LeWeb'10, ça démarre! [fr]

[en] LeWeb'10 has started! Links to follow the conference online.

Eh ben, on pourra dire que les dernières semaines n’auront pas été de tout repos. Un deuxième dan de judo, le module 2 de la formation SAWI que je co-dirige, et LeWeb’10.

LeWeb’10, c’est près de 3000 personnes qui se retrouvent à Paris pour deux jours de conférences: plus d’une centaine d’orateurs, des dizaines de pays représentés, du contenu et des activités diverses qui satisferont les participants quels que soient leurs besoins. Mais surtout, surtout, du réseautage du tonnerre: tous les grands noms sont ici, et l’ambiance un peu “américaine” (vu d’Europe) rend les contacts faciles.

Mon rôle dans tout ça: gérer l’attribution des accréditations pour les blogueurs officiels. Un sacré boulot, sur les détails duquel je reviendrai dans un billet ultérieur.

Quelques photos pour commencer: #yulbizpar (rencontre de blogueurs d’inspiration Montréalaise), visite derrière la scène des Docks avec les blogueurs officiels (ils ont clairement bossé toute la nuit pour préparer l’endroit!), et l’album d’Egobox (sur Facebook) montrant nos délires photographiques lors de la Blogger Party au Six-Huit hier soir.

Plus à venir (on parle maintenant de voitures et de l’avenir de l’automobile — le hack “iPad comme auto-radio”, j’adore), tant côté photos que contenu.

Pour voir ce qui s’écrit en ce moment au sujet de la conférence:

Enjoy, que vous soyez sur place ou bien en train de suivre à distance!

Quick LeWeb'10 News, and IceRocket [en]

[fr] LeWeb'10? C'est le dernier moment pour demander une accréditation blogueur officiel (lisez un peu la littérature avant de le faire, cependant, pour être au fait de nos attentes). Inscrivez-vous à la blogger boat party organisée par Frédéric et Damien, regardez le programme (en ligne aux yeux de tous), taguez vos articles "leweb10" et pinguez IceRocket. Pour les détails, lire la version anglaise de cet article!

So, what’s up with LeWeb’10?

You have until Friday to send in your application if you would like us to consider you for official blogger accreditation. A little recommended background reading before you apply, though: the kind of profile we look for in official bloggers, what bloggers do at conferences, live-blogging vs. live-tweeting (and why we prefer the former), the guidelines introducting the application form. (If you applied before yesterday, your application has already been processed and you have been sent an e-mail — in any case. Check your spam folder if you haven’t heard from us.)

Frédéric and Damien are (like last year!) organizing a cool Blogger Party (on a boat!) for official bloggers and others. Number of attendees is limited to keep the party cozy, so don’t delay signing up for it if you want to be able to come.

LeWeb’10 programme is out! The first thing I noticed when reading through the programme is that we’ll be hearing Bertrand Piccard, that I coincidentally blogged about the other day on the Ebookers.ch travel blog. I’ve heard him speak in French, and he’s a great speaker — look forward to hearing from him again. There are of course many other exciting speakers, but he’s the one that jumped out at me.

You might remember that last month, I was musing on tags and the demise of Technorati. Today, I caught myself thinking what a shame it was that there wasn’t one central place where all bloggers present at LeWeb’10 (official or otherwise) could see their posts aggregated during the conference. Well, actually, there is one: IceRocket. So, tag your posts with “leweb10” and ping IceRocket, and we’ll start building a nice collection of posts on the leweb10 tag page. Official blogger posts will be aggregated on the conference site itself in addition to that.

Now I just need to figure out why IceRocket isn’t indexing my blog.

Blogger Accreditation for LeWeb'10: You Have One Week Left [en]

[fr] Si vous connaissez de bons blogueurs ou podcasteurs (surtout s'ils utilisent une langue autre que le français ou l'anglais) qui désireraient demander une accréditation pour venir couvrir la conférence LeWeb'10 à Paris en décembre, rendez-les attentif qu'il leur reste une semaine pour faire leur demande.

Hallo, good folks and bloggers and podcasters from all over the world.

This is just a heads-up that you have one week left (until November 5) if you would like to apply for accreditation as a blogger to cover the biggest european tech conference: LeWeb’10 in Paris, December 8-9th.

If you know any good bloggers (especially the kind who blog in languages other than English and French, or who come from little-represented countries), pass the word along to them!

LeWeb'10: Applying For an Official Blogger Accreditation [en]

[fr] Le formulaire pour demander une accréditation de blogueur officiel pour LeWeb'10 est maintenant en ligne.

You’ve been waiting long enough, and I think you for your patience. The form through which you can apply for a LeWeb’10 official blogger accreditation is now up.

Update: form is long closed, LeWeb’10 is behind us!

LeWeb'10 Bloggers: the Ball is Rolling [en]

Here we are — news about blogger accreditations for LeWeb’10 in Paris, this December!

First, I’d like to thank you all for the bloggers and podcasters you recommended this summer. These hundreds of recommendations have allowed us to preselect a shortlist of official bloggers which will be truly international. We will be e-mailing these folks within the next days to invite them to attend the conference as official bloggers.

But this is only a small part of the official blogger selection! Once our “international bases” are covered (let’s say in a week or so) we will provide a form allowing bloggers and podcasters to apply directly for accreditation.

The form will be a bit different from last year’s, and there will not be a deadline: we will be processing applications as they come (we have refined our criteria for official blogger eligibility) as long as we have blogger passes available.

So don’t worry if you’re not getting an e-mail from us right now — we know there are plenty of great bloggers and podcasters we have not included in our international selection, and we look forward to receiving your applications once the form is online in a week or so!

LeWeb'10: Tell Us Which Bloggers or Podcasters to Invite [en]

Pay attention: this stage is not about pitching yourself, it will come later (September) — this is the time to tell us who else we should not miss.

As you probably know, I’m managing blogger accreditations for LeWeb in Paris for the third time. We’ve decided to change the system slightly this year to ensure a more balanced representation of countries and linguistic groups. We’ve also decided to do away with the big deadline to request an accreditation, and will be evaluating applications on a case-by-case basis.

Basically, here’s what we’re going to do:

First, reach out to motivated and influential bloggers and podcasters in all countries and linguistic communities. We need your help for that — to identify them, and maybe also to contact them. This is what this post is about.

Second, in September, we will allow individual bloggers/podcasters to apply for an accreditation.

We have thought quite a bit about what we expect from official bloggers, as a conference, and what kind of population we want to reach and invite. Our criteria this year will be stricter. To make it clear: if you work for an industry agency or big company, your company should be paying for your ticket — unless you are primarily known as a high-profile blogger, independently of your work. But more on that in good time (September).

So, back to our plan for July: the problem with the system that we used over the last two years is that it was perfectly possible for us to end up with no blogger from country XYZ covering the conference — or no coverage in certain languages. We want to make sure that LeWeb’10 echoes beyond political and linguistic barriers.

We have a pretty good idea who the main players are in anglophone and francophone circles. However, you probably know your country or linguistic group’s bloggers or podcasters better than we do.

Here’s who we’re looking for. Official bloggers and podcasters should:

  • have a passion for content and reporting
  • commit to attending and covering the conference (it’s in English!)
  • have significant reach and influence inside their community.

Although the accreditation allows to attend the conference for free, we cannot cover expenses.

Got a few people in mind? Great! Please use this form to recommend three bloggers/podcasters from your linguistic group or country.

Thanks a lot for your help! Please tell your friends speaking other languages or from other countries to send in their recommendations too.

What do bloggers do at conferences? [en]

In the process of getting ready for managing blogger accreditations for LeWeb’10 in Paris (for the third time, but warning, the system will be different this year!), I’m having a good hard think about what bloggers actually do at conferences that makes them a valuable audience.

I mean, everybody today is live-tweeting (a bit of a pleonasm). Clearly, if a conference is to invite “new media people” or have “official bloggers”, something more is expected than a brain-dump in the real-time stream. (Not that I have anything against that, but the interest of such a dump fades quickly with time.)

Bloggers (and podcasters) have various talents. I’ve finally learned (after years of finding what I did pretty normal) that mine is live-blogging. Others, like Charbax, catch people in the corridors and interview them — I was so impressed by his Lift’08 videos (you can find his interview of me somewhere on the 2nd or 3rd page) that I invited him to come and do the same thing at Going Solo. These are just two examples amongst many others.

So, here’s where I need your help: I’m trying to make a list of “blogger/podcaster missions” for conferences. Here’s what I’ve got:

  • live-blogging of sessions
  • synthetic/critical blogging of sessions/event (somewhat less live)
  • photography (live and less live)
  • speaker interviews (written, audio, video)
  • corridor interviews (written, audio, video)
  • start-up/entrepreneurial scene coverage (maybe this needs to be broken up into sub-missions?)
  • “off” coverage: parties, networking events…

What else can you think of? If you’re a blogger or podcaster who likes to attend tech conferences, what value do you consider you bring to the event? I’m all ears 🙂