I wanted to say there are women not only reporting but doing things. Well of course I am far from you (switzerland) and my site (www.profession-web.ch) is 100% french…which will not help…but still I just wanted to say we are a few ) I also reported and podcasted altough did not have the chance to meeting you. You must admit that such events are so rare, that yes, people jump on this opportunity to meet, network and report, which gave you the strange feeling to be as a star, chased by mics. Nonetheless, I agree with Jeff : you were one of the most interesting intervention. Get well and please, come back again next year !

I liked the politician’s appearance as well, but I can understand the other’s point of view. But I’m much more annoyed at having paid the price for (often blatantly) generic tech-talk (or even worse, bad, bad, bad, simplistic business talk like in that strange discussion about “enterprise 2.0″) than generic poli-talk. What I found most striking was that much of these talks could have taken place with slightly different vocabulary back in 1995, as well as in 1999. We have the infrastructure now, but none of the real questions (the tough economic once, property rights, online ad revenues etc…) have been answered. If you think about it, Brad Delong’s “speculative microeconomics for tomorrow’s economy” and Hal Varian’s “information rules” contain a lot more wisdom and understanding than was presented in Paris, a.d. 2006.

I’m not certain that it’s possible to have a non-scientific conference create that kind of wisdom, but I still think Loic was juggling with a few too many balls lately and, well, dropped a couple. But Paris is always worth a visit and getting a better glimpse into the French blogosphere (not so much during the conference though) made it well worth the time (and possibly the money).

I believee that, regardless of cultural differences, the Paris network (L’ile de France) proves to which extent physical proximity of people is important even in the digital world – just look at the dispersed German experience. And, of course, there’s Loic, who’s probably to a non-trivial amount responsible for the French blogging phenomenon, as one well known French blogger suggested to me.

But I did not get a chance to thank you for your talk at the conference. You and David Weinberger were about the only ones to add some real value for me. And a longer topical chat with David even appeased me intellectually.

I haven’t followed your blog regularly until now, but I think I will from now on.

Hope you’re feeling better now. happy holidays!

Any chance you’ll be available for our community college’s Spring semester Speaker’s Program(Houston)?

Please let me know if there’s a better way to contact you for this sort of thing.

Word taken:
I’d love to teach you from here (so that you stop inventing new ideas that I can’t translate) because I’m not sure the podcasts would be of any help (Top of the list: still “French Maids” — God: geeks are luscious)

You’ll be welcome anytime; feel free to come in the spring, which can be beautiful. Regarding diversity, I don’t know if you were around Barb’s or Belleville, but conference location aren’t always close to the hotter spots.

I couldn’t decide myself to come—but in the end, I was in the same state as you were, so I was happy to stay away from the fuzz. And of course, your take on it is one step ahead: “What he says is clueless? That’s interesting!” I love ethnographers: you could give them savages dudes that own nothing but dirt, they would make sense out of them — wait: that’s how they started.

Actually, ironically enough, Sarkozy in his very first worlds say that France is late & clueless. The fact that no one pointed it out says it all for me.

Unfortunately I could not go to Paris but I like very much your blog, studies and articles, and have read the long Financial Times article about you. Congratulations! Do you have a written summary of your Paris presentation?

Gyorgy Bogel