2009 8
Bravo Geraldine and Loic Le Meur!
Published by MartinVarsavsky.net in General with No Comments
They are my dear friends, and I don’t need to praise them in public, but I will do so this time. They deserve it. A year ago, Geraldine and Loic ran a very publicly criticized LeWeb to which many people swore they would not return. The main complaints were: lack of food, lack of heating and lack of connectivity. Three event killers. Any other event organizer would have fallen to such criticism, thrown in the towel and retire from the business. But Geraldine and Loic are not “any other event organizer”. They have a passion for getting people together in an atmosphere of trust and they work hard and in sync at it. So not only they did not give up, but they came back in full force. With the best LeWeb ever. In the midst of a global recession, they got over 2000 participants from 46 countries. And if they manage to add more Asians to this event, they will soon have the most global internet event on the planet. So far, I have only been to the speaker’s dinner, but I am happy to report that it was warm, there was plenty of amazing food, and there was connectivity.
What do you do when you fall of a horse? You get a better one 🙂
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Yat Siu on December 9, 2009 ·
I have not been to Le Web for years and am one of the few Asians here but the event is well organized, food plentiful and Internet works well enough and I am very happy to see Le Web grow so fast and so succesfully, Loic and Geraldine did a great job!
Elie Krawczyk on December 14, 2009 ·
I was at LeWeb and it was great! Just a shame I couldn’t meet you!
I make review in my blog for those interested.
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alex on December 9, 2009 ·
Quite frankly I’m among those who swore not to come back after last year’s lackluster performance: useless content, plenty of self-serving speeches by sponsors, feeling of being captive in a cold space, without connectivity (for the third year in a row at Le Web) without enough food for all participants, lack of coffee at times… all basic stuff all other web conferences have. We would have expected Loic to be more careful after the mess of 2006, when French politicians high-jacked the program leaving many participants with a feeling of being cheated. I cannot believe that the mere fact that such a pricey event has heating, decent food and some connectivity should be a reason to rejoice! These are basic amenities that can be expected at that kind of cost. The Next Web in Amsterdam costs me far less than Le Web with much better content and organization. Plugg in Brussels is a hundred times better in terms of content, service, organization and overall experience. Even AdTech, which is more a fair than a conference, is way ahead of Le Web. So unless they seriously work to fix some pretty important aspects of the event I don’t see them becoming the big global event you seem to envision. Participants cannot possibly attend sessions all of which have in common the structure of the title “Is [XYZ] dead?” as it was in 2006, where XYZ is advertising at 09:30, television at 10:15 and journalism at 14:00. If this is a conference then there’s some serious need to distinguish between commercial self-promotional contributions and real presentations / workshops with industry relevant questions managed by and with participation of people without personal stake in either the debate or the event. That’s my two dimes and I’m happy you’re happy with the speakers’ dinner, feeling certain your opinion is completely unbiased.