Web summit Portuguesa talent essential for success of Brazil event
"Many of the 2,000 who work at Web Summit here don't speak English, they only speak Portuguese," he said. "Having this number of Portuguese staff 'behind the stage' is essential".
Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave told Lusa on Wednesday that Portuguese talent ‘behind the stage’ has been essential in organising the conference being held for the first time in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro.
“It has been incredible that we have Portuguese speakers, we have an incredible team of Portuguese,” Paddy Cosgrave said in an interview with Lusa news agency at Web Summit Rio, adding that “dozens and dozens of people working at Web Summit are Portuguese”.
“The business community speaks English, but many of the 2,000 who work at Web Summit here don’t speak English, they only speak Portuguese,” he said.
“Having this number of Portuguese staff ‘behind the stage’ is essential”, Paddy Cosgrave stressed.
In addition to the staff, Portugal is represented at Web Summit Rio by 25 startups linked to areas such as software, education or artificial intelligence and is the second largest international contingent in this edition.
BlockBee, Blue Insight Technologies, Deeploy.me, Dizconto, Enline, Frontfiles, Go Beesiness, Hoopers, IDE Social Hub, Infinite Foundry, ITERCARE, Knok Healthcare, LEADZAI, Mentorise, Modatta and Move, as well as My Data Manager, MyCareforce, ndBIM, Neroes, Sensei, SheerME, Swood, Vawlt Technologies and Wallstreeters are the Portuguese representatives.
The co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement, Ayọ Tometi, the president of Banco do Brasil, Tarciana Medeiros, top officials of Brazilian banks and companies, the executive president of the Onlyfans platform, Amrapali Gan, and the prime minister of Cabo Verde, José Ulisses Correia e Silva, will join more than 300 speakers, about 900 startups, investors and journalists from more than 100 countries, at a summit where topics such as technology, society, artificial intelligence, climate change, among others, will be discussed.
Among the various speakers are the Portuguese secretary of state for internationalisation, Bernardo Ivo Cruz, several Brazilian actors and presenters, Brazil’s minister of indigenous peoples, Sonia Guajajara, former Portuguese football player Deco and Portuguese presenter Cristina Ferreira.
The technology event, which started in 2010 in Ireland, moved to the Parque das Nações area in Lisbon in 2016 and will remain in the Portuguese capital until 2028. The company recently announced an expansion to the Middle East, with Web Summit Qatar planned for early 2024.
Asked about the next edition that takes place in November in Lisbon, Paddy Cosgrave told Lusa that despite the increase in ticket prices “for the first time in Lisbon,” there was no decrease in demand.
“It will probably reach capacity a few weeks before the event,” he stressed.
