Le Web conference in Paris in full meltdown

by on December 12, 2006

Wow, I gotta come back to this later, but when I just walked into PodTech’s offices after a day of interviewing and being mostly off of the Net several people came up to me and said “did you hear what happened at Le Web conference?”

I have one more interview to do today, but looks like Loic has a full meltdown of attendee feelings (people are VERY angry, on first look at posts from the conference, because Loic had a couple of politicians who spoke in French, didn’t take questions, and gave a political speech where attendees expected talk of blogging and technology). I have no idea what I’d do if I were in his position. One thing it tells me: don’t give your audience something they didn’t expect.

  • There have been parts which have been boring - as with every conference everybody has different interest and interest levels.

    I know for example that many people find David Sifry's numbers to be exactly that, I find them interesting even though I have read it before and espeically when combined with another study set (Ipsos) to make something out of it for Europe.

    I do also enjoy having presentations like with Hans Rosling who shows a quite different picture towards modernisation / globalization than we might still used to be.

    So as Loic put it at the end of the day 2, it was "only" short interruptions and not really a lot. (Please view the video for correct wording).

    But like rotten food which is put into a perhaps good to great meal, it will spoil everything.

    There are quite some reactions in the french blogosphere but I am sorry - even with 5 years of school french that is not readable for me and there still is no working babelfish. It would be appreaciated if on such a topic people would at least add a blurp in english - especially when they link to english text.

    The good news? Anybody who wanted to do a conference like this might now have an easier time to get some sponsoring ...
  • julien
    i speak french, but let me say, even in that situation, with full comprehension of what's going on, it would make me feel weird. i dunno dude, i'm having difficulty with loic's promotion of political stuff on his blog and at this event. and i'm sitting hundreds of miles away in montreal! imagine the people there.
  • oops. let's try that url again...
  • rachelc
    Given the various comments (and tom at http://blogs.opml.org/tommorris did a great job of pulling together the English language reactions) I'm glad I did not go this year. I can review the sessions I'm interested in via the on line video but not have to pay out for the full experience, which I'm pretty sure I would have resented as did many of the attendees
  • Hey, Rachel, what's your blog address now?

    Yeah, I definitely am glad I went to Pirillo's wedding instead.

    I'm looking forward to LIFT.
  • rachelc
    the blog is at blog.bibrik.com....when I can convince the ISP to give me access again after being completely slammed by a spammer and getting it taking it offline. So now I'm looking for a new host. LIFT looks good, but next travel to a conference would by SXSWi.
  • Never invite politicians if you don't want a political speech. It's what they do. That would be like having a pigeon flying around your room and being surprised it crapped everywhere.

    But stuff like this is why the Macworld people have a rule that if you do a session that ends up being marketing, (barring crap like keynotes, etc.) you're gone. Doesn't matter who you are or who you work for. I've seen it happen, and it's critical to keeping your sessions worth paying for.
  • Aaaah, the French making controversy over politicians being political. IT's beautiful.
  • What's funny to me is that all these bloggers sat there and took it (and presumably most didn't understand a word) like good little leSheep and then went and wrote up massive amoubts of angry blog posts. Very post-modern.

    I wager just getting up and walking out would've gotten your message across.
  • Michiel I did leave. So did a lot of others.

    To the effect that later near the end the rows where massivly empty. Did all of them leave? No.
  • Alot of people left, the room was a three quarters empty at the end. There were other mini-protests see here http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreasm/320531781/

    The really annoying thing is that none of these people have any interest in the attendees or the event. They are presenting for the camera crews standing two feet in front of them, and not the atendees sitting 20 feet behind (a large number of whom have left). We are renting them our stage space and time to further their own agenda.
  • About leaving... Ok, leaving is symbolic, but not everybody can afford to BE symbolic. :)
    I stayed till the end, blogging about the fact that I wasn't happy and felt betrayed and fooled. The reason I stayed? I payed everything with my own money (and 300 euro is for me a lot of money) and realised that the best "content", presentations would come after Sarkozy left the building...which was actually the case. But in this whole brouhaha nobody is paying attention to this anymore.
  • Roy
    Well, I think no one should complain about this. It is so rare when politicians (especially leaders) talk about the Internet. It is a good sign if an event like LeWeb3 attracts these guys.

    It was a good way to put LeWeb3 under the spotlight. I understand the surprise because everything was apparently set up at the last minute. Too bad also that other presidential candidates (especially Mrs Royal) were not available or did not want to talk.

    But these 3 speeches were not a bad thing. Politicians did not "steal" the conference. They helped to make it more visible.

    R.
  • The conference was great ("super", according to the French). It is just a pity that one hour of politicians talking bullshit can spoil an event.

    Loic Lemeur was wrong by inviting these people, by accepting their conditions, and also by not asking assistants what we thought about this. But we must admit that the conference attracted a great audience, was very well organized and conducted and was celebrated in a non-English speaking country.
  • Pierre CLAUSE
    I was there - I am french

    I did enjoy most of the conference even though there is naturally plenty of room for improvement

    I did enjoy the "surprise" of Shimon Peres hi-level talk; the standing ovation for him was not fake and all participants were deeply moved

    I did not like the amateurish improvisation of having 2 presidential candidates on stage - with unclear and different rules; worse ... the most famous one Nicolas Sarkozy acted 180° from what he should have done in front of this crowd (but the talk was not for the audience, just for the 20+? TV cameras !!)

    It does tell a lot for me as a french guy, but i also understand that almost all international participants are angry and/or pissed off !

    Conclusion : thanks LLM for putting this event together, but your initiative to invite the politicians was a high risk/high reward type of thing and might turned out to become a high risk/high penalty one !

    Hopefully LLM will get proper feedback and will move on from there to reformat a better LeWeb4 maybe with the cooperation of other hi-level guys in Europe ; this should no longer be a LLM show only ! It is probably also up to the sponsors to do something about it.

    Strangely enough, i left those 2 days very much pumped up !
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