Just once a year, Dublin plays host to the biggest tech conference that Europe has ever seen. Start-ups, VCs, angel investors and internet giants all descend on the city for a week of techy madness that defies belief. If you ever felt you’d lost your sense of wonder, this is the place to come to get it back.
A brief stint watching the main stage is a short sharp shock for anyone who believes that tech means sitting in a dark room alone coding, or losing your life to posting selfies on a social media channel. Tech means magic. There are companies out there changing the world, and they’re not afraid to take risks or break the rules.
Some are big established companies. Seventy-year-old head of Pixar, Ed Catmull, brought a breezy, refreshing boost of youthful energy to the stage – extolling the virtues of giving people space to think, create and fail by having faith in each individual’s capacity to bring their own touch of beauty to the end product.
Hyperloop technologies, an up-and-comer that will rock the infrastructure and namely the transport world, wowed even the most jaded conference-goers with promises of an unbelievable future: 400 mile commutes, speed-of-thought deliveries and on demand transport. Move over hover cars, the future is transport pods and it wouldn’t surprise me if they gave light a bit of competition in terms of speed.
In addition to the big boys, the sprawling conference hall was almost humming and vibrating with the combined energy of the hundreds of start-ups gathered to have their chance to pitch to the people that matter in the industry. Dreams will come true: last year’s start-ups have now collectively raised over a billion in investments. We’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for our favourites in the years to come.
I’ll finish with a brief shout out to all the people who we met up with during this event. Follow them on Twitter and see where they end up!
