After years of criticism when held on Irish shores the annual Web Summit got off to th worst possible start in Lisbon last night, when ironically the venue’s wifi cut out on stage just as the show began.
The rather unsuspecting technical error occurred when the summit’s founder Paddy Cosgrave was about to give a live demonstration to begin the show.
Mr Cosgrave who caused controversy last year by pulling the summit from Ireland after slamming the country’s poor broadband service, was left rather red faced when the technical fault occurred.
However rather than highlight the incident Mr Cosgrave decided to play it down saying: “I don’t think it’s working.” “Let’s not worry about that. We’ll try again later.”
Although the Portuguese organisers refused to blame the WiFi but instead claimed the initial demonstration failed because of wifi but because of “a glitch in Paddy’s phone”.