My impression of the 2023 Web Summit is that it is overwhelming. The crowds are huge and the venue is enormous.  To the senses it feels like a combination of a casino and a carnival.

The organizers claim attendance of about 70,000.  I don’t dispute that, although it’s hard to judge since people are spread throughout a vast facility consisting of the large Avila Arena, and five enormous exhibition pavilions.

This magnitude of the crowd gives the feel of attending a very large sporting event like an NFL or English Premier League game.  But you are doing so four consecutive days, each day waiting in 45-minute lines to get through security.

By the time I cleared security for the opening ceremonies at around 5 pm yesterday the 20,000 arena was already filled to capacity. 

It was amusing to observe that at a tech conference an official was doing his best to direct the crowd using an analog bullhorn.

Attendees are generally pretty friendly here, although some awkwardly pitch themselves or their companies before establishing any sort of rapport or personal connection. 

The organizers have a useful app that allows participants to scan a QR code on each of our badges, and thereby view the profiles and establish a connection with those persons that we might encounter.  It’s quite a good networking tool.

I found the presentations so far to be hit and miss.  Most are very short, so the format does not lend itself to deep dives into the various subjects.  Several were much too centered on promotion of the presenters’ products rather than an objective discussion of what I thought the topic would be. 

For example, a forum entitled “Foul play: Tackling online hate” was focused solely on a social media app to comment on sports in only a positive way.  The panel consisted of several retired soccer players who spent the whole time promoting the app.  A good idea?  Maybe. But silly me, I thought it would be a discussion about how social media companies use filters and moderation panels to identify, define and determine what “hate speech” should be disallowed – a subject I find much more interesting.

There were a few presentations that were worthwhile.  One that I found particularly interesting was a panel on regulating AI consisting of two journalists, James Ball, with the New European, and Jillian Deutsch, with Bloomberg. 

Ms. Deutsch discussed how the pending EU legislation to regulate AI is in trouble, as several member states are now concerned that it could hamper European companies in their efforts to be at the forefront of the new technology and thereby fail to close the gap with the US in the tech sector. 

Mr. Ball reported on his impression that the UK’s recent AI summit was mostly a success.  Although nothing concrete came from it, he felt that there were productive discussions, and that the UK may be able to position itself as something of an intermediary between the US and Europe on the subject.

Mr. Ball also related that people in the UK were a bit bemused by the fact that Prime Minister Sunak interviewed Elon Musk at the AI Summit rather than the other way around. He also indicated that Musk did not appear to have any particularly profound views on the subject. 

On another note, the city of Lisbon is a fantastic place to visit.  This is my second time here.  Local people I have encountered both times are very friendly but not in a fake or pretentious way I have been to few, if any, places where the locals and tourists co-exist as easily as they seem to do here. 

The one downside is that I have been asked at least a dozen times on the street if I want to buy drugs.  I now understand why Portuguese are having second thought about the decision made a few years ago to liberalize their drug laws.