UK Editor at ContentNext
Reporting from Paris, Le Web 3
December 11, 2006Day 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.
floor desperately searching for wifi waves meant we were rabidly busy and not just whinging about the crappy conference wifi. The reality was we were scratching our collective heads to think of something to write about. There wasn’t that much that was newsworthy
[...] [ Socially Online ] [#] There’s nothing faster that Twitter on these things. I’m really seeing the value in Twitter recently. But to the issue in hand. Yeah I heard all about Le web 3 conference and the crazyness which was going on there. Tom Morris has a post which summaries the feeling across the blogosphere regarding The web 3. Its all split up so I’m going to rip most of it directlyThere are downloadable (WMV) videos of many of the sessions so far. Judge for yourself. This story has hit TechMeme. Blipverts: “A PR coup for Six Apart in the French press I’m sure, Canal+ even had an outside broadcasting unit set up by the time I entered the centre this morning, but for the international Bloggers who paid to be here it’s the final straw. Le Web isn’t an international or European blogging conference, it’s a standard trade show event which pandered to French political interests.” Graham Holliday: “Personally, I feel the conference has had the life sucked out of it by the egoism and ambition of certain individuals running the show and those hopping on the conference bike for a free publicity ride.” Robin Hamman: “Unlike Le Meur, and apparently oblivious to him, those guys from Belgium and a lot of other people sitting where I am haven’t managed to crack a smile all day.” Tom Raftery: “What really annoyed everyone was the fact that the conference was completely hijacked and changed from a conference about new web technologies into a presidential campaign for the next French election. Two of the candidates, Nikolas Sarkozy and Fran�ois Bayrou were parachuted in to the conference schedule at the last minute, displacing other speakers.” Nicole Simon: “If you have an audience like this and a standing like this in Europe for this conference you invest some time in making the the program. This obviously has not happened. Which is why i have an amount of political content i never wanted to see nor wanted to attend and everything else got pushed aside because of that – without me having really a choice through this… Loic Lemeur has sold out his european peer group for some cheap headlines in french politics – if at all. He has destroyed trust and confidence in a way I have never seen this before.” Alex Papanastassiou: “we basically lost energy and momentum because some bunch of French politicians wanted to do themselves some public relations and build an image of modernity. If they are modern they ought to go for conversations, not top-down broadcasts of official truths and by the way accept questions for the audience, Mr Sarkozy” Adam Fletcher: “Theres a lot of negativity around le web today, the conference room is half empty and people seem more than a little disgruntled”. Also: “So alot of time is wasted pimping the panelists companies rather than engaging in discussion”. David Weinberger (who speaks later) on Sarkozy: “I feel like i’ve been lectured by a guy who has no actual understanding of the Internet.” Shane Richmond: “On the other hand there are plenty of people here who see today’s appearances as a cynical political exercise that has derailed the conference. Loic’s employers, Six Apart, apparently make a lot of their money in France selling blogs to politicians so perhaps there is an explanation in there somewhere… Many delegates are angry that, having spent a lot of money to come here and talk about the web, they are watching political broadcasts instead” Dieter Rappold: “I am disapointed. I am disappointed of you, this conference and I will never attend LesBlogs/LeWeb anymore – But as I imagine you won’t give a damn, as you don’t give a damn about your audience as it seems.” James Higgs: “In theory, Le Web 3 was supposed to be a place for the people on the bleeding edge of European Web 2.0 innovation to come together and discuss the way ahead. Instead, it has turned into a parade of politicians, product anouncements and a complete lack of any type of disagreement or debate… Despite all this negativity, there has been one big positive. I must say that the food has been extremely impressive.” Sam Sethi: “The speakers are all saying the same old thing and nothing new… Overall the event feels like it has run its course just like the Web 2.0 conference earlier this year. Le Web 4 will be a hard sell, certainly as far as I am concerned” Peter Forret: “I did not pay over Euro 600 to come and listen to self-involved French politicians talk about why they want to run for president” Ivan Pope: “I don’t know how much rumbling of discontent there’s been – but frankly I didn’t pay my conference fee to be pitched by politicians. I think the organisers should put their egos away and resist the blandishments of all politicians”. And more: “Same old same old. Same old stories, same old corporate speakers. And same old friends of the organisers. It’s like a love-in for a closed circle, with no fresh thinking or any challenge to the status quo.” Adam Tinworth: “Here we go, another session about the death of Old Media, with four new media types and a single old media chap as the chair. And precious little revealing content.” Stephanie Booth on Twitter: “I wonder what on earth is going to happen to LeWeb3’s program now that politicians and the mainstream press have taken over.” webpronews thinks Dmoz is dead (via Stephen Cohen). You guys all know what the solutions to thi sare, right? It needs to be turned over to a more competitive model. Jim Moore has a post on Harvard, OPML and Dave’s stint at Berkman. Robert Andrews has more coverage from Le Web 3. So once again bullshit gets called on le web/le blogs. Ben has a nice cover of the event too. So what do I think. Well no matter what you say about Sam Sethi, he’s always a man in the room and in the crowd. He was perfect for TechCrunch UK. His style in writing was a little brash but it worked well when reviewing startups and services. Mike Arrington has got to be nuts letting him go for calling Loic a arsehole or was actually that Sam walked? Geez we need a Londonwag blog.John just sent me an update on whats been going on. Mike Arrington writes in Putting TechCrunch UK On Hold, that everything was tollerable till Sam annouced something which was not discussed or approved.Even though I think at that point Sam had reached the limits of acceptable editorial discretion, it still would not have necessarily resulted in him having to leave TechCrunch. The actions that finally resulted in his dismissal were additional comments he wrote on that second post, announcing “that TechCrunch UK will be doing a series of seminars and a conference next year as well as a series of smaller meetings in conjunction with friends & partners which have been in the planning for sometime now.”These events were not discussed with me, and certainly were not approved. The fact that he announced and promoted them while trashing a competing event was a clear conflict of interest and was not appropriate. I do not consider this to be ethical behavior.None of this had to be aired publicly, but Sam chose to write a final post on the blog after he was terminated stating incorrectly that he was being terminated because of the original post. He has also written publicly that he was terminated because he would not comply with my demand to delete a post. That is not accurate. This is driven entirely from Sam’s ethical lapse in trashing a competitor while simultaneously promoting his own events. That’s not acceptable – readers will not be able to determine if he actually believed what he wrote about the conference, or rather exaggerated his opinions to futher his own business interests.Basic ethical behavior is not subjective. We will not associate with individuals who choose to cross the line.The blog is on hold until we determine if/when we will hire another editor and continue writing.I’m sorry but something still seems wrong. Either way, I’m sick of this, we need a techcrunch uk which is based in the uk and has the uk landscape in mind. John made a point that maybe the BBC should do this? I mean its certainly fitting with our public values. I’m not sure how blanaced we could but it certainly could put us back in the new media running. End of the day, I’m not keen on the fact that TechCrunchUK is now on hold, a major uk publication on hold because some american guy decides it. I’m not saying Mike’s in over his head or anything, but you can imagine people are saying that Mike has snapped. [...]
[...] There were some negative remarks about the Le Web 3 conference when I was out in Paris earlier this week, surrounding the organisation and tone of the event. Upon our return, things took a decidedly weird turn. [...]
Your blog is interesting!
Keep up the good work!
[...] 2006.12.12 There is more coverage of Le Web 3 on my blog on 13/12/2006, 11/12/2006 and 14/12/2006. 2006-12-14T09:04:18Z There are downloadable (WMV) videos of many of the sessions so far. Judge for yourself. 2006-12-12T16:11:40Z This story has hit TechMeme. 2006-12-12T23:54:18Z Blipverts: “A PR coup for Six Apart in the French press I’m sure, Canal+ even had an outside broadcasting unit set up by the time I entered the centre this morning, but for the international Bloggers who paid to be here it’s the final straw. Le Web isn’t an international or European blogging conference, it’s a standard trade show event which pandered to French political interests.” 2006-12-12T23:52:12Z Graham Holliday: “Personally, I feel the conference has had the life sucked out of it by the egoism and ambition of certain individuals running the show and those hopping on the conference bike for a free publicity ride.” 2006-12-12T18:04:30Z Robin Hamman: “Unlike Le Meur, and apparently oblivious to him, those guys from Belgium and a lot of other people sitting where I am haven’t managed to crack a smile all day.” 2006-12-12T17:59:01Z Tom Raftery: “What really annoyed everyone was the fact that the conference was completely hijacked and changed from a conference about new web technologies into a presidential campaign for the next French election. Two of the candidates, Nikolas Sarkozy and François Bayrou were parachuted in to the conference schedule at the last minute, displacing other speakers.” 2006-12-12T17:38:41Z Nicole Simon: “If you have an audience like this and a standing like this in Europe for this conference you invest some time in making the the program. This obviously has not happened. Which is why i have an amount of political content i never wanted to see nor wanted to attend and everything else got pushed aside because of that – without me having really a choice through this… Loic Lemeur has sold out his european peer group for some cheap headlines in french politics – if at all. He has destroyed trust and confidence in a way I have never seen this before.” 2006-12-12T17:14:16Z Alex Papanastassiou: “we basically lost energy and momentum because some bunch of French politicians wanted to do themselves some public relations and build an image of modernity. If they are modern they ought to go for conversations, not top-down broadcasts of official truths and by the way accept questions for the audience, Mr Sarkozy” 2006-12-12T17:01:55Z Adam Fletcher: “Theres a lot of negativity around le web today, the conference room is half empty and people seem more than a little disgruntled”. Also: “So alot of time is wasted pimping the panelists companies rather than engaging in discussion”. 2006-12-12T16:28:17Z David Weinberger (who speaks later) on Sarkozy: “I feel like i’ve been lectured by a guy who has no actual understanding of the Internet.” 2006-12-12T15:55:17Z Shane Richmond: “On the other hand there are plenty of people here who see today’s appearances as a cynical political exercise that has derailed the conference. Loic’s employers, Six Apart, apparently make a lot of their money in France selling blogs to politicians so perhaps there is an explanation in there somewhere… Many delegates are angry that, having spent a lot of money to come here and talk about the web, they are watching political broadcasts instead” 2006-12-12T15:47:42Z Dieter Rappold: “I am disapointed. I am disappointed of you, this conference and I will never attend LesBlogs/LeWeb anymore – But as I imagine you won’t give a damn, as you don’t give a damn about your audience as it seems.” 2006-12-12T15:42:40Z James Higgs: “In theory, Le Web 3 was supposed to be a place for the people on the bleeding edge of European Web 2.0 innovation to come together and discuss the way ahead. Instead, it has turned into a parade of politicians, product anouncements and a complete lack of any type of disagreement or debate… Despite all this negativity, there has been one big positive. I must say that the food has been extremely impressive.” 2006-12-12T13:41:27Z Sam Sethi: “The speakers are all saying the same old thing and nothing new… Overall the event feels like it has run its course just like the Web 2.0 conference earlier this year. Le Web 4 will be a hard sell, certainly as far as I am concerned” 2006-12-12T13:32:04Z Peter Forret: “I did not pay over Euro 600 to come and listen to self-involved French politicians talk about why they want to run for president” 2006-12-12T13:18:06Z Ivan Pope: “I don’t know how much rumbling of discontent there’s been – but frankly I didn’t pay my conference fee to be pitched by politicians. I think the organisers should put their egos away and resist the blandishments of all politicians”. And more: “Same old same old. Same old stories, same old corporate speakers. And same old friends of the organisers. It’s like a love-in for a closed circle, with no fresh thinking or any challenge to the status quo.” 2006-12-12T13:16:41Z Adam Tinworth: “Here we go, another session about the death of Old Media, with four new media types and a single old media chap as the chair. And precious little revealing content.” 2006-12-12T10:48:03Z Stephanie Booth on Twitter: “I wonder what on earth is going to happen to LeWeb3’s program now that politicians and the mainstream press have taken over.” 2006-12-12T10:05:30Z webpronews thinks Dmoz is dead (via Stephen Cohen). You guys all know what the solutions to thi sare, right? It needs to be turned over to a more competitive model. 2006-12-12T07:45:08Z Jim Moore has a post on Harvard, OPML and Dave’s stint at Berkman. 2006-12-12T07:35:02Z Robert Andrews has more coverage from Le Web 3. 2006-12-12T07:14:22Z Le Web 3: Hoping for a better day 2006-12-12T07:14:42ZIt’s 8.14am and I’m here early to blog (and to use the Internet before it goes horribly down the drain. The morning’s schedule seems to be based on Steve Gillmor’s style of argument – “Is _____ dead?” – in this case television, radio and old media. Based on the press desk in the reception and the fact that they got in for free, I’d say that we have a long way to go before they are dead. One session that could be interesting is danah boyd’s talk at 11:30 on the “young web”. Mena Trott’s session may be interesting – I wonder whether any disruptive British bloggers cause havoc. David Weinberger might be interesting. The whole day looks like it might be more interesting than yesterday – and hopefully there will be more opportunity for comment. Perhaps the attitude to user-generated content at Le Web is indicative of how it wll be for many companies – “it’s fine that they have things to say, so let’s section them off and try not to listen”. I like the fact that we seem to be having the same debates as years ago – deportalization! Woohoo! Tags: leweb3 Comments | TrackBack Le Web 3: Unconference? 2006-12-12T08:39:52ZLoic Le Meur thinks that this is an unconference. “An unconference is a conference where the content of the sessions is driven and created by the participants, generally day-by-day during the course of the event, rather than by a single organizer, or small group of organizers, in advance.” (Wikipedia) “The idea for an unconference came while sitting in the audience of a panel discussion at a conference, waiting for someone to say something intelligent, or not self-serving, or not mind-numbingly boring. The idea came while listening to someone drone endlessly through PowerPoint slides, nodding off, or (in later years) checking email, or posting something to my blog, wondering if it had to be so mind-numbingly boring. My guess is that if you swapped the people on stage with an equal number chosen at random from the audience, the new panelists would effectively be smarter, because they didn’t have the time to get nervous, to prepare PowerPoint slides, to make lists of things they must remember to say, or have overly grandiose ideas about how much recognition they are getting.” (Dave Winer) Is this an unconference? No. BloggerCon is an unconference. BarCamps are little unconferences blossoming all over the world. If 900 people sitting in a room listening to one person and not being able to ask questions is an unconference, then I’m a pink zebra – because words will have no meaning. Tag: leweb3, unconference Comments | TrackBack Le Web 3: Laptops Off! 2006-12-12T08:40:15ZApparently, in the next session, laptops are supposed to be shut off. Le Web’s unconference stylings continue unabated. And, of course, all our questions have to be “on the blog”. For crying out loud, this is mad. It’s because Shimon Peres, Israeli Vice Premier and former Israeli PM, is speaking. This is the man who said “A godless man is not a human being.” Why, thank you very much. Since you’ve told me that I am not a human being, I’m not going to stop blogging. No fucking way. Tag: leweb3, unconference, shimon peres Comments | TrackBack Le Web 3: Political takeover 2006-12-12T11:25:34ZJust when I thought that this conference couldn’t get worse, these politicians turned up and started talking. The media are lapping it up. But we aren’t. We care about the policy issues. We care about things like data retention and the TV Without Frontiers Directive – why can’t we have some answers about those? One person asked a question in French (and repeated it in English) about open source. I have no idea how this is relevant! I can’t imagine going along to @media or d.Construct to find politicians trying to pitch to us. If David Cameron was suddenly added at the last minute to the conference – and stayed long enough not to be asked any questions that are related to the conference, you’d think people might be a bit pissed. That’s how I feel. We need a way for bloggers to ask questions of politicians in an open and direct forums – but this isn’t it. Kevin Marks has just said in IRC: “this conf is more like TV than the net”. It’s true. Update: One of the speakers in the games panel said that he’s not interested in French politicians. A load of people started applauding and cheering. One would think that the organisers might look down at us peons and say “what do you want?”. But, don’t you know, we don’t matter. Tags: leweb3 Comments | TrackBack Le Web 3: Sarkozy has pushed me over the edge 2006-12-12T14:50:20ZThis is bollocks. Sarkozy came straight in, gave a political speech filled with all the usual clichés of political discussion (I was listening to the translation). The presence of these politicians is totally inappropriate. I’m so glad that Maarten Schenk has created this Le Politics banner. Politicians have useful things to say – but we’re not here for a political pitch. Let’s have some discussion. We believe in conversations, right? We’re bloggers. So let’s have some conversations. The conversation is happening in the backchannel now – and the folks in there are pissed. Now, they are just the ones who have managed to get an Internet connection. If everyone in the room had access to the backchannel (or is it a darkchannel?), there’d be a damn uprising. Tag: leweb3, nicolas sarkozy Comments | TrackBack Le Web 3: Notes from the bad guy 2006-12-12T22:49:29ZWhat a crazy hectic day. To be honest, I’m not as pissed off as the previous posts would make me out to be. I’m just getting it out of my system. Why did we – the “Le Resistance” (yes, I know that’s bad grammar) – have to resort to doing mass postings and mass linkings? Because we wanted to be heard. We’ve paid too, and we had two days filled with Microsoft and Google and Yahoo and friends talking and getting no tough questions asked. It wasn’t just that we weren’t being listened to – no, wait, it was because we weren’t being listened to. We need to make it astoundingly clear to people that we won’t stand for being fucked around with. On the grand scale of attention, taking three days off, flying or taking the train to Paris, booking in to a hotel and spending a large chunk of change on a ticket is a big thing to do. It may not be for people with expense accounts, but for those of us for whom the money comes out of our pockets, it’s a big thing. We don’t want to be professionally managed – even though having croissants and orange juice is nice (next year: keep the catering company but the conference needs to change). We want to be able to ask questions, interact. We don’t want to be treated like eyeballs – we want to have a conversation. This was totally absent. This isn’t difficult stuff – it’s what people like Doc Searls – and, in fact, Loïc Le Meur – have been pushing for the last few years. Indeed, citizen journalism was something that was on the agenda at Les Blogs 2.0 last year – and yet this year non-citizen-journalists, non-participatory-media-ists (in short, the folks with big cameras or big newspapers waiting at home) got in for free, got priority treatment, got seating at the front of the hall. I brought this up because it was relevant. It would be standard operating procedure at any other conference – but at a conference such as this one, it’s hypocritical and it makes us have to ask – do we actually believe this stuff or do we just pretend we do so long enough for Google to buy our startup? I do believe in the transformative power of the Internet – perhaps I’m naïve? I feel sorry for Loïc Le Meur – as Pat Phelan says, it looks like Loïc is going to have a busy week reading Technorati. I hope he and others involved with the Le Web conference realise that this blogging shitstorm could have been avoided by talking to us in person – by getting a proper functioning backchannel going (despite Mena Trott’s protestations), by allowing more time for comments, by not insulting our intelligence with big company shills on waffly panels. I am proud that I am one of only a small number person who managed to get up and say something – of the three comments I tried to make, the one where I managed to get my voice out is the one where I was trying to point out the torrent of bullshit that the conference had been. Somebody needs to have said it. Now back in blogland, people are saying it – and if that makes the organisers uncomfortable, then think about how we feel having our time taken up to help Monsieur Sarkozy in his presidential bid. I wouldn’t have objected to the politicians being there if they were talking to us (allowing us to talk back would have helped too) – but we were just a backdrop for who they were really talking to – the television cameras. They were proving they were “down with the cyberinterweb”. They weren’t interested in conversation – or at least, if they were there wouldn’t be any chance for it to happen. Loïc – please, let’s have the conversation that we didn’t have at Le Web. You, me and all the pissed off bloggers. I’ll be perfectly happy to come back next year if this kind of shit doesn’t happen again (I really want to see Paris properly) – if we can make sure that people can have conversations – because, lord knows, Europe needs what Le Web could have been. Thank you to all the bloggers – whether you were in Paris or not – who kicked up a stink about this. Today’s posts are now on TailRank, Scripting News, MetaFilter. It’s being described as a “collision”, a “festering corpse”, “bullshit” (by the guy who raised the shitstorm last year, no less!) and of “the vast number of disgruntled attendees”. There’s a whole sphere of opinion which I cannot access because I don’t speak French – I’d love to see what people are saying in the blogosphere français. Thank you to the folks in IRC – whether you were in Paris or not – for keeping it all going. Thanks especially to Nicole Simon and Adam Tinworth – who has provided great coverage of the panels while I was busy getting angry. I have a Eurostar to catch at 9am tomorrow. And I need some sleep before then. Thank you and good night. And if you find yourself at a conference which is boring or lifeless or hypocritical or where the hosts aren’t respecting your attention – get angry or these kind of conferences won’t ever get any better! Tags: leweb3, loic le meur, paris Comments | TrackBack [...]