Le Web 3 Controversy
Neville Hobson points me to a blog-storm surrounding Le Web 3, the major European blog conference.
It appears that a number of participants were mightily pissed off by the ‘hi-jacking’ of the event by politicians and the apparant disdain with which they treated their audience. I’ll share some of the participants words here.
Nicole Simon - Loic Lemeur: Betraying 1000 attendees for his own political ambitions?
The result of this conference is very simple for me:
What was done to us today goes against anything this new world stands for. I am surprise about how stupid a person like Loic Lemeur can be to still try to pull it off. ESPECIALLY him.For what? The only answer I have for this is:
Loic Lemeur has sold out his european peer group for some cheap headlines in french politics - if at all. He has destroyed trust and confidence in a way I have never seen this before.He has not shoot himself in the foot, this is more like having shot himself in the head.
Shane Richmond (UK Telegraph Blogs) - Why are they here?
Many delegates are angry that, having spent a lot of money to come here and talk about the web, they are watching political broadcasts instead. The scheduled sessions have been bumped, cut short or interrupted as one political figure after another queues up to praise blogging and the internet.
David Weinberger - Sarkozy - Conservative candidate lectures us
I feel like i’ve been lectured by a guy who has no actual understanding of the Internet. I don’t know about French politics, but personally, I sort of hated him. (This is not a well-grounded opinion.)
And even further than this, the TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi was fired after criticizing the conference (in less strident words than above), however his sacking was apparantly due to other ethical concerns.
Wow, this is truly amazing. If you assemble a huge collection of influential bloggers from around the world, the last thing you want to do is treat them with arrogance. It will be very interesting to see how this plays out - the early commenters could be overreacting, or the Le Web 3 organizers could have made a major mistake in putting their own interests ahead of their blogger constituency.
Did any Forward readers attend? It would be great to hear your thoughts… (Andrea?)
Technorati Tags: le web 3, David Weinberger, Nicole Simon, Shane Richmond, Nicolas Sarkozy, blog conference, controversy, European bloggers, Sam Sethi, TechCrunch UK
Actually, I had no problem at all with having the presidential candidates come to Le Web 3 to talk about their Internet policies. I happened to take a visceral dislike to one of them, but I thought Le Web was enhanced by their presence. But, I suspect there’s a cultural divide here, since in America, it’d be a coup to get presidential candidates to show up at a tech conference.
Comment by David Weinberger — December 14, 2006 @ 7:56 am
I have to agree. The amount of huffing and puffing people are doing seems way overblown. After all, Sarkozy may very well be the next president of France, and frankly, it is good to know what the leader of one of the most developed economies in the world thinks about the internet. Too bad that the socialist candidate Segolene Royal didn’t come though, she has used blogging extensively to build up an online campaign.
Comment by Boz — December 14, 2006 @ 3:17 pm
Sam Sethi has explained a lot that he has not been fired but has decide to leave because it was the only thing that was sensible to do.
Please don’t spread fuds like that.
Comment by Anonymous — December 15, 2006 @ 6:32 am
Having most recently worked for a French corporation, I must point out to Forward reaaders that it is almost impossible for French marketing and communications practitioners to practice their respective crafts without crossing the line into the political arena — even when serving as hosts for such a high-profile and influential gathering. Why is this?
Because France is a socialist country, and the French government has been integrally involved in the nation’s business community for years, including controlling majority and minority stakes in well-known French corporations; authorizing ministry officials to serve as members of boards of directors; and exerting influence over public policies and other forms of legislation designed to control French business activities. Think of it is as corporate ethnocentrism in the extreme.
The French government plays such a prominent role in Corporate France that professionals logically assume that the feds want to, and should be, involved in everything, even a blogging conference. Believe me, such projects, at the least in the eyes of French practitioners, take the UTMOST priority.
Thus, it should come as no surprise to anyone that Le Web 3 was a disaster in this regard.
Comment by Keith — December 15, 2006 @ 2:33 pm