From the word tree of the inauguration speech. Pretty telling!

I

You

They

We

I have been thinking for the past two days which were my  gains, if any, from my participation to LeWeb. Listing a fair amount of   gains is the best defense for an event that has received a fair amount of criticism so far. Inexistent wifi,  scarce food and a cold room were sure a nuisance to most. But are these the things that attract us in a conference? No. They are enablers maybe, necesary preconditions for efficient work, but not the reason people fly over from other countries or continents.

So, what did I gain?

a. Getting out of the box

Our personal lives, our daily routines and jobs act like a lullaby to creative thinking. They reinforce the stereotypes we’ve acquired in the course of time and hinder our imagination. A frequently applied remedy is to step back, step aside, step out (call it whatever you want) for a while and see from a  different angle  things past and things to come. Doing so in complete isolation, or amidst  the distractions of a tourist destination, will not yield significant results. One needs new stimuli from  a crowd of smart, like minded people to  regenerate  his drive. LeWeb was for me just this: the perfect opportunity to sit back, listen to new ideas and perspectives, meet interesting people out of their daily routines, in a place where they had the luxury to pay me attention.  So I came up with a new idea about my business, which I believe can make a difference in the near future. And this despite the fact that I could not forget for a moment that back in my home country things had turned wild, people were burning cars and shops and tear gas was all you could breath.

b. Meeting the right people

Meeting interesting people is a good thing, but not necessarily a precondition for advancing you career or  your life. Meeting the right people, though is. With 1500  participants from 30 countries, you have to be a complete idiot not to find at least one person with  the potential to  be a catalyst for your plans. Thankfully, I found more than one and I am happy for it. Someone commented in Friendfeed whether the cost  of  this networking is justifiable. But that can only be appreciated by contrast: how much would it cost to arrange  meeting, say,  ten different people from four different countries and one different continent? Let alone the time required.

c. The European spin

Startups in Europe lack many things but most of all  lack  the publicity machine of their  US and Silicon Valley counterparts. Loic himself epitomizes it: he left Europe for the States in order  to have this missing link of success. Now, whether he’ll make it or not, it is a completely different story. But it is because of him  that LeWeb, unlike the other European events, is close to be the bridging event of the two worlds.  The closing session (:Gillmor Gang live from LeWeb), where the discussion eventually turned about the comparison of US vs European, brought forth this in the most vivid way. The stage was occupied by Americans and Loic was the only European trying to voice his arguments in a demonstrably soft and appeasing way. For me, as a European entrepreneur, this was a lesson taught. If Europe wants to make anything with its startups, then first needs to find a way to speak about them in a panEuropean fashion. Europe needs to create its own publicity machine for its startups, and needs to address Europeans first. Till then, it will be totally depended on the US and, probably, startups  seeking success will have to follow Loic’s example.

Closing this short note, I have to add that this was my first time to LeWeb, or any other major internet event. I have been in many corporate events before but nothing like this. For this reason I was more receptive than old timers and  more enthusiastic. Maybe after attending numerous conferences, I will also turn cynic and ironic. But till then, I am thankful for this first one.

Related:

Apologies for organizational issues at LeWeb
The Grand Le Web Mash-Up 2008
My Opinion on LeWeb Conference: We Should Thank Loic It Happened at All

Image by nikan_gr via Flickr

Jason Calacanis urged people gathered to listen him in the last Greek OpenCoffee, to abandon their isolation, form groups of common interests and advance and thrive on cooperation. Half jokingly,  half seriously, he appointed John Nousis, cofounder of the Zuni student social network, as the one responsible for a meetup of people interested in cloud computing and Amazon Web Services.

Well, today we witnessed this ‘joke’  come alive!

Close to 40 people gathered in  the cafeteria of Eleftheroudakis’ bookstore to watch John’s presentation, discuss and network.

I got a positive feeling from the meeting for the following reasons:

• Most people gagthered were IT professionals
• They seemed to have a genuine interest in the subject flared by an unconfessed concern about some project they were running.
• There were lots of ‘new  faces’ which means that this meetup motivated people that we do not usually see in other meetups.
• The subject itself (cloud computing, scaling, need for ‘unlimited’ bandwidth etc) points to projects that do not bear the usual characteristics of  Greek startups: local focus, limited reach etc.

“Now what?” you might ask. I am not sure whether or when there is going to be another meetup, but my suggestion is that it should. And it should have a more concrete form: to train people interested in the basics. Because startups don’t need only computing power that scales, but also people to maintain it.