First of all let me say to Loic, Géraldine and Stéphanie how sorry I am to have been such a lousy LeWeb Official Blogger ![]()
The night before LeWeb, the incompetent company Hosteur.com who’s hosting my blog decided to change the DNS of it so it was down for the entire LeWeb conference. I really feel like shit about that (excuse my French… but I’m French).
Now about LeWeb, what about LeWeb?
Well I’ve always attended this event and I remember when we were only 150 ultra geek gathering all together to share our passion: Internet.
Now we were 2600 participants from 46 different countries, from every kind of horizons, of course there was a lot of CEO/founders, but also heavy bloggers, CTOs, CMOs, SEOs, VCs, Angels… journalists, studens, politics, even a Queen, all gathering and melting around to share about The Real Time Web. And I must say that I’m extremly impressed by what Loic and Géraldine have accomplished.
In my opinion, LeWeb IS the best well realized event about Internet, this year was simply perfect, and no I’m not kissing asses because I got a free pass this year. Honnestly I’ve been touring a lot in Europe and in USA promoting my startup MyID.is Certified, I’ve been bitching when I was attending an event at $4000 for a pass in a venue that was making networking a pain and where you had for lunch a lousy sandwich under cellophane.
And if you’ve been bitching about LeWeb for any reason, you really should think twice about what was your motivations to attend or not.
The night before LeWeb I was at the Orange/OpenCoffee/Ignite pre-LeWeb party and I’ve met this young entrepreneur of 26 years old that was presenting her company, I asked her if she was coming to LeWeb the next day. Her answer was « sorry, I have too many things to do »… I was like WTF and started making her regrets to have ever came to life
So she came the day after and when I saw her at the end of the day, she thanked me for being an ass with her, because she made so many connections in a single day to market/promote/partnership her company that she told me that next year she’ll be there the entire 2 days.
Now, how do I attend to an event like LeWeb?
Do not ask me who was on stage or what have been talked about, I’ve seen only 2 pannels. Why? because I consider that if you have to listen to what on stage and pretending to be a web entrepreneur you are REALLY wrong.
Don’t miss-understand me, there is 2 kind of people at LeWeb, those listenning to the pannels and those under perfusion near the Nesspresso booth spending the day networking. I’m that kind.
LeWeb’s pannels is an amazing update on what’s currently happening on Internet and I’m gonna watch the recorded pannels that I’ve missed and could maybe teach me something as Loic is smart enougth to provide a live stream of the entire conference but also to let you access it for free after LeWeb.
But if your wanna learn something about what’s gonna be Internet in the future, go to Reboot or Lift that what those events are made for. At LeWeb I’m spending the entire 2 days running around, meeting people, pitching them about my company and try to make some business deals. And to be fair, actually I think spending €1,500 to attend this event is extremly cheap compared to what would have cost me to met all those people and to make deals with them. I use to say that in 2 days at LeWeb I make as much business as I would make in 4/6 regular months. And I’d love to have another event like this one in 6 months, one is not enougth.
So in conclusion,
Yes LeWeb is a must attend event especially if you can’t go to the Valley to US events, How would you get a chance to speak without a meeting to Marissa Mayer, Jack Dorsey, Her majesty queen Rania, NKM, Robert Scoble (hmm no Robert is really easy to get access to)?
And if you need to catch up on what’s happening online and what 2010 is gonna be made of online, just seat and listen.
Cya next year folks, ’cause I’ll be there what ever’s hapenning
Thanks Loic & Géraldin, you rock!!