le web 3: day one

The best thing about a attending a conference in Paris has to be that it’s in Paris but, after that, there are all sorts of reasons that Le Web 3 is likely to be a unique event.

With 1000 people attending from 36 countries it’s almost certainly the biggest conference of it’s type anywhere in the world. But it’s also a conference with an identity crisis and, myself and some other conference goers I’ve spoken to worry, risks, by trying to be something for everyone, lacking any real noticeable focus.

Le Web 3 is the third Les Blogs conference. Aside from the confusing change of gender between the two, the changing of the name does itself tell a story.

This used to be a conference about blogging and was attending primarily by bloggers. Last year’s event attracted 400 and the organiser, Loïc Le Meur, actually works for the European office of Six Apart, the company behind Movable Type, Typepad and Vox – all consumer blogging platforms.

Speakers last year included Rebecca MacKinnon who heads up Global Voices, a highly regarded website that helps bring the blogs of the world, and primarily the developing world, to the world; blogging activist Ethan Zuckerman; Kevin Anderson, one of the BBC’s first in house bloggers who now heads up The Guardian’s blogging efforts; blogging journalist Ben Hammersley who recently took his blog with him to Afghanistan; and Robert Scoble, famous for his blog Scobleizer in which he wrote about his work as technical evangelist at Microsoft.

There were, of course, also a smattering of suits on the speaker and guest lists but it was – at least at initial glance – a somewhat different crowd than this year’s much larger event seems to have attracted.

This year the speakers mostly come from companies with name recognition in most households, including those who don’t know what a blog is: Yahoo, Nokia, Google, Orange, Lastminute.com are all present. And so too are internet speakers from companies well known to bloggers: Dave Sifry who will give a live version of his monthly “state of the blogosphere” address; Skype; Mozilla; TechCrunch and a whole slew of representatives from tech start ups and venture capital investment companies.

This is why Le Web 3 is a conference with an identity crisis – like a busy branch of Wetherspoons or Yate’s Wine Lodge, it’s trying to be something for everyone, bringing together disparate groups of people who are all expecting something different from the next. Sometimes, of course, that approach can lead to interesting conversations, with bloggers and technologists and venture capitalists joining forces to take on the world or at least to light up the town apres conference.

So that’s what I’m going to focus on. No, not the drinking and socialising bit, although I did have a nice dinner with Graham Holliday, a friend who blogs at Noodle Pie and is covering Le Web 3 for the Guardian’s Comment is Free and finished off my evening in the hotel bar where I sat listening to groups at other tables talking about “value added services”, “ad revenue sharing”, “limited opportunities remaining for first mover advantage” and “targetting the mom and pop audience, diversifying, and ensuring you’re in the right place when it tips”.

What I plan to focus on is the people who are here and their motivations for coming. And maybe then I’ll be able to tell you what Le Web 3 is really all about.