{"id":2502,"date":"2009-10-24T11:17:55","date_gmt":"2009-10-24T11:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.com\/blog\/?p=2502"},"modified":"2023-02-24T19:25:42","modified_gmt":"2023-02-24T19:25:42","slug":"but-i-came-here-for-an-argument-le-webs-greatest-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2009\/10\/but-i-came-here-for-an-argument-le-webs-greatest-success\/","title":{"rendered":"But I Came Here For An Argument! Le Web&rsquo;s Greatest Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>If Christmas is coming up, that can mean a few things, but one of them is that <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/Geraldine\">Geraldine Le Meur\u2019s<\/a> conference, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.leweb.net\/\">Le Web<\/a>, is just round the corner. It\u2019s managed to make itself one of the tent-pole conferences in the Web 2.0 year which is not bad going seeing as it is as far away from Silicon Valley as is possible.<\/p>\n<p>Why has it got that position? Because unlike other conferences it has built up a mystique around it that makes it attractive. Not just because of the speakers, or the company news that comes out of the conference. Not jut because of the location or the time of year. And not just because, at its heart, it\u2019s a conference organised by the female of the species that know the sensible thing is to let the men <em>think<\/em> they\u2019re running it.<\/p>\n<p>All of the above is true, but I think Le Web is a success because <em>everybody knows that something controversial will happen<\/em> and human nature means we want to be there when it happens.<\/p>\n<p>Throw that on top of the a conference that pulls in some big international names, mixes them up with the best commentators and companies in Europe, and let them talk about the latest trends on the internet, and you have the ingredients for a conference. The controversy is the spice on the top.<\/p>\n<p>And we all know how good the French are at cooking.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Le Web\" style=\"border-right: 0px; border-top: 0px; display: block; float: none; margin-left: auto; border-left: 0px; margin-right: auto; border-bottom: 0px\" height=\"339\" alt=\"Le Web\" src=\"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/image75.png\" width=\"445\" border=\"0\" \/>&#160;<em>Last years chill out room at Le Web<\/em><\/p>\n<p>FTC disclosure<em>: I will be attending Le Web as an \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.leweb.net\/community\/09-official-bloggers\">official blogger<\/a>\u2019; being Scottish I didn\u2019t complain about <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2008\/12\/11\/it-was-the-best-of-times-it-was-the-worst-of-times-it-was-le-web\/\">the heating last year<\/a> although a nice hot cup of Le Web supplied tea helped; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.loiclemeur.com\/\">Loic<\/a> once bought me a coffee in San Francisco; and I probably have a French Secret Service file somewhere after Nicolas Sarkozy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/2006\/12\/13\/leweb3-fallout-as-a-speaker-im-not-happy\/\">bumped my session<\/a> in 2007.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If Christmas is coming up, that can mean a few things, but one of them is that Geraldine Le Meur\u2019s conference, Le Web, is just round the corner. It\u2019s managed to make itself one of the tent-pole conferences in the Web 2.0 year which is not bad going seeing as it is as far away from Silicon Valley as is possible. Why has it got that position? Because unlike other conferences it has built up a mystique around it that makes it attractive. Not just because of the speakers, or the company news that comes out of the conference. Not<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[595,53,22,42],"tags":[122,1440,1439,542,561,1441],"class_list":["post-2502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-595","category-blogs-and-blogging","category-conferences","category-le-web-les-blogs","tag-conference","tag-controversy","tag-geraldine-le-meur","tag-leweb","tag-loic-le-meur","tag-nicolas-sarkozy","comments-off"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Gl0-Em","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62349,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions\/62349"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ewanspence.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}