down the avenue: My Recap of LeWeb 2010

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December 16, 2010

My Recap of LeWeb 2010

2,500 entrepreneurs, leaders, investors, bloggers, journalists gathered together for 2 days in Paris on December 8-9, 2010 for an annual event those in the technology industry now know well - LeWeb.

The leading event in Europe for all things Web 2.0 and digital was held at a venue called The Docks, which is an area with more of a campus feel to it than anything else. Combine campus feel with urban and warehouse layout and you have 3 separate halls and tents that sponsors, vendors and speakers called "home" for two snowy days last week.

LeWeb brings together the most influential audience in the Internet ecosystem largely from Europe although I met entrepreneurs from Israel, Australia, South Africa, Ireland, Canada and the states during the event itself as well as the after networking gatherings and private dinners, my more notable experiences from the event.

Some of the speakers from this year included Carlos Ghosn, Marissa Mayer, Dennis Crowley, Alexander Tamas, Sebastien de Halleux, and Michael Arrington to name a few. The format on the main stage was not unlike last year - it combined Q&As, panel discussions and keynotes.

Take a look at my posts and videos on Gary Vaynerchuck, Foursquare's Dennis Crowley, the Joe Green interview from Causes, Robert Scoble's interview with Mitchell Baker, and the two-part video clip on the start-up competition which includes winners Waze from Israel (traffic), Paper.ly (publishing) from Switzerland and Super Marmite from France (food). Here's a link to my interview with Azeem Azhar from PeerIndex.

Also take a look at the Pearltrees recap video that Tom Foremski took -- Patrice Lamothe and his team launched TEAM at LeWeb this year and their booth was by far, the most creative, interesting and compelling booth at the conference. (and yes, while I DO -- disclosure -- consult for them, it simply was the best. Enuf said).

Robert Scoble also interviewed Patrice Lamothe on TEAM's capabilities which you can read here including a video clip. Additional pieces worth reading are Alastair Goldfisher's piece on PE Hub, the ZDNET piece by Sam Diaz and Alexia Tsotsis post on TechCrunch.

Below is a Pearltree for the best of what happened at LeWeb and it includes video, blog posts, speakers, the schedule and more.

Below are some random shots I took on site with some contributions in the collection by Rodrigo as noted.

Mozilla's Mitchell Baker

The food at conferences in Paris is -- let's just say -- different