Andrew Work, from NexChange, speaks to James McCann, the media manager of RISE Web Summit, in RISE 2017 Hong Kong.
Web Summit started as a simple idea in 2010: connect the technology community with all industries, both old and new. It seemed to resonate. Web Summit has grown to become the “largest technology conference in the world”.
Transcript:
NEXCHANGE:
Hi, I’m Andrew Work with NexChange. We’re at RISE in Hong Kong and it is going off in large part due to the efforts of this man and his RISE team from Ireland. This is James McCann. He’s a media manager. All the speakers know him because you make sure that we get in here, you make sure that we’re on stage when and where we’re supposed to be. James you’re the man. Tell me what is special about RISE Hong Kong this year?
JAMES MCCANN:
Well look I think the speakers made at this year. We have over 200 speakers from 67 different countries but I mean in terms of like the main players this year, we had Joe Tsai, co-founder of Alibaba, Min-Liang Tan, Razer. We had Gary Vaynerchuk this year. Gary was our Web Summit there back in November, really blew the house down with his keynote, as he’s very well
famous for it.
NEXCHANGE:
I saw that I tried to get into the Gary Vaynerchuk and then it was sold out and then I had an overflow and I couldn’t get it now and that was crazy.
JAMES MCCANN:
But this was the first time I think he’s been to Asia to speak to people and obviously kind of present and the demand is huge from out here as well which is great.
NEXCHANGE:
Fantastic and so what’s next for RISE?
JAMES MCCANN:
I suppose our next event is Web Summit and taking place in November and Lisbon. This year we’re bringing about 60,000 attendees from right around the world. In terms of speakers, obviously we’re going to have all the major CEOs from all your major companies like Facebook, Twitter, but also I think the most important thing with Web Summit this year is the forum so the forum is going to be at the new introductions. It’s the first time we’re doing it. We’re bringing together world leaders, politicians, academics, economists, policymakers, to talk about the real
issues that the tech is is disrupting so everything obviously from AI and robotics and what’s that going to do to people’s jobs and what does that look like? Is politicians thinking about this? Is this an issue our economist thinking about this? So that’s really what we’re going to be doing with the forum so bring all these world leaders together, trying to solve the the problems of the world and all taking part of Web Summit.
NEXCHANGE:
All right. Well congratulations. Sounds like great things are happening and James McCann from RISE and Web Summit. I’m Andrew Work for NexChange at the RISE event in Hong Kong 2017.