Le Web3 Live : news from inside !

How to ease the webmen’s conscience

Nina — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 12:12:30 +0000

Who said Africa was not present at Le Web 3 ?

Le Web 3 ended up wednesday afternoon with two sparks of ecology and humanitarian relief. Almost an hour of noble feelings to make the web leaders think of something else than business. Not easy, but you have to get money where it is.

Wind energy in Ireland

It was 4.30PM when Tom Raftery, a blogger and social media consultant jumped on the scene to talk of … wind
energy in Ireland.

Did Le Web 3 suddenly move to Bali, to join the climate change conference? The question seemed to be in the mind of some viewers, who were not so many at this late hour of the day.

Yet the brilliant presentation of Tom Raftery succeeded to capture the audience attention. He explained what were the challenges of the wind power in Ireland : it represents 6,5% of the energy demand of the country, and the governement decided to move up to 33% in 2025.
This choice causes some problems : wind power is very variable, when the demand is stable. Energy demand and wind energy supply are almost entirely out-of-sick. For instance, the wind farms energy production falls off at 9AM when the demand picks up.
“If you cannot control the supply, you have got to try control the demand”, said Raftery. His idea to fulfill this goal is to network data centers to collect precise informations about the demand, and then to balance wind sudden drops or picks by speeding up or slowing down data centers generators. Another big challenge is to educate citizens in order to make them use their washing machine or another electric device when the demand and the prices are lower.

All this can be referred as “energy management” for Raftery, a word to recall that energy issues open new business fields. Thereas not a single question at the end of his talk. The speech, as relevant as it was, still seemed quite misplaced in Le Web 3 conference.

Why did Tom Raftery talk of wind energy here? He has two simple answers to the question : his friend Loïc Le Meur asked him (nothing can be refused to the Web 3 guru it seems), and “the people who are here are influencer”. So there is no better place to pass on his message, he thought.

(interview of Tom Raftery will come soon)

Images of poor African people

After the ecological moment, came the humanitarian minute.

To introduce the presentation of UNHCR plan Nine Milion, which aims to provide education to nine million children in 2010, a movie was broadcasted. We could see refugees children from Darfur or Irak, saying they wanted to go to school to become a boss or a teacher, followed by beautiful images of the children carrying wood in desertic areas, with a Hollywood high-moving music : the show went one, even on this sensitive topic.
Then a UNHCR relief worker dedicated his speech to his colleagues who died in an Al Qaeda bomb attack in Algiers the day before. His voice was shivering. He continued : “With all the creativity in the room, maybe we could reflect how we could bring technology to the “dark places” of the world, and try to make them a use for education.” Some people leaft the conference room, others were watching mangas cartoons on their laptops. But a few were still listening.

The last speaker was Hans Peter Bromdo, a Norwegian businessman leading Plum. This company provides tools to websites to share their content and become more “social”.
With seven other “Digital champions”, he takes part to the webmastering of Nine million plan, and said just a few words to the remaining audience : “All you have to do is helping create nine million references on the web to the site ninemillion.org. Post something on your blog, twitt it, make a video, something that points back to Nine million.org.”

A sincere plea to launch a big communication campaign, in which Nike Inc., Microsoft, Merck & Co. Inc., or Procter & Gamble are also involved.
After the end of his speach, Hans Peter Bromdo explained why he is committed in this action and why Le Web 3 conference was the right place to alert on the subject.

(interview of Hans Peter Bromdo will come soon)

These last moments of Le Web 3 created an incomfortable feeling. After two days of frenetic business unrest, it sounded like “Oh Gosh! we almost forget to tell you something about climate change and poor african people.” A unpleasant smell of “politically correct”. But it may have triggered something in the mind of people who have great influence on the web and money to give out. And this is far from useless.

Articles relatifs

After Le Web3: a web review

Caroline — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 19:05:51 +0000

A few days after the end of LeWeb3, here’s a review of different articles about the conference.

(more…)

Articles relatifs

There’s another Web out there

etienne — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 10:38:25 +0000

No sooner LeWeb3 is over that critics point out that each edition of Loïc Le Meur’s conference persists to avoid the “other Web” such as open sources softwares, webartists, hackers and gamers. Well that’s true in a way, if one consider the appearance of Mozilla Europe social entrepreneur* Tristan Nitot or VoW “shogun” Joi Ito as exceptions. That lays also in the fact that LeWeb3 has no pretention of covering the entire Web landscape, but only its business side. (more…)

Articles relatifs

G.ho.st: business is business

etienne — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 17:22:56 +0000

Israeli citizen Zvi Schreiber is CEO of G.ho.st (Global Hosted Operating System), a brand new startup which allows you to carry for free your desktop, data, settings, etc. to any browser in the world on the Internet. G.ho.st won the bronze medal in LeWeb3’s startup competition Wednesday… (more…)

Articles relatifs

Starck is everywhere

Nina — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:50:14 +0000

Relaxing on the mezzanine’s couch… but keeping an eye on the Starck show.

See the article about Starck’s show here and his profile.

Articles relatifs

The sexy side of LeWeb3

Caroline — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 17:09:33 +0000

We girls expected to meet nerds, and only nerds, at LeWeb3. By nerds, we mean very skinny boys with bags under eyes and no life. No glamour, no sex appeal. Surprise, there are some counter-examples.

Here a (definitely subjective) selection of boys we would be glad to share a restaurant with. Or more if possible.

(more…)

Articles relatifs

E-book is a complete failure until now (Hans Rosling)

Nina — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:50:50 +0000

Hans Rosling thinks e-book developers missed the opportunity to create “3D” stories. According to him, the most efficient way to read a literary work like a novel is… in a traditional paper book. On the web, you tend to find more superficial stories than serious works, Rosling feels.

Articles relatifs

Loïc Le Meur interviewed in LeWeb3-Live.net…

Aymeric — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 16:22:53 +0000

… Well, sort of!

(more…)

Articles relatifs

French “business angel” Jeff Clavier sheds light on his unusual job

pauline — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:52:28 +0000

French “business angel” Jeff Clavier is the founder and managing partner of SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed-stage investors in Web 2.O startups. Since 2004, he has invested in more than 20 consumer Internet companies developing new concepts or revisiting old ideas with new technologies. In 2007, he was recognized as one of the 13 “Web 2.0 King Makers,” by Business 2.0. A few minutes ago, he took a few moments to give us more details about his job.

Go to the blog entry to see the video!

Articles relatifs

Janus ‘By Chance’ Friis invests on Web TV

Aymeric — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 15:18:31 +0000

According to Janus Friis, great successes like Kazaa and Skype were only “by-chance ideas”! When he started to work with Niklas Zennström, they wanted to “basically start something,” but they did not know exactly what. This was the very first step to the birth of Kazaa…

(more…)