STHLM TECH Fest

I completely agree with the other reviews so far! I luckily was given a free pass to this thing, but if I had actually paid for this event I would’ve been pretty annoyed at how little I received for my money. Unluckily, my free pass was one of the «free women’s passes» given out to encourage female attendees to come. During the show they decided to announce that it was accidentally given out illegally (due to discrimination laws). I felt like I stuck out like a sore thumb against all the paid for black badges. I was walking around that second half like I had the «scarlet letter» pass and I would be judged as an advantageous freeloading female. Lets just say it was pretty distasteful!
I’m really not sure what the VIP section was all about. My poor little red pass didn’t allow me through that doorway. I don’t really think I was missing anything there though. We all kinda laughed looking in at the empty space filled with standing bar tables and nothing else.
I do have to mention how displeased I was at the American «Apple Dumpling Gang» who put this thing together. They made all Americans look really stupid and insensitive that day. WTF! It’s like they didn’t even bother to involve a Swede in the process of making a Swedish event! Why?! Where was the free coffee?! Do you know Sweden at allllll? Just spit in their face why don’t you? LOL! Also, why didn’t they stick to the schedule and then blame it on being American?! Don’t say that all Americans don’t stick to schedules. That is totally and comply untrue. Take some accountability for yourself. It’s even more unfortunate because Swedes culturally ESPECIALLY like order and schedules… and you like totes ruined everyones day! Ughhh. So insensitive. =P
The strangely laid out «trade-​show» type of room was crowded, had bad flow and didn’t really have that much interesting stuff to look at. For «THE» Stockholm Tech Fest of the year… it was pretty lame. Where were the fun freebies, the heated debates, the cool new gadgets, services and games to play with? There was nothing entertaining or interactive to this presentation at all. Did they hire an experiential designer, planner and marketing team to throw this thing? I’m guessing that they did not. People like me have a profession for a reason. Incredibly unprofessional presentation. The venue alone was not conducive to any interaction for a topic of this magnitude. This thing they threw wasn’t really a «fest», was it? The «after party» was a fricken drink in the hallway for crying out loud! Everything else boiled down to a few speeches and interviews and not much else. Total let down.
The only reason I gave it two stars is because I liked some of the info from some of the presentations and I don’t want to doo doo all over the presenters. They had nothing to do with how poorly this all was set up. I really hope if they decide to do this again next year that they get some professional help.

Although I don’t actually have any connection to the tech world, I find myself attending Stockholm tech events time after time, for work or for fun. It is a fun gang of people, very social and international, and I’ve made a lot of friends and acquaintances.
But for what was supposed to be THE tech event of the year, Sthlm Tech Fest was surprisingly disappointing.
Torrential rain poured outside, and it was nice to come inside at the conference centre and begin a day of mingling and learning with tech people. But the event was so remarkably disorganized!
When I arrived I tried to register and get my name badge, but it took a while as the workers there seemed quite stressed and there were no lines to be seen, just a cluster. I was supposed to have a VIP pass, but the man informed me that they had run out of the actual passes that said VIP, so he just wrote it with a marker on my pass.
I then went to leave my things in the coat check, but that too proved to be a challenge.
«We ran out of numbers, so you’ll have to come back in 20 minutes or so,» the people said.
Excuse me? An event which was supposed to have 6,000 attendees — and didn’t even have that many — wasn’t prepared for nearly as many people as they were trying to attract? On a day of pouring rain we were expected to carry around our dripping coats and umbrellas until someone left and opened up space for our items?
Eventually they opened up an additional coat check area — I don’t know what the problem was with doing that in the first place — and I was able to leave my items.
The next challenge was finding coffee. If you have ever attended any event in Sweden, you know there will be coffee. And probably cakes. There will be least two rounds of fika. But no, not here. Coffee was only available in the VIP room — exclusively for speakers and VIPS — and everyone else was turned away. And when I entered the VIP room, I discovered the coffee was all gone, and they were ‘hopefully working on filling it up soon’.
The organizer tried to get more women involved by letting women pay whatever price they wanted — which is technically illegal as it is gender discrimination against men — but said women-​only cheap badges were also bright red, as opposed to all the normal black badges. Why would they want to single out the women who paid less like that, I wonder? What was the point?
As for those who did pay, tickets were 1,000 kr and more. For 1,000kr, one would think that there would be free lunch (or at least coffee!). And lunch was free — if you stood in line and signed up for a trial service from IBM. Otherwise you even had to pay for lunch at one of the food trucks, which was ‘sponsored by iZettle’. Wait, how is it sponsored if you still have to pay for it???
The wifi network was frequently overloaded, and when they tried to have a speaker onstage via video call it failed and they had to ask audience members to get off the wifi network. Talk about embarrassing tech problems at a tech fest.
Many of the moderators seemed unprepared and babbled on seemingly without purpose, and some of the events were simply too long. Some of the moderators — and speakers — were plain rude at times.
Hopefully the event will get better. But for now, if you want to get involved in the Stockholm tech world, I would recommend setting your sights on Startup Day or Sting Day, not the Tech Fest.