RIO DE JANEIRO

I landed here Monday and I took off Friday, and it’s fair to ask how much I ever arrived in this city during my trip for Web Summit Rio. As in, the amount of time I spent in any public space outdoors could probably be measured in minutes.

Unlike my journey to Rio last year, when I had an entire day free before Web Summit events and the morning through early afternoon open the day after the conference wrapped up, I might as well have parachuted in this year.

And then the difficulty of getting around this city limited any remaining sightseeing to the view through car or van windows or from one event venue or another.

I blame most of that on Rio traffic on the streets and highways that seem the only feasible way to get from the beach-adjacent conference hotel to anywhere else. Which here meant taking absurdly cheap Uber rides every time outside morning and evening shuttle-van commutes between the hotel and the Riocentro convention center.

Some of those vans got an extra boost in form of an escort by police officers on motorcycles who held up traffic at merge lanes–a further isolation of conference speakers from the rest of the city that didn’t seem to save much time in practice.

Rio does have a modest metro subway and light rail system, but they didn’t go near any of this year’s conference locations. As for the enormous bus network that includes miles of BRT-only lanes: Sorry, no. Google Maps never suggested a bus routing remotely time-competitive with hailing an Uber, as if I ever could have enlisted fellow conference attendees in a transit adventure the way I have for Web Summit’s Lisbon and Toronto conferences.

(Rio’s reputation for crime, fair or not, was not absent from these transportation considerations. Also worth stating: Not a single word of this post about conference-subsidized travel should be read as entitling me to any sympathy for this first-world problem.)

But I still appreciated getting to see more of Rio this time even if it had to involve a windshield perspective.

And never more so than Tuesday night, when an invitation to a party being hosted by friends of friends–perhaps friends of friends of friends–led to an Uber ride up increasingly narrow and winding streets up a steep grade through neighborhoods we did not remotely recognize before we realized we’d gotten the wrong address, corrected the error, and made our way to an Airbnb nestled atop the folds of a rocky hilltop that could have figured in a Brazilian version of Entourage.

The view from that rock-star retreat of glittering high-rises in Barra de Tijuca, the harbor beyond and the hills above was utterly magnificent–including a look at the Southern Cross without buildings in the way–and it reminded me to try to see a little more of the city the next time.

https://robpegoraro.com/2024/04/19/seeing-a-city-from-inside-a-conference-bubble/

#Brasil #Brazil #conference #firstWorldProblem #RioDeJaneiro #Riocentro #traffic #Uber #WebSummit #WebSummitRio