LeWeb2009 – afterthoughts

Posted on December 10, 2009 
Filed Under Ramblings

It was my first LeWeb and I have to say, it was a big one. Big as in participants’ number, since there were more than 2000 people attending the conferences, the workshops and the competitions.

What I liked:

- a chance to see people you generally read about;
- a chance to talk to the people above (I have had the opportunity to talk to @ChrisBrogan, whose blog I read almost everyday, because of all the ideas he shares about communication and social media);
- a great opportunity for networking
- hearing, by mistake, someone in Mike Arrington’s entourage saying “I’m a little flower” – priceless. Because I first thought he said it :)
- I got to ask Tim Ferriss if the conference is part of the 4 hours he works in a week and I got put down for asking a stupid question – which it was :D but I had to ask :) – btw, great presentation
- I greatly enjoyed the speaches of Tony Hsieh of Zappos and Queen Rania of Jordan

What I didn’t like:

- too many participants (just an idea, for future editions: put the participant’s country on the badge, since you really underline being international. Also, you could add 3 tags for everyone with their area of interest: #investor, #developer aso)
- less interactivity than I would’ve expected (allegedely you could have talked to the speakers after their speaches. Yeah, right! By the time you got to the stage, you couldn’t really see most of them – I know this from the guys at Money.ro, who had a hell of a time trying to locate them)
- I don’t get who the target of the event was: mainstream, developers? For me, it was kinda light. I would have loved more case-studies from speakers, more detailed information on platforms (which is obvious, since I want to know how I can expand RevvNation’s audience using all those)

While I still think the event is worth attending, I would try to be very prepared before coming:
- have a plan of action – since there will be around 2000 people, you need to know from the start who you want to talk to (LeWeb provided a list of participants with their twitter accounts – a good place to start)
- think really hard if you need to be there (at that moment). You might be using your time better working at your product.

Last: startup owners are the same everywhere: shy, scared, but doing their best to have as good a presentation as possible. And freemium is still a buzzword.

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Comments

6 Responses to “LeWeb2009 – afterthoughts”

  1. Simona on December 10th, 2009 9:46 am

    At least you had the chance to be there… and that’s a blessing, too :)
    For sure, they’ll do it better next year! Hope so.. :)

  2. Bogdan Epureanu on December 10th, 2009 9:49 am

    It still sounds like you had a lot of fun. :P

  3. Chris Brogan... on December 22nd, 2009 7:03 am

    It was so great to say hi to you, Bobby. Thanks for taking the time. It meant a lot to me. I’m not sure I’ll be there in 2010, but I’m glad we met this time, at least.

  4. Impresii de la Le Web 2009 | Arena Biz on January 6th, 2010 2:53 pm

    [...] fost informatii care sa merite a fi notate. Aici am avut aceeasi problema pe care a observat-o si Bobby Voicu, si anume ca nu am inteles target-ului evenimentului: antreprenorii incepatori, antreprenorii care [...]

  5. SleepBarn on March 25th, 2010 9:09 pm

    quite fun and learning. that’s interesting.. hope to also learn here…

    Thanks,
    SleepBarn

  6. Constantin on June 13th, 2010 3:09 pm

    Wow! Talking about tech conferences my Blog Trip attendance (Brasov) was the biggest and first.

    If I knew you went there I would have thrown some other questions at you. :-)

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