Les Blogs: Impressions

Got back from Paris this morning on the 7:35 flight. This meant getting up after a long night of red wine and only four hours sleep, so please excuse me if I lapse occasionally into incoherence. My exhaustion is counterbalanced somewhat by the fact that I returned to Prague to discover that Peer Pressure had been indirectly meta-slashdotted. That is to say, Boing Boing linked to my translation of the 01.net article, and was in turn linked by Slashdot. Even indirect meta-slashdotting gets you a lot of hits, apparently, and this was the first time I ever got a emergency distress SMS (”now what have you posted!?”) from our system administrator. Very cool.

So anyway: Les Blogs. As perhaps the first ever one-day European social software shindig, this was definitely an experimental endeavor. I didn’t know what to expect, and when I mentioned this afterwards to Loïc Le Meur, the organizer, he laughed and said, “Neither did I!” I’m glad to report that it was a resounding success. My only complaint relates to the very start of the conference, which was held in the imposingly fortress-like Senate building. My friend Pierre and I arrived panting and out of breath, about ten minutes late, only to find that there was still a queue winding out of the security area at the entrance, composed of suspiciously Les Blog-like characters (i.e. young, male, sporting pocket protectors). We hadn’t stopped for breakfast, but we naturally assumed that a mound of buttery pastries and treacle-like coffee would be awaiting us in the conference room.

As it transpired, we waited another 20 minutes just to be X-rayed and let into the building. When we finally arrived at the room, there were no refreshments of any type and the room was packed. Mega-packed. It was all we could manage to find two seats within earshot of each other. That and I had bought new shoes the day before and my feet were killing me. So I viewed the first two hours of the conference through a haze of coffee-less, croissant-less, cramped-between-two-strangers, in-excrutiating-pedial- agony ill temper. Naturally none of this was in any way the fault of the conference organizers, besides the lack of coffee, and after hours of ceaseless backchannel griping, I’m quite sure Loïc won’t make that mistake again.

The proceedings were kicked off by a highly entertaining Joi Ito, who spoke about the Creative Commons license. It was cool to see a true star of the blogosphere in action, and his remash of the Republican National Convention (which I have thoughtfully mirrored) was absolutely hilarious. He also showed a cute Flash movie explaining why we need Creative Commons. I don’t suppose this was news to most of the attendees, but it was interesting to see what materials are being produced to promote alternative content licensing schemes. Joi was followed by a panel of notables who debated what a blog is (much more on this in my next post).

I arrived at the afternoon session having rushed home to change my shoes and snarf down a cup of coffee and a pain au chocolat, stopping by the conference buffet for finger food to wash it all down. There had been a certain amount of attrition, so the room was also less crowded. For me, the afternoon’s events were therefore more enjoyable in every way than the morning session. Other highlights:

• The conference backchannel (a chat room set up for participants to talk in real time about the proceedings) was in full effect, often projected onto the screen on the wall behind the panelists. In fact, someone dubbed it the “front channel” because it figured so prominently in the day’s activities. I’d never experienced a backchannel in action before, and it turned out to be great fun seeing the audience launch quibs and questions behind the speaker’s back. It was sometimes hard to keep up with both at once, but it seems appropriate that in this age of information overload we were forced to multitask even at a live event. Perhaps the most striking use of the backchannel was when someone in the front row asked the room whether anyone had a Nokia 7710 charger, and said charger was dutifully handed up from the back row a few minutes later.
• Sky Rock, a popular French radio station, provided a perfect example of how companies can adapt their business models to thrive in the internet age. They set up Skyblog, a seemingly unrelated sideline, and proceeded to become the leader in the French blog-hosting market, with 1.8 million blogs at last count. Apparently it has become an indispensable accessory for French schoolchildren and contributed mightily to France’s status as the number two blogging nation after the U.S. It seems like a no-brainer to push aggressively to convert your existing large customer base, if you have one, into market-leading status in an emerging technology sector, but depressingly few companies have the guts and gumption to execute on this successfully.
• My favorite throw-away line: ICQ cofounder Yossi Vardi’s assertion that ICQ tops the list of the three leading “Jewish brands”, based on the number of MSN search results. The second two are also quite well-known: Jesus and the Bible. Ross Mayfield kept notes and posted an impressively detailed record of Yossi’s talk.

The cherry on the cake was the dinner bash at the swank Alcazar restaurant, in the 6th arrondissement about 100 metres from where I spent a bohemian summer while in college. Pierre had other plans, so I went by myself, and was horrified to discover that it was a buffet rather than a sit-down affair, meaning that I would have to ply my wonky social skills or spend the evening alone. Luckily I happened to plunk myself down on the couch next to Olivier of Blog.fr, with whom I artlessly struck up a conversation. He turned out to be an interesting and amusing chap, and a golf enthusiast to boot (the same goes for his colleague Jean-René, who joined us a few minutes later). So I’ll be dusting off my clubs for my next trip to Paris. Soon, I hope!

[lesblogs]

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