I sat and watched Dave Winer tale this photo this morning.
What was great to see was how easy it was; and how natural.
It reminds me of the quote that any sufficiently good technology is indistinguishable from magic. Watching Dave this morning was like watching Merlin.
I however will be posting photos a lot more slowly simply because the Wi-Fi sucks and I need to sync the camera with the PC etc.
I’m witing this from my mobile phone in the metro on the way to LeWeb3.
Last year this trip was five minutes on my bike. This year it’s out of bed at six and a metro across town.
Hope the coffee is worth it!
Google’s new My Location feature apparently saved Scoble in London and now he’s counting on it in France while at LeWeb3.
One tip: Don’t use it indoors. Or at least if you do; don’t count on the results to save your life.
In my experience it works perfectly outside but the moment you get behind a window it starts putting you in the wrong place.
Leaving for Le Web 3 it one of a million posts about leaving for Paris.
It feels like I’m living in the center of the universe for a day. It’s rather odd sitting at my office desk reading all this stuff. I should be moving!!!
Last year, Adam wrote about his experiences at LeWeb3 (and tried to name this year LeWeb4!)…
I suspect that much of the reaction to Le Web 3 shows that the time has come for blogging and Web 2.0 conferences to start diversifying. One conference can no longer meet everyone’s requirements, and within the next few years we’re going to need to see a whole range of conferences in this area, from the very technical, to the very educational.
Le Web 3 was a brave, if faltering, step in that direction, and for that, Loïc and team deserve some praise. The really big question, though, is how well they take onboard the very valid criticisms made of the event and make sure Le Web 4 is clear and open in its intentions, and smoother in running when its time comes. I wish them well.
This all means that the question for Adam (and the others sitting on trains and planes) is very simple…
What are you expecting this year? Or, like me, are you buying blind on last years experience?
Finally, this is one of the posts that talked about a range of European conferences; has anything happened there or is Loïc dominating things?
I hope that we all fit in!!!
Seriously, I’m beginning to wonder about this. A 7:15 start and 2000 people doesn’t sound like fun.
I thought that I was being original; but I wasn’t.
Over the weekend I wrote about by experiences at the last LeWeb3 conference and how I thought there’d been some manipulation behind the scenes.
In the middle of all this “scandal” last year was Sam Sethi; someone I’ve never known or met. After last year’s conference he left TechCrunch UK and talked of creating a conference to beat LeWeb3.
I’ve followed nothing of what has happened in the last year, and then this comes along…
An Open Letter to Sam Sethi | StarrTrek
And then what do you know; we’re off again.
I love Fon, I got my first router via LeWeb3 last year and it’s been on in my appartment ever since. I’ve also had great fun giving invitations to friends in three different countries.
Then they go and do this for Christmas…
WE’RE GIVING YOU THREE FREE FON ROUTERS TO CELEBRATE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON OF SHARING!
Fantastic idea! I’m now having fun deciding who I’m going to give them to.
If you were on another planet you might have missed the fact that there was a controversy at LeWeb3 last year. I was there but didn’t have a blog at the time; I now have a voice.
The best summary in less than 10,000 words can be found here: LeWeb3 is actually “Loic for president†at blog.forret.com. Loïc wrote the 10,000-plus word version of events with his response here.
Here’s my view…
First, I had a fantastic time last year. Except for a couple of speakers, mainly in the group discussions, who were more interested in promoting the company logo than being interesting, it was well worth my time and money (I took vacation and paid for myself).
Second, I’d not been to any of the previous conferences and therefore wasn’t looking to replicate something from the past. I’m interested in politics, technology and just about anything that I don’t know. As it turned out, two of the best speakers were not IT speakers at all; Hans Gosling was amazing and Shimon Peres was inspirational and got a standing ovation. There were another ten presenters who were well worth the two days on their own.
Now to how I perceived things. I was sitting at the front at the left and it was very clear that something was happening on the other side of the room as early as the mid-morning on day one. This was before the announcements that supposedly sparked all the controvosy.
When changes were made to the program I just held onto my hat and thought that at least I was seeing something new.
However, when I got home to wi-fi that worked after day one the blogs were very negative and it seemed that I was the only happy customer in the room. By the end of day two the blogs had gone into meltdown and the end of the world was iminent.
The aftermath of the conference was the end of TechCrunch UK v1.0, discussions about starting a “real European conference in the UK” and even the end of Loïc’s career.
I can’t help feeling, even a year later, that most of the fuss was generated by a small group who had a hidden agenda. Conferences are big money and I think that last year was the last chance for someone to get a rival conference off the ground.
We’re now twelve months on and LeWeb3 is back and even bigger, I’ve not heard of any massive life changing conference in the UK and Loïc the poor man seems to have the hottest startup around.
So what was wrong with last year again?
Joho the Blog pointed out that TwiT came up with gold this week.
Last week I started questioning why I spend an hour a week listening to Twit and then this comes along, this has to be one of the best Podcasts I’ve heard in a long while.
Just shows what a fantastic media it can be when done right.
PS – Joho will also be speaking at LeWeb3. I’m starting to get excited!!!
Specifically about podcasting (Scripting News)
Every six months or so Dave Winer tells us that the iPod isn’t a good podcast player and that we need to build a new one. The wish-list is always roughly the same and it’s always Open Source.
An Open Source podcast player; the ideal toy for developers, a mobile developer platform.
First, I’ve nothing against the idea, in fact, I think that it would be great.
However, it wouldn’t promote the development of podcasting. The issue with podcasting is finding things that are worth listening to. I don’t have trouble teaching my mother to use an iPod but getting her to subscribe to a feed is impossible.
The solution to the podcasting isn’t the device, it’s the guide.
PS – Dave, if you want to scream at me, see you next Tuesday at LeWeb3!
PPS – While I’m on the subject, why is the iTunes store so difficult to use? It’s impossible to browse for music. It’s fantastic once you know what you’re looking for but I don’t know what I’m looking for!!!