Daire Hickey, 26, joined from RTE, and brings significant media experience to the Web Summit. He has also written extensively for a range of Irish newspapers including the Irish Independent, Irish Examiner and Irish Times. At RTE and elsewhere, Daire was responsible for bringing numerous world leaders, Hollywood movie stars and more to Ireland. Daire leads our communications and speakers teams.
Richard Greene, 38, joined from Microsoft, and brings more than 15 years of experience in finance and operations to the the Web Summit. Richie worked with Microsoft for over 7 years in a number of finance positions. Richie is a qualified accountant, and has also worked in private equity, insurance and commercial property. Richie leads our finance function.
Sinead Murphy, 29, joined from MCD, and brings almost a decade of experience producing the largest music festivals and concerts in the UK and Ireland. Sinead was head of live events at MCD, prior to which she worked with Live Nation in London. Sinead has been at the helm of almost every major concert and music festival held in the UK and Ireland over the last five years. Sinead leads our events and production teams.
Paddy Blackley, 29, joined from One 51 plc, an investment fund with interests across Europe and China. Paddy loves numbers, trends and metrics, and helped lead systems implementation and data architecture across numerous multinational companies, both in Europe and China. Paddy is also a world class dinghy sailor, and is a former Laser 2 European champion. Paddy leads our data team.
Brónagh Crowley, 28. In previous lives Brónagh gained a law degree, lived in China, studied International Relations, worked for The Irish Human Rights Commission and headed up the digital media arm of a Presidential Campaign. She has also ran her own successful charity events. Brónagh leads our partnerships team.
Aislinn Kelly, 26, joined us from the freelance world, where she worked extensively with startups, helping them develop their brand and online experiences. Prior to this she worked with Jolt Online, an online gaming startup. Aislinn leads the design of all our online and mobile products.
Rob Farhat, 24, arranged and conducted the first ever live orchestral performance of the Daft Punk's greatest hits as head of the Trinity Orchestra. Rob leads our community team, responsible for outreach and engagement with attendees. He also plays a lead role in programming music and art at our events globally.
The Web Summit has helped put Ireland on the map as a global technology hub. Described as "the Rolls Royce of tech events", "Europe's SXSW" and "Davos for geeks", our events bring together the CEOs and founders of hundreds of the world's leading tech companies, as well as the most active technology investors and most influential journalists on the planet. We're building both a technology company and a traditional conference company, and our focus is entirely global.
Daire Hickey Director
Richard Greene Finance Director
Sinead Murphy Production Director
Paddy Blackley Head of Systems & Data
Tony Ennis CTO
Bronagh Crowley Partnerships Manager
Paul McDonnell Startups Manager
Aislinn Kelly Web Designer
Rob Farhat Digital Marketing Manager
Chris Murphy Investors Manager
This October, over 10,000 technology companies, investors and CEO's from some 80+ countries around the world will fly into Dublin for our annual Web Summit. Back in 2011, our entire team fitted on two couches in Paddy and Dave's house. Two years later, we've expanded to 30 people spread across two former architects offices in Ranelagh. The company is focused around five teams: engineering, production, speakers, attendees and partners. We're hiring aggressively, relocating staff from around the world to Ireland, as well as hiring incredible talent from Ireland.
Our team includes entrepreneurs, accountants, management consultants, lawyers, academics, recent graduates and more. We've hired incredible people who've run the largest concerts and festivals in Europe, to engineers who've built their own products, to management consultants who've cut their teeth in far away places like London, to data architects who helped build systems for plastic manufacturers in China and then some more.
In 2010, 500 people attended our events in Ireland. In 2013, that number will grow to 20,000. Already this year we've run events at scale in Berlin, London, New York and San Francisco, as well as close to 100 small events in cities right around the world. The growth has been astounding, but we're only getting started.
