Many of you may have wanted to join Southeast Asia's largest tech gathering on July 11-13 in Hong Kong - that is none other than RISE, Web Summit's flagship event in Asia which this year attracted over 14,000 attendees from more than 90 different countries. If you wanted to make it over there but couldn't, we've got you covered. The organizers of RISE have kindly sent us a roundup of the event's highlights so that even if you weren't there, you can feel almost as if you were - and get the inside scoop on what everyone else experienced, in case it might interest you to join next year's summit (wink, wink). Read on to find out more about some of the event's biggest personalities and biggest press conference announcements to be released over the 3-day event in Hong Kong.

1. "Fire the miserable people" One of tech's biggest personalities - and one of the main highlights at RISE was the Belarus-born CEO of Vaynermedia, media entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk, who got emotional as he told RISE attendees the importance of EQ on Centre Stage. Standing room only. Read excerpts from his speech here. 2. 14,281 attendees, 500+ startups, 240 speakers RISE welcomed 14,281 attendees from 90 countries to Hong Kong. During the Night Summit portion of the event, participants explored Hong Kong’s best bars and cultural hotspots. See anyone you know? 3. Stripe announced global partnership with Alipay and WeChat Pay One day ahead of RISE on June 10, Stripe Co-Founder and President John Collison made their big reveal about how Stripe will be setting up operations in Hong Kong following its new global partnership with Alipay and WeChat Pay. 4. "We wanted to take a 114 year old newspaper into the digital age" The Co-Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of Alibaba Group, Joe Tsai, joined Gary Liu, CEO of the South China Morning Post, onstage to discuss how to transform a century-old newspaper into a 21st-century media company. Watch the talk in full. 5. Catch up on what you missed RISE speakers included leaders from Facebook, Alibaba Group, WeChat, Salesforce and Dianrong, and executives from GoDaddy, 9GAG, Mazda and Sogou. Check out what they had to say on RISE's live stream. (Full schedule of the 3-day event here.) Interested to join RISE next year? Sign up for 2 for 1 tickets for RISE 2018. Facts and Figures: You can find all the facts and figures about RISE 2017 in this post here PITCH: The winner of RISE's PITCH competition was Zap Zap Math, congrats to Henry and the team! Women in Tech: Thanks in part to RISE's Commitment to Change programme, a whopping 40.1% of the attendees at RISE were female! Polling: RISE had a number of polls that attendees took part in over the course of the three days; the polls found that: Sexism and Ageism are the biggest problem in tech Job loses created by Artificial Intelligence will be significant and soon. Flickr: Photo-lovers, check out RISE's Flickr page here for photos of the event

We've got more coverage of RISE and all the big news to come out of RISE. Stay tuned!

About RISE Conference Brought to Asia by the organizers of Websummit, RISE currently holds the title of the largest and most well-attended startup conference in Southeast Asia. Hosted annually in Hong Kong & targeting 15,000 attendees this year, it also features a Night Summit with “legendary networking” on the streets of Hong Kong after dark. It is also well-known for its Alpha packages targeting startups and some great discounts for women attendees to boost women in tech.

Note from the organizers: As of this year (2017) RISE is no longer a singular conference but rather home to many independent conferences.  Each with its own stage, schedule, exhibition area, workshops and networking events. For example, digital marketers attended PandaConf as their conference within RISE and SaaS will also be at SaaS Monster conference within RISE.  These conferences alone constitute the largest global gathering in the industries.  Attendees gained access to many conferences hosted within RISE, and were able to learn about every major industry that involves technology. (Credit: RISE Conference)