Contents
- Overall feedback
- Without feedback, we have no idea what people think
- 1. People loved making friends
- 2. People are worried the culture will change if we grow the event
- 3. Why Ibiza Super Summit does need to grow
- 4. People want to start the conference later
- 5. People liked Rory Sutherland
- 6. People want the WhatsApp group segmenting
- 7. People actually preferred the pool party
- 8. We were better at helping people mix (but our dinner groups idea didn’t work)
- 9. Our team are excellent 🥰
Did the second Ibiza Super Summit work or not?
The dust has settled on our biggest Ibiza Super Summit yet, and we’ve been going over the feedback. As usual, in this post we’ll share what people told us – the good, the bad and the ugly.
There are two reasons we do this:
- We hope you’ll be more likely to attend our events in future. If you know we’re trying hard to make them great, you might feel more inclined to be part of them.
- You’ll be more likely to give us feedback yourself. If we can prove we pay attention to what you tell us, you’ll know that it’s worth your time to tell us what you think.
Overall feedback…
The Ibiza Super Summit is our annual agency leadership conference in Ibiza. In 2024 we ran it for the second time, this time at the Ibiza Gran Hotel. We welcomed 200 delegates, doubling the size of the previous year. Tickets sold out several months in advance.
This year the overall feedback was very good.
- The average feedback was 8.7 out of 10.
- In 2023 we got 8.9 out of 10, so this year’s score is slightly down – although we did get a bigger response.
- 40% of attendees gave us their feedback. Which is frankly amazing. Most people wrote 100-200 words of really thoughtful feedback. One person wrote 700 words!
Here are the scores:
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 10/10: 25 people
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 9/10: 25 people
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 8/10: 13 people
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 7/10: 5 people
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 6/10: 1 person
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 5/10: N/A
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 4/10: 1 person
⭐️⭐️⭐️ – 3/10: 2 people
⭐️⭐️ – 2/10: N/A
⭐️ – 1/10: N/A
Without feedback, we have no idea what people think
As you can see, overall the feedback was great. We are pleased that people, generally, loved the event.
But it was not perfect! We have things to improve on. And we’d be completely oblivious to them if we didn’t ask for feedback.
Throughout the event, people only tell you how amazing it is.
“You’ve smashed it! This is the best conference ever!”
But you can’t only rely on this feedback. If you don’t do proper feedback, there’s a big room of “meh” that you’re choosing not to enter.
The problem is, it’s painful. The absolute last thing I wanted to do at 9am on Friday 26th September (the day after the conference) was sit (hungover) in my hotel room and send out the feedback form.
I knew, within minutes, it would feel like people are calling our beautiful baby ugly.
But we do it! And we steadily get better! And, more importantly, people know we don’t take them for granted.
Anyway, let’s get into it – here’s what we learned.
1. People loved making friends
Before the Ibiza Super Summit, we asked people what their #1 fear was about this conference. Answer: being on their own.
So no surprise that the top thing people loved about this conference was making friends with other people.
1️⃣ “I enjoyed the types of conversations I had with people – who all have high standards for themselves, without being arseholes. It’s a community of really driven and ambitious people who are all very happy to share advice and learn from each other.”
2️⃣ “I was really nervous about attending this event for a number of reasons. Primarily being in the room of a lot of Alpha types (nightmare). But the reality was that out of 186+ folks, I swear I only met a couple of folks who were not quite my people. The rest, absolute pleasure to talk to – like-minded and funny. I’ve made a lot of great new contacts and hopefully these turn into great friendships too.”
3️⃣ “The Agency Hackers team are BRILLIANT and need to take credit for the tone, atmosphere and culture of the trip, where 99.9% of people I met were lovely – good fun / humble / curious”
All of this is great because it’s the whole idea of the conference.
I often think how one day, when you were little, you and your friends went out to play together for the last time. And nobody realised. As you get older it get hard to make new friends. You meet likeminded pals at conferences, but then you leave and never see them again.
But at Ibiza Super Summit, people do actually make lasting friendships.
People keep in touch, meet up with each other, and often go on holiday again as a group. They also hold each other accountable throughout the year.
One agency owner said:
“In Ibiza, [one person] made me promise from a sun lounger to get off my ass and contact my American clients and now next week I’ll be in NY with 13 meetings. Ta darlin’ for the push!”
One month later she posted in the WhatsApp group how she won a huge hotel chain – who paid her for the year up front. As I type this, there’s a whole group of people who are going on a skiing holiday together because they met in Ibiza.
2. People are worried the culture will change if we grow the event
People keep saying they’re worried the culture will change if the Ibiza Super Summit grows.
In 2023 we had 100 attendees. In 2024 we had 200 attendees. I’ve been open about the fact that in 2025 I want to get 400 attendees, and people are concerned this will harm the event.
People said as much in the feedback:
- “I’m nervous about the event being 400 people, with 200 there were still so many people I didn’t chat to!”
- Somebody else said: “Keep it is intimate as you can. If you are planning to take on Web Summit, I don’t think that’s a good thing. The intimacy of the thing is part of the appeal.”
- Another: “I would caution about doubling the size of the event – grow it organically. The groups that are forming should be allowed to grow and include other people. I fear that if there is another 200 people then these groups will close off to new people and go and do their own thing they did last year.”
One person even came to our office as kind of community envoy, delivering the plea: don’t make it bigger, please!
Now, I love that people feel invested in the Ibiza Super Summit. And one thing we famously always do with Agency Hackers is listen to people – hence posts like this.
So why am I not necessarily taking peoples advice on this? Don’t mess with a winning formula, Ian!
There are two reasons:
1) I don’t think making it bigger will harm the culture.
2) The event has to grow to survive.
Let’s take the first one.
People worry that adding more people will make Ibiza Super Summit feels different, corporate, and less intimate:
“For me, 200 was a great number. 400 will change the vibe a lot, make it less intimate, more random in networking etc. It’ll feel more like a big corporate function.”
But here’s what I think people are missing: the reason it’s intimate and “un-corporate” now is because we have made it that way. The atmosphere that people like is down to deliberate choices we make.
It’s not like the default vibe of a 200 person business event is fun and cosy. We do stuff to make it that way. And we plan to keep doing that stuff as the event gets a bit bigger.
For example:
- Our audience won’t change. Ibiza Super Summit is not going to be suddenly full of ‘wrong-uns’. The thing people like about our events are the people: they’re likeable, funny, but also mature and professional. There’s also a lot of women. It’s been like this since we started in 2017. Because we market Ibiza Super Summit to our existing audience, the quality of attendee will remain high.
- Agency Hackers has a certain tone and house style. We communicate with people quite a lot in the run-up to our Ibiza conference. The friendly house style sets expectations and keeps the tone ‘non-corporate’.
- We make our events playful ( but not gratuitously whimsical). There are lots of small things we do (smiling on stage, making jokes, teasing attendees) that are designed to break the ice and let people know it’s ok to let their guard down.
What I’m saying is: I know we are guilty of playing the clown that drove their car into the goldmine sometimes. But we do know what we’re doing with the culture of our community.
3. Why Ibiza Super Summit does need to grow
Ok, but why does it need to grow?
My vision is that the Ibiza Super Summit becomes an iconic place where the agency community gathers each year.
At the moment people see the event in their feeds for a couple of weeks every year. But I want it to have a momentum of its own. I want it to become a fixture on the calendar, like the Cannes Festival or Burning Man.
I want it to be an event that runs for 50 years; an event that’s difficult to imagine not happening.
Sure, you might not come every year. But it’s always there for you when you need an excuse to make new friends, meet up with old faces, and generally escape the way you’re not supposed otherwise be able to when you run a business and you’re in 40s, 50s or 60s.
If we keep it the same size, I don’t think it will be here in 2028. It will probably just run for three or four more years and then it will lose its magic.
- If it doesn’t grow, other people will copy the event.
- If it doesn’t grow, it will lose its novelty.
- If it doesn’t grow, it will eventually become “the same old faces”.
I don’t want growth for the sake of growth. But we must achieve a certain scale where this event has a gravity of its own.
100 or 200 people is not that size.
In fact, it’s actually quite a difficult size to be! You’re too big to get way with putting on something that’s scrappy and DIY, but you’re also too small to invest in really decent production and huge keynote speakers.
The lowest score we got this year (3/10) was from somebody who felt parts of the event had a “DIY feel”.
This person was kind enough to leave their name, so I had a chat to them. They were really helpful. They run an event agency themselves, so they could see straight away all the areas we’re weak on. They gave me some good advice.
But going forward there are things we need to be slicker on – better production, a bigger team on the ground. Some of these things, quite frankly, we just need to get better at. But some of them require us to grow a bit so we can invest a bit more.
4. People want to start the conference later
The conference starts at 9.30am, and some people said they think we should start it later.
“With the culture of ibiza being a general evening/night one I would shift the start time of the conference to adapt to this. Starting at say, 11am-6/7pm would allow those that have been out socialising to rejuvenate”
We might adjust the time on the second day to start a little bit later – but I’m wary of letting the party tail wag the conference dog.
Ultimately, it’s a conference first and foremost. So if you do decide to stay out all night on the first night of the event, that’s a choice you need to live with. 🙂
5. People liked Rory Sutherland
Rory Sutherland was a huge hit.
But twenty minutes into Rory’s talk I thought: “How are we doing for time?” I discreetly opened the slides he’d emailed me. I noticed we were on slide 4… of 40. We only had 45 minutes scheduled for him, including Q&A.
So I messaged our attendees on WhatsApp. “I will let Rory run over slightly – I’m watching you guys to see when you’ve had enough.”
People gave me various nods to indicate: ‘No, we have not had enough. Let him continue’.
Rory was also really generous with his time. He was the dictionary-definition of somebody “holding court” throughout the event. People pulled up a chair to hear him hold forth.
6. People want the WhatsApp group segmenting
One of the staples of Ibiza Super Summit is its WhatsApp group. It gets people excited in the build-up to the conference, and it’s how we communicate with people on the island.
Most folks mute the chat and dip in and out. It’s a space to get to know each other, and the tone of the group is very casual and light-hearted. But a lot of people find it overwhelming.
Personally I love it, and I think it’s a big part of the event. It’s here to stay. I don’t think it would work on a different platform.
But in future we’ll have a separate one for official communications about the conference.
“The WhatsApp group is a lot – it would be good to have a community and then have a thread that’s just for info”
7. People actually preferred the pool party
Originally, one of the set pieces of the Ibiza Super Summit is the boat party that rounds off the conference. We all get on a boat, enjoy some drinks and food, and stop for a swim in the sea.
But this year we had a problem – it was too windy to sail. Also, we only had eight hours notice – so this was really stressful.
What would we do instead? We had 200 people looking forward to this. We finish the second day of the conference early to give people time to change for the boat. We couldn’t just have nothing. Without something else to offer people, not only would we have a huge gap in our schedule – the conference would fizzle out.
Luckily, one of our delegates Ash (who lives on the island) helped us secure another venue – a bar, club and restaurant in the Ibizan countryside, with a beautiful pool surrounded by flowers and orange trees.
People were very appreciative we pulled this off at such short notice, and we got a lot of comments that this worked better than the boat party.
“The pool party was so much better than a boat party. Everybody had the ability to come and go as they needed, rather than being stuck to specific times” – Anonymous
“Pool party worked really well and felt like that might have been better than the boat would have” – Laura Holyer
8. We were better at helping people mix (but our dinner groups idea didn’t work)
At the first Ibiza Super Summit we didn’t curate the evenings at all. People could sort themselves out!
But we heard that people wanted help finding people to snap into groups with. So we tried hard to make sure nobody felt left out.
Largely this did work:
1️⃣ “It was really helpful to have pre-dinner drinks and all the soft stuff you did to help people find others to hang out with throughout.”
2️⃣ “The AH team made sure that no one was stood alone and moved people in to groups, making introductions and looking after everyone.”
3️⃣ “I was nervous about attending this event… but you made it easier than it ever has been in my life because of all of the amazing people, talks and opportunities you put on.”
4️⃣ “It was clear a great deal of thought had gone in to ensuring people had the opportunity to mix and not feel left out.” – Amy Williamson
One idea we had was to create dinner groups; we grouped people together, and asked them to arrange to have dinner together one evening.
This looked set to work. People were in neat groups, and restaurant bookings had been made. But in the end, these largely didn’t happen. Why? Because we had to replace the boat party with a pool party. This meant that everybody ended up in a completely different location than they’d anticipated – which meant that dinner plans fell apart.
One surprising comment: one delegate came to the conference, but felt too anxious to attend the “work” bit. We didn’t know about this, otherwise I do feel there’s a lot we could have done to help them. So it’s a shame, and I feel bad for them.
This person did kindly put their name, so I emailed them to say sorry. (Side note: if you leave a low score, it’s nice if you put your name because it helps to be able to contact you for extra context.) They told me they were going through a bad time and didn’t feel it wasn’t our fault, but still – maybe we’ll be more explicit next year about what to do if you don’t feel in a good place so we can help people.
9. Our team are excellent 🥰
The final thing was that I got a lot of feedback on how good our team are.
We brought our full team out this year, and they were specifically briefed to chat to people who looked like they need a bit of help to get involved. They did a great job It was nice to see people recognise this:
1️⃣ “The Agency Hackers team are BRILLIANT and need to take credit for the tone, atmosphere and culture of the trip, where 99.9% of people I met were lovely – good fun / humble / curious.”
2️⃣ “Spending time hanging out with the agency hackers crew was one of my favourite bits – you’re a great group, super fun to be around and it really made the event!”
Want to come next year?
I hope this gives you a flavour of how we run the Ibiza Super Summit, and where we are planning to take it.
The next event is September 24th & 25th 2025, and it’s in Santa Eulalia. It’s at a beautiful venue called Palácio de Congressos, which has 12 breakout rooms, a big theatre, and it opens up into the forest so it feels really calm and spacious.
We have sold 25% of the tickets after just a month being on sale – so if you’d like to grab yours and the you can jump on the flights and book your hotel etc, now is your chance!
Get your tickets here: www.agencyhackers.com/ibiza
We’d love to have you there!
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