LeWeb3 in Paris
+8* Event reportsPublished January 1, 2008 at 11:44 am Comments OffDecember for us was surprisingly un-Asian as we attended LeWeb3 conference in Paris, and added a couple of short trips in the neighborhood. It is nice to reconnect with people and lifestyle, sometimes the lack of separation between business and private in Asia, and the over-focus on business vs. art de vivre can be unsettling.
Anyhow, those folks in Paris showed how to combine both in a conference: Web entrepreneurs, star keynotes, startup pitches, cheese and WiFi.
The first day felt very corporate and after the first speech we had a strange feeling:
Why were we sitting in a conference room looking at the giant screen?
As it was much more visible than the fellow on stage. Wouldn’t that be much better to watch them comfortably on the Internet, at a more suitable time? Is the value of a conference in what is said? Obviously, the key there was people, and finding the right ones for us in close to a thousand attendees.
The videos of the event are here.
Nevertheless, we spent a large part of the first day listening to speeches and meeting old friends. At the end of the first day it was still unclear if the conference was really good for us. Key people were difficult to approach – disappearing backstage after their speeches – and random encounters were… random. It became clear that the only way to make interesting contacts was to leverage introductions (“who do you think I should meet here?”) and approach some of the speakers via indirect means.
So the second day was largely spent outside of conference rooms, and in a couple of encounters that turned into hour-long meetings, the conference became a success.
Some ideas we took away from the event:
- There is still a stigma on gaming (from Joi Ito’s presentation)
- Leaders of WoW are better when service (nurses, etc.) rather than MBAs. (from Joi Ito’s presentation)
- Kids are learning how to get 40 people to have a common goal and work together for 2 years to reach it. (from Joi Ito’s presentation)
- Internet is now polluted and human intervention seems needed to filter it (“Artificial Artificial Intelligence”) (from Jason Calacanis’ presentation)
- Vision is about raising your head from your feet, looking forward then looking up (from Philip Stark’s presentation)
Our comments
- Most still make a difference between real world and cyber space, online and so-called “real” friends.
- There were only 2 speakers from Asia (CEO of portal Daum in Korea – who could only say little in his panel, and Joi Ito from Japan who was talking about WoW).
- We keep wondering why no attention is paid to Japan and Korea, the two leading forces in mobile, and world’s #1 and #2 ranked Internet infra by the OECD, nor to China, today the world’s largest mobile market (over 500 million subs) and second largest Internet user base. Is the West a LAN?
- Ideas about human intervention to filter the Internet garbage were interesting, and some are already implemented in Asia (not only for good reasons).
Overall, a very good event – likely the best in Europe for Internet stuff. Now, the style was still quite 1.0… ok, maybe 1.5. It would be nice to see a more international crowd (i.e. not only Westerners), a better feedback channel during the sessions, more interactivity (as there are hundreds of silent smart people in the room), and tools for more efficient networking next time.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.