Web Summit founder Paddy Cosgrave addresses wi fi concerns at his tech event and has a ‘go’ at the ‘old dudes’ of the Royal Dublin Society (established 1820) that run the venue and “hold this country back”.
*snaps quill*
Meanwhile…
“Gavin Thursday; writes
Re; the [Web] summit [wi fi] outage. The RDS can handle up to 20,00 devices but with 20,000 people attending the summit and many of them carrying at least two devices the venue would need to have capacity for 50,000+ devices. Wouldn’t this have been known in advance though?
Anyone?
Fix the wi-fi or Web Summit will leave Ireland, warns founder (BreakingNews)
Thanks Laura Gaynor
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Well done Gavin Thursday (did you see what he did there?)! Obviously the kind of chap who plays with his “device” regularly. Still, when 2nd year Arts in UCD represents the best two years of your life, well what do you expect?
Hit a nerve did he, or are you always so charming?
His argument is idiotic.
Say why it’s idiotic then.
It’s idiotic because he claims that one venue, which has nothing to do with the tech industry, is holding the country back.
Idiotic? Why is it idiotic to expect that you check the venue details before organising an event.
Cosgrave choosing an organisation with this webspec to organise the WebSummit is a bit like a bride complaining because McDonalds doesn’t provide her with champagne for her wedding.
Why not choose a university as the venue, for ffs. They must deal with that no. of mobile devices.
20,000 people these days equals very close to 20,000 smartphones. 20,000 people at a tech conference is definitely going to include a huge percentage of people with either a laptop or a tablet and another smaller but still significant percentage of people using both. Not to mention the fact that stands and displays are all promoting their tech which probably also requires the internet and the stand would likely have at least three demo devices (phones/tablets/laptops) so more than one person at a time can sample the product.
Expand please Banotti.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contention_(telecommunications)
This link shoots down the original point just as effectively: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostrich
Sorry, probably a bit too technical for someone of your calibre.
Not at all. Your link does nothing to back up your claim of the original point being idiotic.
Ad hominem attacks prove nothing other than an inability to respond to substantive points made.
C’mon. How difficult was it to get the wi-fi right? For so-called “techies”?
Very hard…. no really… it’s very hard!
WiFi on this scale is very, VERY hard. And I am, by profession, a “so-called” techie.
(Wait, did I get the quotation marks right?)
No, you didn’t!
Agreed. Event organisation is a two way process between the event organiser and the venue. In the absence of a full statement from Mr Cosgrave (not just a diatribe) evidencing communication and recommunication of his needs to the RDS as well as the carrying out of all prior testing (particularly given the debacle at previous years’ events) he must accept responsibility. This seems like a staged attempt to ‘pass the buck’.
+1
i blame phil hogan
Not everyone was actively using a device at all times so RDS’s claimed capacity should have been fine. The wifi obviously isn’t as good as they claim.
Too important a feature of the conference to take the chance that people might not all be actively using a device at the same time.
Also – you mean to say the organiser of a conference took someone’s word on this? What verification was carried out? Enquiring minds want to know.
Active use doesn’t really matter, once a phone or tablet makes a connection it doesn’t relinquish it by default once it goes to sleep.
Tru Dat
Go then Paddy…!!!
I mean, it seems strange to get up on stage at a venue you’ve chosen yourself for the second year and have a vague but rousing go at the unnamed power structures that are thwarting you. This is why it’s impossible to complain to an Irish person, they’ll just agree with you and nod disapprovingly towards the back office.
Also the self-satisfied rhetoric about “young entrepreneurs” with pauses for applause is embarrassing. These startup kid that are changing the world for the better. I am open to all sorts of improvements coming from new tech companies, but they’re not an egalitarian collective ousting corrupt capitalist structures. They’re not a collective force of f*cking enlightenment.
Parklife?
I laughed!
Haha.
These tips from 2011 suggest 2.3 devices per attendee: http://www.nonblocking.io/2011/05/how-to-make-wifi-work-at-tech.html
Thats a nice practical guide. You just need good infrastructure and people behind the scenes to make it happen
I hear they’ve internet down californey way
Lawd lawd…
Ah shure he’s wearing his Makem and Clancy geansai tonight, who can argue with a leprechaun.
The vile hatred some of you display for this game, enterprising go-getter makes me wanna retch
…hurl?
And so, the GEGG was born.
FFS did they break it, is it gone now?
Out of interest, has the video of Paddy Cosgrave’s speech been made private now?
And, if so, why?
So, the broadband pipe into RDS is only 5 times the speed/capacity of my home broadband? Isn’t even a fully dedicated 1GB a pretty paltry amount to share over wifi to potentially 20000+ devices?
I have 1GB going to my PC at my desk in work. I wouldn’t fancy hosting 20,000 peoples wifi from my work computer.
The 1Gig pipe into the venue probably wasn’t the problem here. The contention over the air is the problem.
There’s only so much data that can whizz through the air in a small space from thousands of users.
Unfortunately if one access point gets overwhelmed then the load shifts to the next nearest access point in range and it gets overwhelmed and the whole thing falls over.
Also you “The Dude” you share your 200Mb connection with all your neighbours.
The RDS would have a dedicated 1gig pipe. If you wanted a dedicated 200Mb pipe to your house then it would cost you a hell of a lot more than you are paying now!
What Paddy fails to recognise is he is ‘one of the old guys carving up contracts for one another’. Paddy is like a modern Butty Sugrue or Albert Reynolds. A showman with no real talent of his own apart from putting on a show, poorly. Look at Paddys first big venture, ‘Rock the Vote’. Bandwagoning, that’s Paddys skill.
Bit of a word for you Paddy, the RDS don’t need your 3 day conference. They’ll just book in an extra couple of days for the knitting & stitching show to cover the shortfall.
Sounds like one of these “doers” that constantly goes on about doing stuff but nothing of any substance.
Jays
I think Francie summed it all up there.
A Stroker
Trying to get away with not paying the band
Guys – Sinn Fein and Richard Boyd-barret are organising a massive protest march on Saturday meeting outside kielys in donnybrook walking down ailsbury and Shrewsbury road gathering outside the RDS demanding free wi-fi for entrepreneurs and investors with 2 or more devices. Let’s let enda and the boyos know this is the final straw. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
If he was a smart businessman, he would have chosen his words more wisely. His ignorant, insulting to his host’s remarks don’t make him look powerful, his ultimatum is nothing more than a temper-tantrum. And it’s his fault that they didn’t make sure that ‘CISCO’ were brought after last years issues.
Exactly. And he’s using this problem as a means of rationalising his departure from Ireland, which was probably his plan all along, and leaving the blame with the RDS.
No pressure Cisco…
Kudos to Paddy Cosgrave for what he has achieved. It is a massive success story and is not something just anyone could pull off. The event is big news internationally and brings in a lot of money and investment, even if the media circus gets irritating.
However, as head honcho he needs to take responsibility for this.
Threatening to leave the country with the event is a bit much, it suggests the country itself can’t be relied on for good tech. He would have been better off saying nothing now, and later demonstrating how he will fix it next year. I also think he’s underestimating the appeal of Dublin as a destination for this event in what is really a hollow and kind of petty threat.
And yes, that capacity is crap, and contention does not fix anything if the bandwidth is too low. If it did, we needn’t have gone beyond 1mb “broad”band.
Did the travellers steal the wifi pipes and sell them to the scrapman?
should’ve read the small print Paddy. next time ask eircom to shorten the leases on the addresses.
There’s summit up with the Internet
Bit like bringing a horse to the show and expecting him to clean up after himself
What a complete and utter baby.
“The RDS told me the wifi would be grand. At an event in which wifi connection is absolutely paramount, I believed them, and didn’t spend any money getting some good wifi in the place. But it’s not my fault really. It’s someone else’s fault. And instead of this being about poorly/cheaply organised event, I’m now going to try to make it about The Man holding back the Little Guy”.
Never heard of this man before the Web Summit. His reputation must be muck.
Exactly. Its not that expensive to get a few links in for the days that its needed. 20,000 is a large capacity network but its not impossible. Then again, he pays no one so it doesn’t surprise me.
Finally watched the video, what a bunch of self-important whining a*seholes – get some perspective about real problems, sort it out, stop complaining, stop making grand speeches and fupp off. ‘This country’ has got a lot more things to worry about, talk about and focus on than fupping wifi at some 3-day conference
But what about Syria?!?
Well. I talked to Venetia and apparently she’s sent her to to the Priory for her ‘eating disorder’, not a word about the baby though.
People clapping at the 1.48 mark in response to the threat made by this plank.
Glad the web summit is over so this tool can disappear for another year – enough time to figure out how to organise wifi before he pops up again.
Ya know the whole thing is a pity
After assembling an extraordinary number of people into a concentrated time and place, all I’ve learned is about the failures and the problems and the weaknesses of the organisers.
Any good news stories
Any new tech stuff discovered
Any interesting discussions
Any Joint Ventures / partnerships announced
And
Who won the raffle
Who got off with who
Any fights
Any morning after the night befores
Since the only reporter that got a free ticket was the guy from the Irish Times, you can forget reading about what actually went on!
Paddy Cosgrave – sticking it to the man! Coz you can always blame the man!
Well that’s pretty much what that vid shows
A rabble rouser with no corporate skills
It’s very, very poor form to blame your venue for something you should have been aware of in the first place and which should have been an integral part of the planning. And pretty much unacceptable to do it in such a public way. The buck stops with you, Paddy, whether you like it or not. Sometimes that’s not fair, but them’s the breaks.
It’s all gone very Bob Geldof.
‘Give us your fuppin’ wifi’
To describe the RDS as the “host” of the Web Summit is misleading. Hiring a venue is not like being invited to stay in someone’s house and if they’ve failed to live up to commitments they made (in exchange for lots of dosh) then he’s right to blame them.
However, the buck still stops with him in so far as it’s his event and he should have done due diligence on the RDS to make sure they could deliver. And given that the wifi failed last year too, then he should have been doubly careful to make sure this didn’t happen again.
Furthermore, we don’t actually know what RDS did commit to and what the contract says. Their website pledges coverage for 20,000 devices which is clearly insufficient for 20,000 wired-up attendees. But we do not have any idea whether they pledged to take care of more than this and whether they specifically rejected a specific offer to let Cisco organise the thing.
So basically, we’re all judging on the basis of hearsay. All that is clear is that both the RDS and Cosgrave look like a bunch of amateurs.