingredients were all here”, he concluded.
Paddy Cosgrave also highlighted the role of the “Portuguese security services behind the scenes” to protect some important figures participating in the seventh edition of Web Summit, stressing that the whole process is “incredibly complex”.
This is because security procedures are applied “that we had never implemented in an event of this size”, he pointed out.
Cosgrave pointed out that normally, in the case of personalities such as the first lady of Ukraine – who was the event’s opening speaker on Tuesday – , the meetings are bilateral and security is of another type, “not in a venue with thousands of people”.
The executive president also thanked the PSP police and the other security forces for their work.