We Attended Web Summit. Here's a Rundown of How it Went Down

Wait, do not close or flip the article just because it describes the experience of an IT service company. Actually, our experience may be useful for a working product company, early-stage startup, or anyone interested. If you are considering conferences as a new source of useful acquaintances and clients, then this article is what you need.

Here I will share our excellent plan (as we thought initially), our mistakes, a couple of life hacks on how to attract attention using content, and reveal conclusions that everyone can apply for themselves.

Why attend business events like Web Summit

Experience, networking, ideas, make yourself known. Even if you have a perfect product-market fit and word of mouth in driving sales, it never hurts to amplify the impact, right? And if you are just starting to enter the market, all the more, you could use some new contacts.

A conference is a place where everyone is ready to communicate, meet and help each other. A conference is a space where you can easily meet almost anyone in person. You can even draw the attention of top speakers. The main thing is to initially understand your target audience and be focused.

We, in turn, are firmly convinced that business is built primarily on trust. Uinno has emerged and is growing thanks to networking and our clients' trust. So we decided to try conferences as a tool for meeting new people.

A mindblowing plan

Although we did not have a conference-related experience, we completely understood that it required thorough preparation. We had a perfect plan. Well, at least we thought so...

There were six of us split into two teams of three. The business technology unit was supposed to hold as many meetings with potential clients as possible. The film crew aimed at shooting a video about the Web Summit. Let me dwell here in a little more detail.

Video content is a perfect way to attract attention, be remembered, and get profit after the conference.

We've decided to make a video about the Web Summit in faces. The idea was to show the event with our eyes. We were going to shoot short video interviews with the Web Summit attendees. Our focus was mostly on startups and investors.

What's the use of all this? We thought that interviewing people would allow us to get the following benefits:

under the cover of interviews, it is easier to initiate a dialogue and get acquainted;

getting the contact info of people we meet is also not a big deal this way;

we receive additional content for interactions in social media;

most of the participants will definitely repost our publications as being a part of our content, so we get free coverage among the contacts of our respondents;

communicating not just over a cup of coffee (although on the Web Summit it is more like a glass of beer, wine, or cocktail), but within an interview, will make it easy for a person to remember us.

How we Prepared

That's what all people do and we've decided to have a try. 

In about a couple of months prior to the Web Summit, each participant gets access to the mobile application. There you can find any other participant - from just a spectator to a top speaker or investor. In fact, the application is implemented as a social network, just without the news feed. Filters allow you to find any person, add them to your connections, write a private message, book a meeting, etc.

Besides the application, you can also connect with people you need through other channels. Finding people on LinkedIn will help you create extra touch and increase your appointment rate.

We went even further. To stand out among the crowd of participants, we've created a landing page where everyone could book a meeting with each of us separately. Moreover, all participants could declare themselves to take part in our video through starring in our mini-interviews.

A few days prior to the event and all the days while the Web Summit was going on, we promoted our landing page to the target audience on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Our message was: 

"Web Summit is about great products and powerful people, who are passionate about what they do. Uinno is coming to share our tech expertise, and create a movie about you."

What's Merch Got to do With It?

Every article we read about Web Summit echoed in one voice that you need to stand out. Like, bright clothes will be a big advantage. For instance, everyone remembered the guys who wore dinosaur suits.

So what do you think we've come up with? 

That's right - black hoodies. In the course of long discussions, opinions changed several times regarding how and what we should wear. In the end, we've settled on the hoodies. Everyone got a unique patch with the most relevant phrase. Being a marketer I got the “Show me your ROI” writing while our COO Stas received the “Meet you at the bar” inscription.

We also thought that it would be nice to somehow thank the people who will make the time for us. Since the weather in Portugal changes quickly, and the rain can take you by surprise at any time, we've made these raincoats. Because we simply care.

Exactly how many of these raincoats were handed out in the end? What about the number of meetings we had? And how did we shoot a video about Web Summit? Let me share it with you further. Then you will find out how much we screwed up and the overall trip results.

Harsh reality or coincidences are not coincident at all

Let me tell you about our losses and findings at the Web Summit. Yes, it so happened that these things are a little interconnected. Failures sometimes led to positive things for us.

#1 Failure with setting up meetings

We have managed to pre-schedule up to five meetings. It's too little. First of all, we have sent just a few requests, and secondly, most of the summit attendees are not interested in developers.

I mean, the development in general. There is no point in coming here to just present yourself as a great development team and so on. For example, there were a lot of IT outsourcing companies from Ukraine this year, just like us. While getting to know each other, once people found out that we are Ukrainians, they said: "Oh, you're from Ukraine… You probably have a development team, right?"

It makes sense to go with a specific topic like Blockchain, IoT, or, in our case, expertise in Machine Learning.

When ML comes in handy

At the entrance to the Web Summit (and it’s a long walk), we accidentally met the guys who proceeded in parallel with us. Nothing unusual, just an ordinary small talk about where everybody's from, what they are doing, why they came to the summit, how beautiful Portugal is, etc. As usual, once I said that we are from an agency, there was a reaction like “okay, I got it”.

These were the guys from a large online marketplace for buying and selling goods and services. So we somehow caught on to the subject of fraud on their platform. They said that they are aware of this problem and are trying to educate users on how to not get caught by scammers.

In our turn, we told them that machine learning can help to identify fraudsters before they commit unwanted actions. We briefly explained how we do it for OnlyFans, and lo and behold, the guys' interest in us has grown instantly.

In the end, we came to an agreement that we will connect after the summit and discuss the possibility of building a team from our side for one of their subprojects.

The major findings from this casual acquaintance:

• be open (you never know who's beside you until you start a conversation),
• it's nice to have cases with specific expertise,
• the more famous your client is, the more trust you gain.

#2 Failure with a video about Web Summit

Interviews were the biggest failure out of all we had. First, it's important to separate casual conversations from interviews. Secondly, there is such a hum at the summit that even two sound sources could barely cope. We had both a shotgun and lavalier microphones. And even this combination could hardly provide us with a perfect sound.

We simply did not take into account that the summit is a whirlwind of events. Everything happens so quickly. There are a lot of people around you. So much noise and distractions. To shoot a high-quality interview just like that is a pretty complicated task.

Another unexpected factor was the openness of the speakers. Look, there are a lot of scenes at the Web Summit. Besides the main stage, there are around 30 more within each of the 4 pavilions. Someone is performing simultaneously at every stage. Hence, we could not even imagine that the speakers from small stages are so open that after the speech they can make personal contact easily. You can talk to almost anyone, ask questions, and exchange contacts.

When we noticed this, we've decided that it is a good idea to take mini-interviews with speakers who have a large network in social media. But no such luck. It turned out that they can only be filmed and participate in interviews with media certified by the Web Summit. Therefore, people like us, having a Sony mirrorless camera and no license are out of the competition.

But here, this coincidence worked to our advantage.

Actually, the coincidence and our expertise. Our CTO Andrew approached one of the speakers from AWS (Amazon) and asked a question that made the speaker freeze for a while and then invite to connect on LinkedIn for further discussion about the matter.

So sad that we couldn't capture this moment on video, but such a connection and a photo will definitely not be superfluous. Well, I'm so proud that our CTO is so cool that he can make a top Amazon architect give a thought.

#3 Failure with merch

We ordered one hundred and fifty raincoats. Five of them we used ourselves. Another seven were handed out. Ten got lost. The rest returned home with us.

But let me mention that people who got a raincoat were very grateful and didn't expect such a pleasant present from us. Hopefully, this has helped us stand out a little in the minds of these people.

# 4 Failure to keep up with events

To be honest, our productivity was not great, to say the least. At the summit itself, we’d come closer to dinner. That's because when the city falls asleep, the Night Summit wakes up. There is a street in Lisbon, Pink Street, which hosts an unofficial Night Web Summit. In fact, this is an endless street with bars, where 90% of visitors were the summit attendees.

Let's be honest, getting to know each other in bars is much easier than at an official event. Here everyone is more relaxed and inclined to dialogue. Of course, it is not always possible to get in contact with the right person at once. There are a lot of different people in the bars. You may connect with an investor and pitch your idea, as well as accidentally bump into a webcam model who came chasing for IT specialists.

Our personal conclusions from Web Summit

It's too early to talk about the efficiency of our trip and the return on investment. We are now in the process of accounting for our new connections and negotiating further collaboration with those who are interested in our services.

But if we drop the dry figures, it was a huge experience for us. So to speak, experience is priceless. Let me recall, we are an IT service company. It might be different for product companies. 

But here's what we've realized:

• It's much easier to meet people at small events

We had a chance to attend a little event by Startup Estonia for a couple of hours. So there, in a small circle of people, we've easily established great networking. It's hard to say how useful those connections would be, but we are already forming a plan for attending small technology conferences and events worldwide.

Any event is always accompanied by numerous side events. Just for the record, you can find those in communities over Slack, LinkedIn, etc. Follow the social media feed so you won't miss the advertising publication of such events.

• Content is king

Not a single person has ever refused us to record a mini-interview with a camera. On the contrary, everyone agreed with great pleasure. As a result, we had conversations with people from Japan, the USA, Sweden, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Poland, Norway, and France.

• Relevant experience and specific expertise

In our case, Machine Learning takes up only a small percentage of the services we provide. Our greatest strength is custom web development. We build large SaaS products. But it does not spark that much interest as ML. On the one hand, it seems that selling ML services is not the most profitable idea, but then again it can be an entry point. Start small, provide the best service and grow your presence on the client's project.

Yes, this point only applies to service companies. But the approach is also well suited for products and startups. Such conferences are a good reason to test your product-market fit, get first users, conduct a survey, etc. Just try it out!

• Be open and never fear

A trip to the Web Summit is a series of random things that happen to you while you make plans. You can drive yourself into a bunch of KPIs and get very upset when they are not met. Or you can develop skills for presenting yourself and the company, easily make contacts with new people and try to make decisions as efficiently as possible in complete uncertainty.

Thanks for reading this long story. Hoping, our experience has been even a little bit helpful. If you were at Web Summit 2021, please describe in comments where you agree and what makes you disagree with us. I would love to discuss the details. Well, we are not perfect. That was our first experience at a conference, let alone, such a giant event for forty thousand people.

Author bio:

Rodion Chudin

Rodion Chudin is the Head of Marketing at Uinno.io, a digital product agency engaged in custom web/mobile development and making AI/ML solutions for business clients.

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