LeWeb3, Politics, and Proportions
If you ever closed a deal, you probably know that bigger influence comes with bigger responsibility. Bigger responsibility comes with bigger noise to filter.
This summarizes our zen moment of the day.
Now for the case study:
My friend Loic, who organized the wonderful LeWeb3 event, is now taking the heat for letting politicians in the event and having the 2nd day schedule changed at the last minute.
Well for me this criticism is naive at best and hypocrisy/violent at worst .
Loic created this event to empower the internet and the blogosphere, which is something that he is doing on a daily basis for the last few years, and doing it best. And now, he got a nobel prize winner, and the next president of France (?) to come and give recognition to the importance of the blogosphere, and the critics are trying to virtually lynch him for letting them in.
First, even though I am an Israeli that doesn't necessarily share the same opinions of Mr. Peres, I will take an hour with this remarkable man any day. He probably did more for making our world a better place than any Web2.0 company will ever do...
And then we geeks had to "stand" François Bayrou & Nicolas Sarkozy.
We blogo-geeks want more recognition; More people to understand why blogs are great and old media sucks. We want less censorship,and get governmental support for internet activities. Well guess what - you and I took part of it and saw it happening at LeWeb3. The "price" we paid is ~2 hours change in schedule. Big deal.
Get some proportions.
The problem was the impact of adding the politicians to an already-ambitious (in terms of time) programme - some items were cancelled, others cut considerably. Several key speakers also didn't turn up. This all followed day one, which was poorly moderated and facilitated. As a friend of Loic, you probably didn't pay for your ticket. In which case, your view is understandable, but your perspective flawed.
Posted on: December 17, 2006 at 09:13 PM