Did we buy the WebSummit (WS) tickets based on deceptive marketing? Yes! They were just lying about what an Alpha Track (AT) participant is. Nevertheless it was a unique and great experience.
WS is really huge. There were about 2000+ AT participants and as such you get to present your startup one day long. The other two days you’re „just“ an attendee. The event was really well organized and filled up to the stocks with all kinds of stuff. We were lucky that we (www.jack.chat) had our AT stand on day one because everything is new to everyone, and everybody is excited and curious. We had nonstop traffic at our 40“ wide stand and everybody was really nice and excited for us. It was just an awesome experience! A few investors showed up as well, asked interesting questions, and took notes. Our booth neighbors - Mommy Dearest - were really cool, too, and we hung out after the events and shared insights and experiences.
I attended 3 talks. 2 on main stage and 1 at the code summit. The main stage talks were watched by thousands of people and honestly were just plain boring. The stage was very impressive but the speakers weren’t. The code summit talk by Jon Hodgson on the other hand was really good.
The Night Summit was kind of disappointing because all people went to this one place and it was just heavily overcrowded. But we went to some other places (a taxi driver told us about - btw the irishest Irish ever). And later that night we got to meet the amazing guys from the Startup Van (twitter.com/Startup_van). You really have to check them out!
All in all it was a great trip. Dublin is an amazing city and the WS is a mind-blowing, well organized event. But even to gain the littlest thing out of it we had to work very hard. Don’t be fooled that you can buy a ticket and everything will just falls into place.
PS: we met a guy at breakfast who knows Paddy and the inner circle around him and he told us that everything they are ever talking about is how much money they make.
That said, Web Summit was a fantastic experience. I agree some of the speakers were somewhat lacklustre or at least not as spectacular as I expected them to be. Others were great though (Ed Catmull for instance or the one about what Facebook is going to do the next ten years) Most of the talks on the smaller stages generally were more intriguing anyway.
As for the Night Summit: Yes, it was crowded but it was far from being just at one place. You could meet all sorts of interesting Web Summit visitors at pretty much all of the places.
This certainly requires some effort. In order to get anything out of an event like this you have to actively make it happen. Plan who you'd like to meet, walk around, look around, talk with people. It can be overwhelming and 3 days (and nights) of this indeed can be a bit exhausting but also very rewarding.
Besides, there's worse ways to work than over a pint of Guinness or Smithwick's in the evening.