My Opinion on LeWeb Conference: We Should Thank Loic It Happened at All

For the last two days I’ve been trying to figure out what I myself was supposed to say about LeWeb conference in Paris watching many negative comments on blogs and on Twitter. I attended the event last year and enjoyed it pretty much (could enjoy it even more had it not been for the chilly Paris – and yes, I do live in Siberia but I was constantly freezing in Paris because of the humidity there). Last year the event had some minor flaws (for me, at least) but I enjoyed it very much – mostly because of the people I met there. So I did not think judging from this far was fair at all for this year’s event – even with a new negative comment arriving every minute to Twitter criticizing the organizers (Loic LeMeur, founder of Seesmic in addition to his role of LeWeb organizer, and his team).

It is quite obvious that this year’s event had some pretty significant problems that have probably been best summarized by Maya Baratz of VentureBeat who also watched it from a far – but with attention enough to draw some conclusions. The problems were serious and for some attendees and watchers (who were often left without the promised live streaming from the sessions) they must have outweighed the good things about the conference. But while I can see the bad points perfectly well I somehow have a feeling that we should still thank Loic LeMeur for having the event at all – for a number of reasons. But yes, it’s hard not to notice the obvious problems.

First of all, I agree 100% with Allen Stern that Loic LeMeur could be better off inventing a way to use his own tool, Seesmic, for the video coverage of the conference instead of sending all the traffic to Ustream. Well, yes, I do remember that Seesmic does not have live streaming functionality but I am quite sure it could be integrated fairly well – not to raise unnecessary questions from bloggers like Allen and also to use the perfect chance to encourage people to get involved in video conversations as much as they can around the conference sessions that could at the very least be recorded and upload to Seesmic for users to reply with their own video comments.

Of course we can not know if using Seesmic could help keep the video streaming smooth and avoid problems interested watchers experienced yesterday with a lengthy downtime of the live video from the sessions – right when people woke up in the US and were eagerly watching. But at least in this case Loic would have been criticized for his own mistakes, not for problems another product (Ustream in this case) caused for his conference.

Also I do think that leaving people at an internet industry conference without internet access is kind of cruel but I also remember perfectly well that as a sponsor at April’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco we were not left without internet access entirely – it’s just that the organizers have decided that the exhibition hall where all sponsors had their booths to demonstrate their web products should not feature any free WiFi and made us pay a nifty amount (the amount that is even more amazing for a city where you can find free WiFi almost anywhere you happen to go) to have internet connection in our booth. And even that connection, the one that cost us the unbelievable amount that caused lengthy cursing in our team, was very much far from stable. And you know, Paris is not San Francisco and free WiFi is often something you can only dream of.

Also I do realize that not providing people with enough food to keep them happy throughout the day is not a good idea as even the best minds need food to have strength to share our bright ideas and engage in happy networking. So given all the problems above it is no wonder that we got all the criticism about LeWeb during the two days the conference ran.

True, when yesterday only freezing and hungry people sent tweets about LeWeb the search stream on Twitter looked particularly bad. But now that people are leaving Paris and heading back home there are other comments from people who are pretty happy about the event and mentioning it was great – despite absence of internet or food or heating.

So it is obvious that many people judge conferences based on how efficient they are for them and their businesses (like, who they met, how good networking was, how enjoyable sessions were, etc.). Again, last year when I did attend LeWeb I was also freezing (but that’s just natural for me as I’m freezing most of my life anyway) and did not have time for food at all as usually every time I tried to grab something to eat I was immediately distracted by a conversation. But it was a great event for me as I got a chance to meet some of the great people I knew from afar but never met in person. And a real-life conversation is still a real-life conversation.

This is why I think that many of those bashing the event should stop for a moment and try to realize what an incredible work it is to arrange such a conference and have everything run smoothly. After all, there are thousands of things your team should think of and it is pretty logical that at least something will go out of control.

The fact that we don’t really have many technology conferences in Europe makes LeWeb even more valuable than any other event held across the ocean – you do have plenty of them in the US and we do need something as well – and here is where LeWeb comes to everyone’s minds as the largest tech gathering here. Our events are known to attract less people as we do have less people working in technology so they are kind of more intimate and friendly for everyone participating. And it is true even for the largest event in the industry – LeWeb. So at the very least I think that bashing the only brave person who dared to start such a conference in Europe at all and to continue with it even at these difficult times is not exactly right.

And of course the most important thing that comes into play is economy. My argument is that given the current economic situation anyone not cancelling an event like LeWeb must be very brave. I have no idea of how sponsorships worked for Loic but I have my suspicions that it was probably worse than last years – especially with companies that paid for their sponsorship positions after September.

Another revenue source is what the conference organizers receive from people paying for their tickets – a nice amount of 1,500 euro for LeWeb. I myself had to cancel my participation for purely economic reasons – in the current economy I simply know I can’t afford an expensive trip, even though Loic was generous enough to offer me a free press pass. I can imagine there must have been quite a number of people who had to cancel their attendance – many of them for the now usual reason of cutting costs everywhere we can, others because of not feeling like attending an event in a situation when it is hard to predict how the economy will evolve and if any deals should happen at all or if you would be better off keeping your money to yourself. So chances are some of the people had to cancel their LeWeb plans and it could have hurt the budget of the event as well.

All in all, I think everyone working in the conferencing business now must be worried as many industries are already hurt by the financial crisis and many more will follow. So the event organizers will also experience problems losing both sponsors and attendants. Honestly, I have a feeling that Loic could predict some of the problems at LeWeb and he could cancel the event without too much embarrassment citing poor economy as the reason.

But he did not and I think we should still thank him for preserving the European tech event and for giving the place for European tech people to connect and communicate – as well as meet their colleagues from the other side of the ocean. For the record: I can not consider myself a big friend of Loic’s as I was only introduced to him at last year’s event briefly and only exchanged some Twitter messages since then. So I don’t think I can be considered to be biased – I just don’t like the way people are so quick to criticize people in the tech blogosphere without trying to see deeper reasons and deeper problems where they could exist. Yes, problems are bad and should be addressed to or preferably avoided – but that does not mean people handling such problems don’t have enough justifications to be considered additionally.

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