Welcome to Fabulous Web Summit!

Last week, tech crowd from all over the world gathered for the most important event of the year in Europe – Web Summit. Everybody who cares about disruptive technologies, startups and web-shaped society came these days to Lisbon. Politicians, entrepreneurs, fashion influencers and even Hollywood stars, virtually everyone showed up. Let’s stick to numbers: over 53 000 IT people flooded the streets of the Portuguese capital. In any museum, cafe and just on the street we’ve seen people with branded headbands. Just imagine what it meant in terms of logistics, scheduling, and housing. And Web Summit team did a really great job. Yes, there were lines, WiFi troubles and overcrowded streets, but warm and welcoming Lisbon washed away all those little problems that appeared during the summit.

The Opening The fancy opening night in MEO Arena gathered more than 15 000 under one roof, and the magic started. The inspiring speeches from the Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa, the former EU president José Manuel Barroso, and an interview with actor Joseph-Gordon Levitt were crowned with the closing words from Paddy Cosgrave receiving a key from Lisbon and the rain of lights and glitters. The Exhibition The rest of the summit was packed with talks, pitches and discovering startups at the enormous exhibition halls & 21 conferences here and there. Here’s where you can actually see how big the event is.

SaaS

With the rise of the cloud computing market, Software-as-a-Service became one of the most widely spread segments of online services. Starting with accounting, finance and analytics for large businesses, SaaS then turned to automating and simplifying all the things around:

Quiqup – on-demand logistics services

– on-demand logistics services Emitter – open source real time messaging platform

– open source real time messaging platform Yclient – marketing and loyalty automation tool

– marketing and loyalty automation tool Attendify – easy-to-use event app constructor

– easy-to-use event app constructor Correlate – ultimate productivity tool

– ultimate productivity tool Handy Audit – crowdsource audit platform

eCommerce

As consumers increasingly use multiple devices for online shopping and mobile transactions skyrocket, more and more classic shops turn to the Web. This explains the number of eCommerce solutions and services that thrive around from year to year:

Social Media

For the last ten years, social media remains to be a titbit for numerous young entrepreneurs. No wonder, Web Summit had a whole section packed with new apps, services and platforms created to engage people in sharing various aspects of their lives. And not only people, pets too!

Twizoo — social media content generator

— social media content generator Influencer.DB — in-depth Instagram analytics tool

— in-depth Instagram analytics tool GigPic — social platform for concert goers

— social platform for concert goers Lemur — dating app for pets

— dating app for pets Twinkl — social communication platform

— social communication platform Get Social — in-app social marketing platform

— in-app social marketing platform Insydo — extended city guide services

— extended city guide services Glarify — platform for artists and art-lovers

— platform for artists and art-lovers GlobeChat — instant messenger with multilingual translator

— instant messenger with multilingual translator Sevn — all-in-one event management platform

Software

Guess, this category was created when Web Summit team couldn’t categorize a project from the start. Startups here were way too different from one another. From what could possibly be the next Slack to mobile app constructor, from audit services to alternative app store. Just check this out:

Big data, BI, Data Science

Big data has given businesses a window into valuable streams of information from customer purchasing habits to environment monitoring. This created a whole new level of data science and business intelligence that allows you not only to observe but to predict and prevent various virtually anything from fall of stocks to forest fires.

Social Karma — social media analytics and audience insights tool

— social media analytics and audience insights tool Sky Lab & Cooper Copter — forest health monitoring system

— forest health monitoring system BRIN — pocket business advisor

Other

It’s hard to tell how many categories of startups were presented at Web Summit, and, unfortunately, we couldn’t name them all. Here’re some awesome solutions in the fields of security, travel, eHealth and even Internet of Things.

Ansnei — on-demand bodyguard services

— on-demand bodyguard services SafeCloud — solution that provides data privacy in the cloud

— solution that provides data privacy in the cloud Honula — surfing experience platform

— surfing experience platform Madoc Worldcare — innovative healthcare service providers

— innovative healthcare service providers Tic-Tag — connectivity technology based on stamps with a hidden multitouch fingerprint

Gamification Meetup

Well, it’s not only the exhibition where you can find new friends and projects. Redwerk team has also taken part in some meetups, and the most interesting were the Gamification Meetup on the corner of Pink Street.

Ennea Play — gamification consulting agency

— gamification consulting agency Ludium — gamification consulting and game development

— gamification consulting and game development Fractal Mind — workflow productivity and optimization studies

— workflow productivity and optimization studies Digital Flow — innovation and gamification agency

— innovation and gamification agency HRB solutions — human resources and recruitment services

The Results

Well, Web Summit’16 in Lisbon was enormous. It seems that even if we had more than 24h hours in a day, there wasn’t any chance our team could see everything interesting that happened at the summit.

What also impressed us was a speaker and attendees mix. Big names from the Valley along with investors, media, startups and established companies. One could find literally everything just circling around the exhibition.

And that’s exactly how our CEO Konstantin met the Prime Minister of Portugal Antonio Costa:

Another cool thing about Web Summit is the Night Summit. Since the first one in Dublin, the Pub Crawls became an essential part of the event. And Lisbon showed up to be a great place for the night out. The endless networking and meetups were spread between two main locations: the Pink Street (it’s actually pink!) and Bairro Alto. And again the mix of attendees and speakers flourished here. We even managed to catch Robert Scoble in between bars during the Night Summit:

Overall, Redwerk team has met many cool people creating groundbreaking products and services. Web Summit is definitely a place to come back!

About Redwerk

Eager to learn about advanced and innovative approaches in tech, Redwerk team was excited to take part in the summit. Extending our expertise in cutting-edge technologies in every possible way, we strive to deliver software solutions with the highest quality. With over 11 years of experience in providing software development services, we took part in diverse projects including e-gov and SaaS solutions, startups and e-commerce projects.