The team behind the Dublin and London Web Summits plans 100 ‘Pub Summits’ globally this year

The European Web tech conference scene is going through a period of rapid expansion and diversification. In addition to more conferences aimed at audiences in their thousands, we’re seeing increasing numbers of invite-only events like F.ounders and most of Hy Berlin, and those with more specific focuses, like the European Commission’s Europioneers, which is supported by The Next Web.

Now the people behind the acclaimed Web Summit events in Dublin and London are expanding their brand even further with a series of 100 free events around the world under the Pub Summit brand this year, and the first 20 cities have been announced.

The team have been running Pub Summits for a couple of years, and they embarked on a European Tech Crawl series of such events last year in the run-up to the Dublin Web Summit but this something much larger and is a particularly interesting move because they won’t actually be at all of them.

For each event, there will be a local co-host, who will organise the event on the ground but who will benefit from marketing and promotion support (the Web Summit team is extraordinarily well-connected; the number of people in tech who haven’t met founder Paddy Cosgrave is possibly smaller that the number who have) and the use of an online platform for distributing tickets and allowing attendees to invite others. Local startups will also get a chance to enter this year’s Spark of Genius competition at the Dublin Web Summit in October.

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The idea here is to build awareness of the Web Summit brand while helping local tech communities host a well-attended event. Aiming for 100 in a year is an ambitious move, but one we don’t doubt they can pull off, based on their track record. The opening event took place in London last night, co-hosted by Seedcamp. The full list of cities so far, includes New York, Moscow, Paris and San Francisco and co-hosts like Startupbootcamp, Springboard, Ignite 100 and Rude Baguette.

If you’re interested in hosting a Pub Summit in your city, you can apply via the website using the link below.

➤ Pub Summit

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