A group of students with less than a 1st class honours degree from UCD, UCC, NUIG, DCU, UL, NUI Maynooth, are believed to be begging Paddy Cosgrave to consider them for starring roles in next year’s Web Summit. So concerned at Mr. Cosgrave’s warning that he might take the tech wizards dream conference to another location outside Ireland, the students are offering up their very bodies in the cause of saving the country’s reputation.
“We are taking our lead from the homeless hotspots idea which caused some controversy at the SXSW conference in 2012.”, said Fíachra Nílafhiosagam, founder of the group, Students of a lesser degree: WiFi Action Group (SOLD:WAG).
“We want to show the world that this is most definitely not a country for old dudes or city centre venues without 100% robust WiFi for up to 50,000 devices in a concentrated area. A lot of important deals go down at this conference, and it is imperative for this nation that the absolute cream of the world’s population solving important problems for humanity (such as where to sit to get the best sunshine) have the ability to tweet at will. Anything else is just not acceptable to us, and we cannot stand idly by with the threat of the conference leaving these shores.”
Just as the homeless people did at the SXSW conference, the student volunteers propose to become roaming WiFi hotspots and will be easily indentified to Summit attendees.
“We have already come up with the idea of wearing large triangular shaped hats with a D on them. That way, people can identify us from a distance without having to come up close and read a sign on a t-shirt”, said Ninja Rockstar Designer Maireád Clewless.
Asked whether or not Trinity College students could sign up to volunteer, the P.R.O. for the group told us that, “Look, we will consider any and all offers of help. We are an equal opportunities group and will look at the individual merits of all volunteers and do them the courtesy of looking at their CV. A key metric for us is the ability to stand and walk for long-ish periods of time, so we would want to see some evidence of that in the application. For a Trinity student, the walk from front gates to the Pav 3 or 4 times a week, will probably suffice as evidence. It’s no guarantee of being accepted into the group, but it will enable us to get through the applications a lot quicker”.
Interested students should contact the group through their Facebook page. I would post the link, but the WiFi link I’m on isn’t great and the page is timing out. Still, a search for students of a lesser degree should turn it up, I’m sure.
