Reporting from Paris, Le Web 3

Day one of the Le Web 3 conference (about the state of the web, media and communications) was marked, we have decided, by a certain lack of web.

The wifi was barely there all day, making it quite difficult to file any copy or do any research. Also thin on the ground were bottles of water, or any kind of liquid actually – I’m parched, man; the Grimbergen went down a treat, boys. So we hope both l’internet and l’eau will be flowing more freely tomorrow.

There’s a joke going around – based on a comment overheard during drunken hotel shenanigans last night (though not mine) – that “someone’s going to walk out from that conference a millionaire”. The protagonists don’t know it’s a joke but, to those who have always known the web was about grassroots media production and connecting people, the hubris surrounding the Web 2.0 concept – around which much of the event centres and using which many startups are angling for the limelight – is at least mildly amusing.

I overheard one central European business owner, huddled together for a quickfire meeting with an individual presumed to be an investor, turn even a knock-back for his social networking idea into a “yeah, I’m totally with you on that”.

Technorati CEO Dave Sifry today spoke about some stats on the blogosphere he released a couple of months ago, and made a plea to French bloggers in the crowd to ask their hosts to ping Technorati.

Sifry acknowledges that the service’s stats on French blogging – known to be bigger than anywhere else in Europe – are greatly underrepresented. He didn’t have any stats on that when I asked for Vivre Les Blogs in 2004, if I recall, but the prevalence of the medium has clearly only grown.