Grab Your TechCrunch Discount To Web Summit In October

With our own Eric Eldon and Alexia Tsotsis speaking at Dublin Web Summit in October, it would be remiss of us not to mention the event, which also runs just before the so-called ‘Davos for Geeks’ event known as F.ounders. TechCrunch Readers can use the special voucher code DWS12TC here to purchase 2 tickets for the price of 1.

This year DWS has (refreshingly for tech events) paid particular attention to women entrepreneur speakers, with an all-women list published just yesterday which includes the controversial TED speaker Cindy Gallop, founder of MakeLoveNotPorn, Soraya Dorabi, co-founder of Foospotting and Science speaker / technologist Debbie Berebichez.

The move ignited some controversy over the issue of whether it is right to engage in this kind of ‘affirmative action’, but judging from the line-up announced today there will be plenty of men amongst the 200 or so speakers in Dublin, October 16-17, including Ben Milne of Dwolla, Joe Fernandez of Klout and Jan Rezab of Social Bakers. So guys – and I mean guys – chill out maybe.

Hot on the heels of the spectacularly staged Le Web London in June, DWS will have to work hard to pull out the stops in October, but then again they are aiming for 3,000 attendees from across Europe. They’ll also be a running a developer conference alongside, called Node Dublin, a Node.js conference with its own two day schedule of speakers and parties.

This year once again DWS features the invite-only, parallel, VIP event F.ounders, which consists of 150 hand-picked early stage founders who are already in high-growth mode. But there is a new twist, with a side-event called START, which will be for 50-60 founders who’ve raised Seed investment and are just starting out. To apply email Peter[@]websummit.net.

Given that DWS has worked with the Mayor of Dublin to block off entire streets for the evening events, featuring bands and various corporate parties, one wonders if this won’t turn into more of a SXSW-style event in the future. Then again it’s Dublin in October, so Austin’s weather will be hard to match…