It Was the Best of Times, It Was The Worst of Times, It Was Le Web
So, what to make of this year’s Le Web conference in Paris? The problems of the event have gathered momentum around the web; namely the lack of heat in the conference centre on the first day; the minute portions of food served by people with split second accurate stop watches; and after last years pretty acceptable level, the return of unpredictable levels of connectivity (especially if you were reliant on Wi-fi and not the ethernet cables in the front few rows). From the coverage and twitters you’d think these three issues did much to kill the buzz of the fifth year of Loic le Meur’s Conference.
But…
There was a huge cross section of people from all areas of the internet ecosystem, from all around the globe – somewhere north of 1700 delegates as I understand. The number of meetings, deals and handshakes going on outside the main auditorium and presentations I suspect was very high – you put smart people in a room together and things happen. Put a lot of smart people in the room and a lot of things will start to happen.
Certainly that was my experience of Le Web. I had two meetings pre-arranged with people who would be there, to discuss new projects. I made countless one on one presentations of some new products from other projects, and spoke to a number of companies interested in promoting themselves alongside said projects. But there’s no link-bait headlines in “deal done quietly in the middle of a room full of other deals going on.” On top of that the number of social meetings and catching up with people from around the world was great – very little beats using the IRL API.
That was where the value of Le Web was for me, and as usual it was exceptional value.
Le Meur has acknowledge the three issues most people are writing about on Twitter – the heater in the hall broke for day one, Swisscom let them down in terms of promises/deliverables on the connectivity, and the caterers had to be changed as the event location was changed. Inconvenient, yes, definitely. Event destroying? No, and certainly not compared to Le Web 2006. It will be interesting to read the feedback from the organisers on the suppliers answers to all these problems, assuming that these are made public over the next few months.
What is more worrying to me is the schedule of speakers. For a European conference, to have the first five speakers on stage coming from US based companies seemed to send the wrong message, especially as one of those messages was “European companies need to be more visible.” I also felt that Helen Fisher’s talk on Love, which in a previous form had been the catalyst for the choice of “Love” as the Le Web topic, should have been moved to be the Keynote Presentation. While we all talk about the social scene being the main reason for a conference, the presentations can make a huge difference to the perception.
Ultimately none of the presentations, the start-up demos, or evening events generated an extreme emotion in me. Previous Le Web’s have lifted me to dizzy heights (and depressing depths), but not this year. Apart from two gems, all I felt was “meh” from the official program. Where Le Web wins is the people it attracts and meshes together throughout the two day event – and a lot of that is down to Le Meur himself.
Add up all the parts and Le Web is still the flag bearer of European Conferences, offering a breadth that no other offers. But it can’t sit back and rest, especially with a recession and budgets for 2009 travel, conference and sponsorships due to take a lot of pain. Rather like 2006, Le Web needs to take a careful look and re-invent itself yet again. I’ve no doubt that it will, and I’ll be back in Paris in 2009.
Disclosure: I was one of the speakers at Le Web, and as such my conference ticket and hotel was paid for by Le Web.
December 11, 2008; Le Web 2008;
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- Paris and LeWeb3 Already A Success
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[...] freezing, being constantly hungry, but very happy with especially one thing: opportunities! As Ewan Spance brings it to the point, LeWeb is the paradise for getting yourself an investor. The receipt: just [...]
[...] freezing, being constantly hungry, but very happy with especially one thing: opportunities! As Ewan Spance brings it to the point, LeWeb is the paradise for getting yourself an investor. The receipt: just [...]
[...] freezing, being constantly hungry, but very happy with especially one thing: opportunities! As Ewan Spance brings it to the point, LeWeb is the paradise for getting yourself an investor. The receipt: just [...]
[...] I will be attending Le Web as an ‘official blogger’; being Scottish I didn’t complain about the heating last year although a nice hot cup of Le Web supplied tea helped; Loic once bought me a coffee in San [...]