Coworking in Paris: Meet La Cantine #tg09

At Silicon Sentier and La Cantine in Paris, the goal is provide a environment in which to foster ecosystems and have companies collaborate and make projects emerge and happen.

I spent some time there with folks from Invest in France and Cap Digital recently during our Traveling Geeks Paris tour.

Meet Paul Richardet at La Cantine who helped make our event happen.

Says 37 year old engineer Louis Montagne, who's the founder of af83 and Bearstech, as well as the vice president of Silicon Sentier: "We consider that every entrepreneur is a hacker, and that he may need to fulfill what Steven Levy called the "hacker ethic" (sharing, openness, decentralization, free access to computers, world improvement, and pleasure), he needs to have support, to have elder brothers (companies he can tell the stories to explain his project), he needs financing, to be able to fail, he needs to meet with people."

That's basically what they do at La Cantine, which is the co-working space Silicon Sentier created. The group has 150+ members and a number of innovative companies with dynamic projects.

Centrally located, La Cantine has more than 25 events every month, and it has become a meeting point in Paris for technology people, geeks, nerds, hackers, artists, funders, and startups.