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Freezing cold, no Internet, boring: it's a French web 2.0 conference
- gruseom 18y agoUpmodded for this splendid morsel of malicious British wit: That's right — LeWeb was entirely without the web. Which I suppose makes it simply "Le".
- ErrantX 18y agoI do love our humor. Classic quote #2: "skipped out to the car park where a Finnish startup had had the remarkable foresight to install a functioning sauna"
- greyman 18y agoGood writing, but the mutual animosity between France and Britain is itself funny, if not a bit childish. No flame, but my impression is that both countries lost their past influence and glory, but none of them would admit that. ;-)
- ErrantX 18y agoI think definitely these so called "conferences" are almost a waste of time.. no one is really that interested in the keynotes any more because most of the interesting people blog it all anyway.. right? It's all about networking now: and the guys right - why not do it in a Sauna whilst getting drunk! Your right we lost it... 30 years ago it would have been like that but now.. meh :(
- xiaoma 18y agoI've found TED to be an incredible source of entertainment. I've learned quite a bit from it, too. If I could ever go in person, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
- michaelneale 18y agoI think there is a difference - the British do recognise it through satire and humour - "taking the piss" out of themselves - I haven't observed that in the French (but perhaps it does exist, just not as obvious to the rest of the world).
- cabalamat 18y agoThis bit's good too: Day one's keynote firesider was Paulo Coelho — the favourite author of that girl you met on the first day of university who spent her gap year in Thailand and like totally found herself. "Everyone has something interesting to say," Coelho said at one point, clearly showing that he's never had a conversation with one of his fans.
- scott_s 18y agoI skimmed over that until I thought "Coelho" is a strange name. Then I realized he wrote The Alchemist, which I read at the behest of a girl that pretty much fits that description.
- lionhearted 18y agoI'm cracking up laughing here. Here's some perspective for my fellows 'mericans who haven't been to this part of the world. English people love to pan everything French for any reason whatsoever. Most English folk will openly say, "I hate the French" - they don't actually hate the French. It's just that they really, really get off on having a laugh at anything and everything French. I was cracking up laughing when I saw the headline - and then saw it was from the Guardian. The article's probably all correct, but the really gratuitous tone the author takes, like he's glad the conference was a mess because it made him able to write this article hardcore "taking the piss" out of the conference? Yup, it's an England thing :) I love it, and mind you, I'm a quarter French and a quarter English so I'm pretty neutral in the whole affair.
- peakok 18y agoI'm French and I enjoyed the article. This Loic LeMeur guy has always been a self-proclaimed ambassador of whatever he wants, but he's just blow hard. He needs the bad press so he'll disappear sooner (I hope so). And you're right about the gratuitious French bashing, it's a cultural thing and it takes part on both sides of the Channel, there's nothing to be offended about, it's funny if you take the right stance.
- staunch 18y agoLoic LeMeur is the European answer to Jason Calacanis.
- fallentimes 18y agoTogether at last: http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/images/2007/Loicandjason.jpg http://www.onemanandhisblog.com/images/2007/Loicandjason.jpg
- Shamiq 18y agoSomeone please make a secondary market for karma. This one deserves more. Jason, as great of a guy you are...
- lawrence 18y agoThat was the best conference write up I've ever seen.
- ojbyrne 18y agoPersonal reminiscences warning: One of the weird things about my digg experiences was where I sat in the conference hierarchy. Kevin would go to London (FOWA), Paris (LeWeb), etc, and listen to a bunch of other fake people talk about fake stuff. They sent me to 2 conferences. Webmasterworld in Las Vegas, which was all SEO, lots of hustlers, the best party I've ever been to (a Yahoo party in the Hugh Hefner suite at the Palms), met Matt Cutts; and then they sent me to Reflection/Projections in Urbana-Champaign (why would we want to go there?) - which included Steve Yegge and Randall Monroe (XKCD), and was probably the best conference I've ever been to. You pose, poseurs gather around you. You get pushed into the background, you meet lots of interesting people.
- unalone 18y agoI'm guessing you don't have the fondest recollections of the Digg team? (Not trying to be snarky: I just don't recall ever reading you talk directly about Digg before.)
- petercooper 18y agoYou're right. Webmasterworld's Pubcons are awesome. I'm a writer, a programmer, whatever, but the energy of the people in the SEO and marketing world is contagious and they put on excellent events. Any grandstanding is all in good fun unlike when you get a bunch of passive aggressive programmers together.
- amohr 18y agoReflections/Projections is consistently a good time. The year before that one, I saw Yale Patt, the guys from Rooster Teeth (Red vs. Blue), Max Levchin, Jawed Kareem, and Joel Spolsky - that was a pretty exciting weekend. And there's a job fair one day so there's all sorts of recruiters, which means all sorts of free food/drink!
- vaksel 18y agowhy is France the face of European tech scene? Shouldn't Britain have that job? I mean for Brits its easy as hell to release world wide apps since English is so popular.
- markessien 18y agoNo, Germany should be actually.
- david927 18y agoI agree. Germany has the best scene. Someone should organize something in Berlin.
- danw 18y agoThere is an already thriving network of events in Berlin
- dchest 18y agoSomeone should organize something somewhere.
- nihilocrat 18y agoDoesn't really have to do with startups, but GC Leipzig is a big gaming conference, sort of like Euro E3.
- gaius 18y agoIt's very difficult to start a company in Germany. You need X amount of capital and masses of paperwork, etc. Talinn in Estonia should probably be the European startup capital.
- prakash 18y agosort of explains why skype was started there.
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- tarkin2 18y agoI like how the article descends into a rant about how it would all be a lot better if we all just got drunk, a typically British answer to just about anything.
- dant 18y agoYou make it sound like that's a bad thing.
- akshaye 18y agoHugh's take: http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004739.html http://www.gapingvoid.com/Moveable_Type/archives/004739.html
- petercooper 18y agoJust to save readers 10 seconds. All Hugh says is: "It's been an intense but fun couple of days." That's it.
- prakash 18y agoAbsolutely fantastic! For a moment there, I though this article was actually a skit on A bit of Fry & Laurie. This quote specifically: And even more satisfying than all of that is the fact that the idea of a huge state-sponsored piss-up is such an anathema to Americans that there's no way they can outdo us
- iron_ball 18y agoOur drunken bouts are all the result of good hard-working private industry. The government will get our rye whiskey when they pump it from our cold dead stomachs!
- Ras_ 18y agoSauna and licorice vodka! Finnish Tourist Board approves of this message.
- nihilocrat 18y agoA web 2.0 conference with no Internet access? Actually, a conference occuring sometime this century with no Internet access? He's joking, right?
- babul 18y agoPaul Carr is just as funny, yet honest, in person (especially after a pint at DrinkTank http://blog.huddle.net/?c=DrinkTank http://blog.huddle.net/?c=DrinkTank or such). Twitter gives a good flavour http://twitter.com/paulcarr http://twitter.com/paulcarr.