After last year’s Le Web3 experience, my expectations for this year’s Le Web3 were very low!
However, 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. I had conversations with Michael Arrington, Robert Scoble, Marc Canter, Stephanie Booth, Hans Rosling, Loic, Lee Wilkins, JP Rangaswami, Doc Searls, Laura Fitton, Dave Sifry, Jeff Clavier, Martin Varsavsky, Dave Weinberger, Om Malik, Rodrigo Sepulveda and many more too numerous to mention.
There were one or two minor issues, the wifi was poor but as Loic had contracted and paid Swisscom to make that work the fault for that is squarely on their shoulders.
From a speakers’ perspective I was surprised that the organisation charged with the AV only had a single wireless mic. This delayed my getting onstage as I had to wait while Janus Friis came offstage and had his mic removed before I could mic up and go on. Even more incredibly though, the AV crowd didn’t have a wireless ‘clicker’ to move the slides forward! This meant that I had to stand at the podium pressing the right-arrow key on my laptop to move the slides on! I like to walk around when I am giving a talk so this really interfered with my ability to be natural onstage.
Other than those minor issues, the conference was a roaring success. I didn’t hear any delegates say that they were disappointed that they had attended.
Kudos to Loic, Geraldine, Cathy Burke and their team.
Not wanting to be critical but I couldn’t help noticing that you mentioned Ireland at the very least 20 times, which would make it the country with the most number of mentions over the two days.
“Loic had contracted and paid Swisscom”.
There’s the problem – Swisscom. I’ve had really, really poor experience with Swisscom for connectivity over the years. They seem to thrive on a least-cost, highest-profit model that delivers the lowest possible bandwidth to the consumer at the highest possible cost. Just last week I paid 12 swiss francs per _hour_ (that’s £60 per day) for a very slow connection in a hotel ~ 20kbps at best. I’ve got a very low opinion of Swisscom these days and avoid them at all costs.
You wouldn’t be trapped next to your laptop if you had a mid-range Bluetooth SonyEricsson phone since nearly every SE upgrading around EUR 200 in Ireland comes with Presenter installed. It sees your Bluetooth laptop and the phone’s joystick works like your laptop’s mouse. Recommended.
@Pete – yup, I have had similar issues with Swisscom when stuck with paid wifi in hotels
@Bernie – I was kicking myself afterwards because I have an IR remote which comes with all recent Macs and functions very well as a slide forwarder but I didn’t bring it with me because, stupidly, I assumed the av people would have remote slide forwarders! I won’t be making that mistake again!
Tom, I really enjoyed the keynote you delivered at Le Web 3! Well done!
Tom, you’re making me blush. That is awfully nice company to be in, that list. Wonderful meeting you & look forward to more conversations! Good luck with your move…
Interesting post.
Interesting post. I’m quite amazed that the prestigious conference having a faulty wifi connection
Good to see the conference was worth it! Is it every year?