Donkeys and clowns, castle settings and fine dining are all part of the action at FunConf, the latest in a line of Irish tech conferences that are attracting the best and brightest to speak and hear about "the bleeding edge of tech", writes JOANNE HUNT
WE’VE ALL BEEN there. Conferences at swirly-carpeted hotels with bad coffee, worse carvery and power ballads on loop. After two days of over-long presentations in dimly lit rooms, you can lose the will to live.
But talking to Paul Campbell, co-founder of FunConf, one of a gaggle of new tech conferences making Ireland a Mecca for high-profile speakers and delegates alike, it’s clear there is another way.
Aimed at those “passionate about innovation, technology and web start-ups”, his anecdote about last year’s event entails a double decker bus, a DeLorean and a donkey. This isn’t your average tech conference.
A coder with his own web applications business, Campbell got the idea for FunConf while attending conferences in San Francisco and Berlin. Pairing up with Eamon Leonard, founder of Orchestra, the software company acquired by San Francisco-based Engine Yard last year, he says, “I didn’t want to do something really stuffy. It had to be different.”
Inspired as much by the form of the event as its function, Campbell and Leonard had a simple pitch to persuade their tech idols to come. Michael Lopp, author of the tech workplace bible Managing Humans was top of the list.
“I sent him an email saying, ‘are you interested in coming to Ireland to drink Guinness and chat and travel around on a bus?’” says Campbell. “His reply came an hour later saying, ‘that would be lovely’. That started it off.”
They also bagged Joe Stump, a former lead developer at digg.com. When Stump tweeted that he couldnt wait for FunConf, Amazon.comchief technology officer Werner Vogels, replied to say the trip sounded tempting. He came too.
For Campbell, a self-confessed foodie, “craftin” the delegate experience, complete with fine dining and cool venues is key. He describes Heston Blumenthal as one of his idols.
“What I’m trying to do is take that attitude and that inventiveness and kind of creativity and put it into the creation of an overall experience,” he says of his conference approach.
While Funconf 2010 included grub at trendy Le Guileton and an after-party at the Gravity Bar, the mystery around last year’s event was part of its appeal.
“We didn’t tell them what was going to happen or who was going to be there,” says Campbell. “There was literally a paragraph on the website saying, ‘we’re having a conference in a castle, we’ll put you up in one of these hotels, tickets are €750’. That was it.”
Kicking off with breakfast at up-market Thornton’s followed by a double-decker bus ride to Lismore Castle; delegates were greeted by a pig on a spit. Two hours of short presentations in the castle’s gallery the next day, where the returning Werner Vogels gave “the presentation that got him hired at Amazon”, had attendees in thrall.
“The idea is that at Funconf, you are not going to be bored,” says Campbell. “You are not going to have to buy your own tea or coffee or have to find somewhere to go for dinner. You are going to be with us and we’re going to make sure you have a good time.”
While Funconf is happening again this year, Campbell, along with Tapadoo founder Dermot Daly, is launching a new conference, Úll (Irish for apple). The three-day event beginning April 27th will cover all the aspects of building, designing and marketing apps.
Meeting at the National Digital Research Centre’s LaunchPad programme, the pair bonded over a shared love of food. Ross Lewis from Michelin-starred restaurant Chapter 1 is designing the menu for Úll.
“We told him that programmers typically eat bacon and coffee, so he came back with the perfect marriage of pork, apple and coffee, he’s done an amazing menu,” says Daly.
While venues include the Odessa Club and the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, it’s not all style over substance. Heavyweights from the world of Apple punditry, including Jim Dalrymple of blog Loop Insight and Horace Dediu, the writer of Apple market analysis blog Asymco, are booked to speak.
But with great food, cool venues and built-in sightseeing between sessions, are these ‘conferences’ really just a bunch of coders wanting to go on holiday together, a sort of tech tourism? “The appeal of visiting a new city is very high for me when I go to a conference,” admits Campbell. But there’s more to it, he says.
There is also the idea of wanting to be on the bleeding edge of tech. Every time I go to a conference, I know the things I need to be working on or learning about.”
Paddy Cosgrave however, whose Dublin Web Summit and F.ounders events have attracted a galaxy of tech stars to Dublin, including the founders of Twitter, Skype, Bebo and Angry Birds, is surely the godfather of Ireland's burgeoning tech conference scene. He thinks these events are far more than just a coder jolly.
“Computer code can’t replace the need for business people to meet each other,” he says. “As efficient as Linkedin has made the world, people still need to meet.”
The launch party for Cosgrave’s next Dublin Web Summit takes place in Café en Seine next Tuesday. He says the number of international attendees is growing.
While Enterprise Ireland is sponsoring Úll, and the engagement of state agencies with such conferences has grown, Cosgrave thinks it still falls short of the mark.
“The most important technology journalists from all over the world will be in Ireland again in October and that provides an incredible opportunity for Enterprise Ireland to connect their start-ups with journalists and bloggers who are the biggest influencers on the planet,” he says.
He’s clearly frustrated by what he sees as their inability to recognise the gift horse that these conferences bring.
“Conferences have life cycles of about a decade, and right now, there is no other single magnet to attract world class start-ups into Dublin,” he says. “It’s an opportunity of incredible magnitude for the Irish government to attract the hottest and most promising start-ups . . . and to think that I’m paying money to State agencies that are not grasping the opportunity, I find that incredible. I find that infuriating.”
Cosgrave believes there is scope for an even greater number of tech conferences in Dublin, that could further cement its attraction for a-grade visitors.
“The more events like that and like the Dublin Web Summit in Ireland the better. We can’t just rely on the IDA and Enterprise Ireland to market Ireland as a destination.”
The idea is that at Funconf, you are not going to be bored . . . You are going to be with us and we’re going to make sure you have a good time
