Day 3 at the Web Summit saw a lot of tired heads and practically no reaction to speakers questions from the energy sapped audience at the Code Summit. The session with Jeff Pulver,of Vonage/7ula, was perfectly timed. He stressed the importance, for those of us in the tech and digital sector, of taking time to stop and look up at the milkiway now and again. We live in a type of augmented reality, constantly online and switched on, stressed out and time poor. Even during his talk, half the room were looking down at their screens proving his point that we never “live in the moment”.
He touchingly shared his experience of illness during the past year and how he had to get sick to learn what life was really about. He reminded us of the fragility of life. His own was spared when he was fired by Kantor Fitzgerald (for being too innovative!) just before the Twin Towers disaster. He lost 700 acquaintances and friends during the atrocity, whom he thinks of daily. His main message to us was that “getting fired can save your life” and to “learn to love what you do, don’t apologise for success and remember to breathe and enjoy your life.” The applause was just short of a standing ovation.
After that, Ponders founder William leGate took the stage to share his tips on retaining users. He shared an interesting fact “77% of App users disengage or drop off after a short period of time.” App developers still develop as the payoff is huge if the App works. Ponder has tried several small incremental changes that have led to much higher retention rates. They increased their retention rate by 150% just by improving their onboarding. By focusing on 3 main tactics of Onboarding, Fast Iteration and optimising the UX they have managed to exponentially increase retention rates.
Akamai’s James Kretchmar terrified us all with the fact that the structure of the internet won’t be able to cope with the onslaught of data, particulary video. So basically we are all breaking the internet (oooops). “HTTP2 is the biggest development in web structure in the last 15 years but it’s only catching up with where we are now” he says. “It’s not near enough for where we’re headed.”
Over on Centre stage, one of the highlights was hearing Da Vinci Code’s Dan Brown speak of his work ethic and how the war between science and religion is destroying each set of beliefs. He still starts writing at 4am as “there’s a thin veil between dreaming and reality when you’re more creative.” He emails his wife any research questions which she usually gets at 8am. When asked how the internet has affected his work, he answered that “for research, it’s great. If I’m writing a piece about Bosnia or wherever, I can look for a café, get the street, the name, the menu….. I can email the chef and ask him how they cook the dish, how long it takes etc.” He continued, “but the thing is to stop yourself going down the rabbit hole with that stuff as a writer. It’s more important what the characters are saying than the colour of the table cloth!”
It was refreshing to hear him admit that although science answers a lot, it’s God we turn to when we’re waiting for a plane to take off! He has some interesting views on the influence of techies “in the future techies will do more to influence spirituality than writers ever have or can have.”
We were star struck when Rio Ferdinand and Brian O’Driscoll rocked up at 3.30pm. The room was full to capacity to hear how the sports stars were coping with “retirement”. Ferdy has completely embraced social media and is never off it. “I got very early on that when you have a large audience the sponsors come.” He originally got involved because “when I was growing up, I wanted to know what my heros were doing, like Michael Jackson, Robert DeNiro. That was all I wanted to know – what were they doing? So I like that it allows me to interact with the fans so they can see what I’m really like.” It hasn’t all been plain sailing though “well I did get a couple of fines for saying what I really thought, I tend to react very fast.”
BOD told us he was late to the whole thing but has totally embraced it now. Although he’s made mistakes aswell. “Tweeting at 4am is not a good idea. The morning after I’m like why did I say that? Delete, delete.” He’s coping well with retirement but doing the punditry is not the same as playing. “Nothing compares to playing. No-one understands the whole experience but your team mates. It’s so intense.” He found the whole match attendance thing a bit weird though. “I’ve been playing since I was 20 till I was 35 so I’ve never attended a match until recently. “ It seems to have been a surreal experience. “I was like, how do I do this? Can someone please show me to my seat!”
Despite their phenomenal success, both Brian and O’Driscoll and Rio Ferdinand lit up the room and were incredibly humble. Their time on stage flew and we just wanted more.
Favourite quote of the day:
“Money in the death industry is trending up, we don’t know why, we need to look into it” – Hardeep Walia, Motif Investments
