Tom Peruzzi's thoughts on digital, innovation, IT and operations

Dear all

I will more and more use this blog to not only write about operational issues but more and more about what I’m doing and why and what my experiences are … here my first “new” post about websummit vs. pioneers which I originally posted on facebook:

I was asked by several people in the last few days what the better event may be and I truly struggled to really compare, but here are my hints and assumptions. I was on both meetings mainly in supporting crate.io in my role as board member and on behalf of my owns business:

• Pioneers is much more strucutured and organised
• Websummit are way more people trying to speed date for business
• Pioneers offers more and easier accessible info upfront
• Pioneers is more condensed and private during day, no long walks for lunch needed
• Websummit offers tons of chances to have fun in the evening, pubs were overcrowded and really good atmosphere in the city centre
• Possibilities and places to meet people are much better at pioneers
• The massive crowd leads to long waiting for registration, lunch and a lot places were overcrowded thus no chance to participate at websummit
• It depends on how you organise yourself but the permanent change of booth owners on daily basis made it somehow hard to get in touch at later stage
• Wifi was crappy at websummit same for gsm, lost some meetings due to loss of communication
• Pioneers is a real festival with spirit, websummit is a perfect marketing business with lots of people with the ability to connect adhoc
• Websummit seems to have more international speakers

Now the most interesting, I had the chance to step into four more high quality meetings at pioneers but 17 more adhoc at websummit and it seems like the more international you want to be the better is websummit (the more you want to go east the better is pioneers). Time will show which contacts evolved better …