Photo Joi Ito. looking at the stage with Geraldine, both of us stressed, Joi was saying "Loic you do not have to smile as I take the picture"
It is a tradition every year, here are some notes in a bullet point format of the feedback I have read from hundreds of blog posts and ideas to make it even better next year. Geraldine is likely to go fulltime on managing the conference, given the scale of the event. Please keep sending us feedback in comments on this post or on your blogs. We are delighted you liked LeWeb3 so much this year and will start preparing 2008 very soon. Thank you all partners, speakers, team and participants for making this edition a success.
Joi Ito
"Le Web 3 was the best conference of its kind I attended this year. Great venue, great team and awesome speakers. Loic, Geraldine and team, super job. Thanks! Interestingly, my favorite talks were the two non-web people: Hans Rosling and Philippe Starck."
Robert Scoble
"LeWeb was a remarkable conference. Why? Because Loic took a far more participatory stance this year. Not to mention he spent 125,000 Euros on the wifi (which still didn’t work that great) and had power plugs under every seat that I was at. Every part of the experience was top-rate and positions LeWeb as the most important industry conference. Period. One little secret? Loic’s wife did much of the heavy lifting behind the scenes. Cathy Brooks planned the content and I couldn’t see how to improve it."
photo Sacha QS
Tom Raftery
"Loic, the conference’s organiser obviously took all of the criticisms of last year’s conference on board and delivered a fantastic conference this time out. The talks were great, the venue was perfect, the food was delicious, and the networking opportunities were tremendous."
David Lenehan at Read/WriteWeb
"Loic and Geraldine have turned LeWeb3 into a really great conference, possibly the best web conference of the year."
Henrik Ahlen:
"The LeWeb3 was one of the most professionally produced conference I have attended in several ways. The video projection was the best I have seen and the audio was top notch with very engaging musical intros. I also liked the scheduel with lots of time for networking in the coffe and lunch breaks. The lunch offering was a totally staggering buffet of french gourmet cuisine at it best."
Jeremie Berrebi (french)
"Absolument fabuleux…des conférences d’un niveau telle que je ne préférais ne pas y assister (j’ai assisté à celles de Philippe Starck et de Joi Ito). Je veux les écouter tranquillement chez moi pendant les prochaines semaines et les étudier tranquillement."
Laurent Gloaguen (french)
"Un grand merci à Loïc pour l’organisation du LeWeb3, une sorte de “Davos de l’industrie Web 2”. Il est exceptionnel qu’une manifestation de cette envergure se tienne en France et nous ne pouvons qu’en être reconnaissant à l’égard de Loïc le Meur. Cette 4e édition fut une réussite presque totale, sans les erreurs de 2006. Encore bravo Loïc (et Géraldine, logisticienne en chef de la manifestation)."
Laurent Vermot-Gauchy (french)
"Cette année Le Web3 aura été pour moi l'année du networking fertile. Le grand bain bouillonnant des professionnels du web. Certains s'y ressourcent, d'autres améliorent leur façon de nager, d'autres y trouvent des partenaires pour aller plus loin, d'autres viennent simplement prendre la température de l'eau, mais une chose est certaine, c'est de là que le point de vue sur le secteur est à regarder."
Robin Wauters "LeWeb3 was Fantastique"
"In general, the conference was just awesome, especially considering the magnitude of the whole thing (almost 2 000 participants signed present)."
Gary Stewart "Tres elegant"
"But if you do go to a conference, it’s nice to feel welcomed, as if you are a VIP guest. And that’s what Le Web excels at. [...] it was definitely a very cool event. The coolest, most elegant tech event around by far."
Very cool videos
French news TV LCI (french)
From Radon agency
what we succeeded
-communities (press, VCs, entrepreneurs, bloggers)
-1800 participants from 40 countries
-plugs behind every seat
-300 journalists and tons of press
-great food !
-audio, video
-live stream thanks to vpod.tv that was viewed by nearly 20 000 people (and also remotely blogged, best blogging from Bruno Giussani)
-seating, cloak room
-extend the reach with Jun Cohen and Matthias Luefkens
-the networking space in 3 rooms
-key voices (and friends) of Silicon Valley in the room (Michael Arrington, Dave Winer, Om Malik, Robert Scoble, Jason Calacanis...)
-key partners support (Google, Ads-Click, 3i, QSphere, Six Apart, TechCrunch, steek, Nokia, Microsoft, cafe.com, zong, Orange, netvibes, shopping.com, ekaabo, goojet, nomao, wengo, cocomment, BT, IBM, Sun, TF1, Europe 1, Le Figaro.fr, Business Wire, LCI, vpod.tv, L'Avion, Amiando, NetEco, Wikio, Intruders, mykinda.....)
-the cosy home like athmosphere in the upstairs networking room (that included a bed)
-the startup room (kudos to Thomas Crampton and the judges) and tons of startup launches at LeWeb3 including Dopplr who had all his members converging to Paris, other startups launched new features such as Mahalo and Netvibes
-special thanks as always for Jeff Clavier and Ouriel Ohayon who helped us organizing the workshop program and more
-the program was generally of good quality (kudos to Cathy Brooks)
-move all the speakers in BMW cars with drivers ! BMW and Bert, you rocked
-ticketing with Amiando (thanks again all Amiando team !)
-all the pictures taken by our official photographer (take any you like for any use) and by all the participants (more than 8000 !)
-tons of press with 300+ journalists, a press book will come shortly, in the meantime you can read google news english and google news french.
what we failed
-David Weinberger got bumped as speaker (see David's post and my comments to understand why, I will make sure this never happens again). I really regret it and happy David and I talked and are still friends after this.
-failed wifi but with a 120K EUR investment and about 6 full time Swisscom team dedicated on it we tried really hard...
what we could have done much better
-the last afternoon and the closing
-the awards presentation
-calling on the community for non profit initiatives where we can help (who are they in the World, decide the ones we should help, define how and report on the progress)
-let people who add significantly to the community for free and explain why, if possible decide in group with the community
-avoid typos in the speaker program
-list the side events, everything happening
-session descriptions matching the content
ideas to make it better next year
-how to involve more communities (politics, arts, culture, design, )
-more women on stage and in the room (tell me how !) and there were some who got noticed like Marion
-script everything happening on stage, add video and sound effects, minute per minute
-small rooms for brands and startups to pitch their products
-translation cabines in french and several other languages, videos subtitled
-David Guetta or Joachim Garraud at the party
-tables in the front with wires for press / key bloggers
-end the conference better and earlier probably, for example let 500 students in the last afternoon
-speaker management (keeping the time, presentations in advance, welcome and follow them, speaker room, photo guide of speakers and judges, bios)
-organize local leweb3 small gatherings around the World to get feedback ahead of the conference
-better following of everything happening online, reference how to follow LeWeb3 online
-video transmission coming from all the rooms
-project more the room on stage
-video transitions between sessions and effects
-names of each speakers as subtitle
-sponsor brands in video
-training rooms on topics (create a community, )
-bridge the conferences to bridge the World
-zones per Country / Region to showcase the best of each in entrepreneurship, web, etc
-take the startup competition Worldwide
-create a video show competition
-have a program committee and team
-partnership with a WW airline while maintaining I hope L'Avion
-better gift bag
-gather a semi public wiki all the testimonials from previous years
-community tool
-integrate better email to keep in touch
-involve the brands
-chose the dates outside of a VC conference happening at the same time for 2 years in a row
-(urgent) announce the date of the conference in 2008 as soon as possible
-invite more tech leaders, actually for the first time sit and wonder who we would really like to have
-invite the brands, the advertisers and give help them integrate in the community (ask the help of people you know are in contact with the brands such as ads click etc)
-involve more sponsors (seagate, Club-Internet, Xing, MySpace, L'Oreal etc)
-more women
-free
-VIP tour
-what is LeWeb video for Mahalo
speakers/topics I would dream to have next year (dreams are free and possible, realizing them is something else)
-Richard Branson
-Al Gore
-Bill Clinton (yeah, I know he is hundreds of thousands of $ a speech)
-space, the pilot of virgin galactic, the former silicon valley entrepreneur who launches rockets
-more on environment (Tom Raftery was the only session)
-slow food a session with the best french chefs in the World
-"it is not fuck the brands" how to integrate brands better
-music bands during the evening (les concerts a emporter to help ?)
best moments (from tons of best moments)
-Yossi Vardi's speach on how pigeons and snails are faster than DSL
-Starck and the amazon book reader design
-Jacob Share's DIGGs Live
-the Marc Canter panel
-Scoble learning that him leaving PodTech was disclosed by Arrington
-the closing dinner when everybody gave us a round of applause
My dreams
-we can change the World, and soon we will see more and more the impact of LeWeb3, will add more non profit mission sessions
-make it entirely free for students, unemployed and people who contribute significantly (I will need more sponsors...)
SEE YOU ALL NEXT YEAR !
