Preparing LeWeb3 2008, feedback from 2007

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 !

Comments

[Maarten Schenk]

Might I suggest Ray Kurzweil as a speaker too? I would love to hear him talk to a tech audience about the coming technological singularity. Perspective-changing.

Anyway, have to agree with all the positive reactions: I have been at all editions and this was by far the best one. Keep it up Loic and Geraldine, and maybe next year we could use http://www.leweb3community.com during the planning stage?

[Tom Raftery]

Loic - congrats again, great job by you, Geraldine, Cathy and the team.

From a speaker's perspective improvements for next year should include wireless mics and wireless 'clickers' (for forwarding the slides) for those presenting.

[-a]

Loic & Geraldine,

One thing I'd like to suggest that I haven't see on the list , is have more speakers from Asia, or have session about Web 2.0 in Asia, get them interested in coming to LeWeb3.
I've traveled to Asia, and I always found it interesting that they are using something that I've never heard of in the states or Europe, aka QQ, wretch, daum,etc...
I thought it was so cool that Jaewong Lee from Daum was in the first panel, but I think it's too bad that no one asked him any question, everyone was focused on the Facebook speaker.

I propose a session a session about "Web 2.0 Asian style". Until you'll get a major numbers of participants/speakers from Asia I don't think it can be considered a "WorldWide conference". Otherwise it's a bit like when the G8 meet up w/ out China.

I think getting speakers from the African continent would be nice as well, if there's any. After all mobile phones have been growing rapidly there and the continent is getting wired.

Good luck with next year! If you need volunteers for anything, I am up for it, as long as it earns me a way inside LeWeb3 '08 :)

[Jonathan Marks]

I agree with the comments above. You need some more input from both India and China where most of our software and hardware is being made these days. The Indians are building a medical portal designed to share operations live with surgeons across Africa. It would be great to hear how other non-broadcast organisations are using new media tools to share their great ideas. Can elaborate if needed.

Leweb3 was a festival of great ideas. It would be great if the web presence and Seesmic extended the conversation throughout the year. Like if you announce the theme(s) for 2008 in January, I can imagine that some participants can prepare relevant video to bring to one of the sessions. In other words, you are involving participants before the conference starts. Talent spotters on the website would invite the best digital storytellers between Jan-October to come and share their story at Leweb3/5.

The audio and video production at Leweb was superb - clearly the people behind the scenes were enjoying it too - the girls on the camera were crafting the shots well. I think you need to talk to vpod to revamp the way the videos are posted on the web. The quality doesn't do justice to the original, and the user interface may be a designer's dream, it is bloody difficult to use. What you have is a knowledge powerhouse of new thinking and great ideas. By selecting the best speeches from Leweb (present and past) and perhaps mashing them with great video from DLD, Reboot, Picnic and Lift) you can build a portal that would complement what TED is doing. To answer the previous poster, there are also great entrepreneurs from Africa - doing what Hans Rosling was talking about, especially in the areas of health (like SMS services to help people select real drugs from the thousands of fakes). I'm happy to share other suggestions to give it more of a global touch. But this is icing on the cake... It is great to watch a great idea blossom.

[Loic]

more speakers from Asia is a good suggestion ! Thanks

[Funny Videos]

WE are all waiting for the new web 2008 to come up