LeWeb3 Underway

Web 3.0 (Le Web3) in Paris is underway. How refreshing it was to be "served" upon arrival, from my badge to the coat check. Then as I entered the lounge area, "real" coffee is served with traditional French croissants -- plain et avec chocolat. Ahhhh!

I can hear Six Apart's Loic LeMeur's voice through the curtains as I start my very first conference conversation with a French VC in the back of the room. They have offices in Tel Aviv, Paris and San Francisco. Israel is important for them, he tells me because there is so much innovation coming out of Israeli start-ups over the past few years.

They used to have an office in Tokyo, but it never really took off. I ask about India and China and while he agrees we can't ignore them, there's still more money from them in Europe and Israel so they'll start here and move on as opportunities arise. Interesting.

He is well dressed, as are others around me, although I haven't been here long enough to meet the attending engineers. How refreshing. I may be saying that frequently over the next couple of days.

The event starts with Loic interviewing Skype's Niklas Zennström, particularly around the increasing examples of how the Internet is providing transparency on multiple levels. We can provide the same kind of transparency to politics,” says Niklas. Loic is not so sure.

“It starts with the audience” Skype says. Loic asks, “how do you change politics, how do you see these power shifts?” Niklas talks about the elections in Sweden this year, how people thought the Internet would have an impact on it, however it did not have much of an impact.

Asks Loic, “how about freedom of speech, in China for example?” Skype works in China and other developing countries around the world. For one, it people a lot of money, so popular in Africa for example. Also, people cannot eavesdrop on them.”

Lorraine Twohill, the head of Google’s European marketing comes onto the Web3 stage. She says that Google still feels like a start-up. Except she says, "perhaps there’s a little more money in the bank.” A little? I guess she missed their corporate holiday party last week in San Francisco and the latest acquisitions.

She is articulate, has a great sense of humor and I like her presence on stage, but in an older European style, we see a deck of slides rather than have a more interactive un-tech conference discussion. While much of her earlier presentation is a marketing pitch, we learn a few interesting stats about access, storage, wifi and broadband usage in Europe. She also talks about laptop trends, what the iPod has accomplished and where it is going.

Thirdly, she talks about the increase of self-expression, using YouTube and blog traffic as examples. She notes that France is the number one country for blogging in the world; one out of every three has a blog. Who knew? Thanks to the web, one action from the World Cup drove so much traffic and activity alone (phone and the web). And she flashes one example after another to remind us how prolific self-expression is worldwide. Coffee break. More from the ground providing the strength of the open wifi improves.