Dublin Web Summit - Day 2
Ciara O'Brien and Davin O'Dwyer with all the latest from the big tech event

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This event has now ended
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08:01
But never mind the swipes at Government or the moans about wifi, there is the usual array of impressive speakers to check out.
First up on Centre Stage this morning will be Stripe cofounder and recent winner of Ireland’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year award John Collison - the Collison brothers have been wowing crowds at the RDS ever since big brother Patrick won the Young Scientist of the Year award a decade ago.
On the Content Stage at 10.35am, the cofounder of augmented reality pioneer DAQRI Gaia Dempsey will talk about the much-hyped but never quite there technology - it’s a crowded field, but I think DAQRI is doing some of the most impressive work.
I’m also looking forward to hearing Pebble founder Eric Migicovsky discuss the future of wearables on the machine stage at 1.30pm - his smartwatch company shattered records on crowdfunding platform Kickstarter earlier this year when it raised $20 million in one month, and he seems remarkably upbeat for a man going up against Apple.
Finally, closing out the centre stage at 3.50pm will be Tinder co-founder and president Sean Rad, sure to offer a suitably controversial endnote. -
09:34It's never too early to pitch some potential investors. Or too late, judging by some of the slightly tired faces who seemed to have enjoyed the Night Summit last night...
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09:41
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09:53
"Do not be afraid to start a business that feels like it has no precedent," he says as a word of advice to the assembled entrepreneurs. "It felt odd to begin with, but when it started getting product-market fit, it felt like the most obvious thing in the world." -
10:08Three VCs walk on to a stage and talk about the future - lot of ground to cover in 20 minutes, and they have already covered the on-demand economy, Bitcoin and wearables. Phew
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10:15
Other areas of interest include health tech and Internet of Things, which shows they read Wired like the rest of us.
But Jobanputra expresses concerns about the tech bubble - based in New York rather than Silicon Valley, she isn't as exposed to the hype and sees some of the valuations running ahead of reality, with exit possibilities becoming rarer. Sobering observations that don't exactly chime with the larger sense of Web Summit exuberance. -
10:18Augmented and Virtual Reality are big themes of this year's Web Summit, and Jacki Ford Morie is one of the pioneers in the space. And she's literally talking about space - developing VR to help astronauts
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10:42
When Julien Seret, business development director at Aldebaran Robotics comes on stage to chat with Pepper and it feels a bit like an upmarket ventriloquist act. However, there is a lot of complex machine learning, natural language processing and other forms of Artificial Intelligence behind its design.
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10:56The Hyperloop executive team give a press conference - they are building the tube-based transport technology put forward by Elon Musk, the world's resident sci-fi imaginaire! They're looking at having a working prototype by the end of next year.
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11:00
We’ll have to think about this a lot more in the next few decades. Do we want robots that look like people (Repliee Q2), pets (Roomba) or cartoonish stereotypical robots (Pepper)? What happens if robots don’t behave the way we want them to. Robot ethicist Nell Watson gives the example of a phone operator bot that, when questioned, kept insisting it was human. Can we teach manners and ethical behaviour to robots? At the current pace of robotics research, we’ll find out soon(ish).
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11:56
Mr Conroy said the migration crisis was a case where digital media reporting had had a huge impact. 'It went way to the agenda very quickly when the pictures of the young child on the beach were circulated at the end of the summer.
He wasn't the first child to die in the Mediterranean and hasn't been the last and there were...another dozen or so children in the last boat that capsized off the coast of Greece but the media and social media aren't reacting in the same way as the crisis has moved on.' -
12:18Padraig Harrington chatting on the Sports Stage - he's got a nine-week winter break period that he says is key preparation for next year. But alas he tore his knee cartilage playing tennis with his kids.
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12:30
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12:35
"Over the past number of years I’ve been acutely aware that female participation in the tech sector has been and continues to be a significant issue," Web Summit producer Sinead Murphy said.
"We're going to try and play a small part in changing that," she added.
The conference is inviting 10,000 female entrepreneurs from around the world to attend, for free, Web Summit 2016 in Lisbon, the conference's gathering in India called SURGE, to RISE in Hong Kong and to Collision in New Orleans.
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12:52Living life online - Essiebutton, Noodlerella & the rather boringly names Rene discuss becoming an online star. They all look very happy to be on a real stage instead of a video camera...
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13:21
Robots already do the vacuuming, help us with our shopping and drive cars so why not get one to help out in the, you know, bedroom area? This was the topic debated by a group of experts on robots and robot ethics.
Kathleen Richardson, Senior Research Fellow in the Ethics of Robotics, De Montfort University, thinks that it is "something we need to be worried about" because if people think they can form an intimate relationship with a robot then that says something about how we form relationships with other people. On the other hand, Nell Watson, futurist at Singularity University, says she wonders if robots can perhaps help lonely people or even people with disabilities who have challenges with physical interactions. Maybe sex robots aren't just made (and used) by shady characters like Nathan in Ex Machina, they might be an emotional lifeline for those who need it; when it comes to our preconceptions of sex with robots, maybe we should try a little tenderness. -
13:26Nice collection of cities you got there in 2016. Wonder when their respective prime ministers will get invites...
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13:28
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13:36The first Pebble watch prototype, as shown off by Eric Migicovsky, Pebble founder, speaking now on Machine Stage
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14:07
It's going on to Kickstarter shortly. -
14:12The other Web Summit - the main RDS arena and the Simmonscourt Pavilion are quite a walk apart, and it's easy to get stuck in one or the other. Almost feels like two competing technology conferences have set up across the road from each other.
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14:56Among the more idealistic startups at the Web Summit is the Silent Secret team, who have developed a very thoughtful anonymous social networking app with an emphasis on mental health. They're flying back to the UK tomorrow morning to pick up an award for their work at the House of Lords!
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14:58
Evgeny Chereshnev, vice president of global consumer marketing with IT security company Kaspersky, invited startups with ideas in the area to contact it, saying he did not have any product to sell or any firm answers in this area.
He said things had changed dramatically in the past couple of years with regard to how cybersecurity applied to the automotive industry.
“We don’t realise that a car is a computer running on diesel or high-octane fuel, but it’s a computer eventually.”
Indicating to a car at the side of the stage, Chereshnev indicated he could, in theory take it over remotely and drive it into the audience.
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15:10
It was mainly about wearables though; the panel, which included Nymi founder Karl Martin and Nervana Systems’ Arjun Bansal, didn’t manage to get to robots because there was a bit of debate on the wearables side of things.
Part of the change in the medtech industry will be brought by the revolution in big data for healthcare, which can deliver insights in real time for users. The availability of low powered sensors has led to a wealth of innovation, with developers trying out new things, Martin said.
He also voiced what many people are thinking, that the initial introduction of wearables was somewhat of a false hope because all they did was count steps and read your heart rate. While that’s nice data to have, it’s what you do with it that’s the key thing, and you have to inspire real behaviour change. The dirty secret in the wearables industry? According to Martin, it’s that most people don’t wear them after 30-60 days.
But Bansal said that while the day of the handheld MRI is still a way off, things are heading in the right direction. There have been “tremendous strides” made on the algorithm and analytics side of things.
While the idea of having everyone’s genome sequenced may seem a bit Orwellian and open to discrimination, it’s the ability to predict future illness, the panel said, that could spell the end for insurance companies. After all, if we already know what we’re at risk of in the future, why would we need insurance companies? -
15:15
Burly security guys keeping media at bay at @RichardbrutonTD doorstep at #WebSummit. So we don't 'encroach' on him. Ridiculous nonsense.
— Elaine Edwards (@ElaineEdwardsIT) November 4, 2015 -
15:15
The #WebSummit is a v successful Irish-born startup and the gov is keen to support it as it grows and diversifies, says @RichardbrutonTD
— Elaine Edwards (@ElaineEdwardsIT) November 4, 2015 -
15:16Stephen Dunne of Barcelona-based Neuroelectrics gives a fairly mind blowing pitch on their brain-health tech, if that isn't too obvious a pun. The investors don't know if it's science-fiction or the future of medicine...
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15:34
No, didn't think so. But what do I know, because two guys from a firm called Pura are showing off just such a product, the world's first smart fragrance dispenser, backed by 'Big Data Analytics', on one of the Pitch stages. Their team includes 'hipsters, hackers and hustlers'.
Amazingly, this doesn't appear to be satire. No one is laughing either - too stunned, I imagine. And the investors do not seem to see the joke. If it's a gag, it's a Web Summit classic. -
15:38
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15:57Paddy Cosgrave reveals 10 start-ups selected by what appears to be an undercover investor programme - they will be guests in Lisbon, and earn some kudos
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16:10
"I'm thrilled that over the last five years, we have able to grow this little event from 400 people to 40,000
"But we want to invite 10,000 entrepreneurs to our events next year at absolutely no cost. I want you to invite a female entrepreneur on our website. They may not be able to make it, but if the invite isn't made, I don't think the ratio at events like these can happen, and I think changing the ratio is something we need to do." -
16:16Tinder's Sean Rad is on stage to talk swipes, matches and hook-ups. In the mantra common to many start-ups, he believes his company is changing the world...
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16:26
"Ireland is a highly engaged market for us," he says with a chuckle.
"It's been our mission since day one to uncover every popssible meaningful relationship - there are so many barriers, you walk over you say hello you might get nervous, you might get rejected, it's not fun. If you make more possibilities, you're fundamentally changing the world. If we can make more connections to a person's life, you are fundamentally chanigng that person's life. You're not going to remember the photo you saw on Snapchat two hours ago, but you will remember the person you met on Tinder two weeks ago."
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17:12
From Swedish House Mafia to Richard Bruton, we had some unlikely guests turn up.
With robot sex and smart air purifiers and umbrellas telling us it's raining, we saw how tech entrepreneurs don't let weird ideas go untested.
And with the gender-ratio changing invitation to 10,000 women entrepreneurs, we had a very worthy initiative just as the Summit departs our shores.
Come back tomorrow for coverage, and thanks for reading.