Web 2 Ireland

Sam and Peter from TeamworkPM at #leweb

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgTqJyPszLI

Paul Barry of Temetra.com at #LeWeb on the Enterprise Ireland stand. Temetra provides utility metering data management solutions to service providers in Ireland and across the world.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBvLNQ98oQo

In a bid to avoid the usual conference fragmentation tomorrow (Tuesday) night in Paris, we’d like to suggest the following places where we have been and enjoyed before.

Drinks from 6pm at: Brasserie Select Haussmann, 28 Boulevard Haussmann, 75009 Paris. PinPoints location here.

Food from 8ish (an Irish 8pm) at: Au Petit Riche, 25, Rue Le Peletier. (about 250m away). PinPoints location here.

Nearest Metros are Station Chaussée d’Antin-La Fayette (Line 9), Boulevard Haussmann and Station Richelieu-Drouot (Lines 8 and 9), Boulevard des Italiens.

The restaurant is obviously subject to numbers, availability and booking which we’ll sort tomorrow. Failing that, the brasserie itself does decent standard fare. Leave a comment below, @conoro on Twitter or text me on 087-9790297 if you think you’ll be coming.

To aid with finding each other, any chance we can all use Foursquare? Follow me here.

Next week will see the largest ever number of Irish people at Le Web which began as Les Blogs back in 2004. It’s building up to be a stonkingly good few days.

Your old reliables, Messrs Burns and O’Neill, will of course be there but mainly wearing our start-up hats this time. So we’re chuffed that there will be a new Web2Ireland blogger/vlogger on the ground. A huge thanks to John Peavoy for agreeing to be the eyes and ears of the Irish web community over the two days. As anyone who knows John will tell you, he’s not just a Super-Connector, he is also deeply interested in the web and Irish start-ups.

If you spot him with his flipcam, please share all your thoughts about the event. We’ll be posting as often as possible here during and after Le Web.

Since nothing official seems to be in place for Tuesday night, let’s try and arrange dinner and a few drinks for the Irish contingent. I’m on @conoro,  Fergus is on @fergusb and John is on @johnpeavoy. We’ll all be on @web2ireland. I’ll also be on +353-87-9790297

It’s less than a week to Le Web and we’ve all started smoking Gauloises and reading Sartre in preparation.

Karen Hallez has a great post over on the Enterprise Ireland Best Connected Blog with all the details of the Ireland Demozone. The startup-ups who’ll be there are:

• Cauwill Technologies (nominated for the Start Up Competition)
• Teamwork PM
• Feedhenry
• Gruupy.com
• Infacta (Miximo)
• LouderVoice
• Mxsweep
• Realex Payments
• Temetra
• Weedle
• Worky

You can follow all these Irish companies on Twitter at http://twitter.com/entirl/clients-at-leweb/

Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland will be hosting a networking reception on the Demozone.  At 17.30 on the 8th December, Ireland's Ambassador to France, Paul Kavanagh, will kick off the reception to enable Irish companies, VCs, the big names in the Internet world and journalists to come together and share news and views.

For more information, please contact:

Karen Hallez, Enterprise Ireland Paris, karen.hallez@enterprise-ireland.com

or

Ray Walsh, Enterprise Ireland Dublin, ray.walsh@enterprise-ireland.com

I’ve been finding it hard to keep this news under my hat since the idea was first floated a few months back. There will be an Ireland Pavilion at Le Web in Paris this year! This is just an absolutely brilliant idea and huge kudos goes to all of those in Enterprise Ireland who conceived the idea and then got full support for it both internally and from the IDA.

Le Web is the most important conference about the web in Europe every year. You will not see a more impressive collection of heavy hitters in one place anywhere else. It’s the kind of place where you can meet people like Marissa Meyer or Niklas Zennström or Fred Wilson. My trivial claim to fame is that I think I’m the only Irish person to attend every year since 2006 and I’ve watched it getting better and better.

This year some of the speakers on December 8th and 9th include Dennis Crowley, JP Rangaswami, Toni Schneider and Carlos Ghosn.

The importance of Ireland having its own stand at Le Web cannot be underestimated. The first country ever to have a pavilion like this at the show. One place where global businesses, VCs, other European/US start-ups and leading tech bloggers can see the best of Irish web start-ups. One place where you can point people to in the coming weeks and say “we’ll be there, pop on over for a coffee”.

A problem with giant events like Le Web is that co-ordinating meetings can be a nightmare. People are being pulled in every direction and we are all vying for our own little bit of attention. This stand solves that problem in one fell swoop.

I am convinced this genius move will get a ton of coverage from all the attending press. Who wouldn’t be intrigued by this? After all the relentless bad news about Ireland in the global press where we allowed a cabal of innumerate imbeciles to rape our country, this gives journos a totally new, positive growth story to tell. “Ireland may be screwed now but these start-ups are re-building it from the ground up”.

So, interested?

The EI package is as follows:

• A full LE WEB pass, giving you access to all the seminars, networking events and competitions over the two days
• Use of a dedicated 18m² meeting place/demo area which your company can use to meet with key contacts and demo your solution.
• A drinks reception on the Irish pavilion on the evening of 8th December for EI clients and your guests.
• In the run up to LE WEB, EI overseas offices will endeavour to link your company in with influential people from overseas markets that will be coming to LE WEB.
• Your company's profile and contact details in Enterprise Ireland's Internet marketing materials designed specifically for the event

EI is providing this at a totally knock-down price.

There is really only one limitation which is that you must be an EI client to apply to be on the stand. There are only 14 slots so not everyone is going to get through. To apply, simply contact Karen Hallez in the EI Paris office at Karen.Hallez@enterprise-ireland.com and she will send you an application form and details on the cost etc. They really need to get this wrapped up in the next few days so apply now.

Also don’t forget that this is the last weekend where you can enter the Le Web Startup Competition.

I know I’ve been lauding Enterprise Ireland a lot recently, but with good reason. Of all the state and semi-state bodies I’ve dealt with since the country went to hell, EI and all its staff are the ones that more than rose to the challenge and they are impressing me with every single encounter. Right now, the way EI operates shows the best of what the public sector and private sector working together should be about.

Geraldine LE MEUR has just announced the annual Le Web Startup competition. This is one of the most important ways you can get your start-up in front of a European audience of tech media, influencers and investors. Previous Irish entrants include Cloudsplit, LouderVoice, Pixenate and Touristr.

There is expected to be a much stronger than usual Irish contingent heading over this year. Do your start-up a favour and enter before October 15th.

The Start-Up Competition will take place on Dec 8, 2010 and there is no fee to participate. They will select the best 16 applications to demonstrate their products on a dedicated stage throughout the day.

The 3 winners of the competition will then have a chance to present their companies on the LeWeb main stage, during a special session on December 9.

Selected Startups will get 2 passes to the conference for team members who will demo on stage and a DemoPod in a lounge dedicated to the Startup Competitors.

I usually have these posts written within a day or two of Le Web but other commitments slowed me down this year. 2009 saw the 6th Le Web (my 4th) and it was easily the best ever. Loic & Geraldine can rest easy knowing 2010 will be totally over-subscribed.

People go to Le Web for a couple of reasons:

• Networking
• Meetings/Deals
• Learning
• Pitching

I went as an official blogger to the event but with intentions of doing all of the above. It was a real pleasure to be on the official blogger team and a big thanks to Stephanie Booth who organised all of that brilliantly.

The Irish contingent was tiny with Joe Drumgoole, John Peavoy, Colm Long of Facebook and myself flying the flag. Whilst I know the tickets are very expensive, it’s a pity there wasn’t a bigger showing. The IDA attended last year but I didn’t spot them this year. Le Web is the European web business/tech event and I happily skipped every other pay-for event this year to ensure I could go.

The opening session with Jack Dorsey set the perfect tone for the two days. The guy who created the global phenomenon of Twitter showed off his new startup Square. This is P2P payments with a credit card swipe that plugs into the headphone socket of your phone and an application which allows others to pay you. I didn’t quite get how revolutionary this was until I saw it in action (despite the terrible demo problems he had).

There are often complaints that they have too many Americans speaking at the event. I take the opposite view, since this is one of the few opportunities for those of us who don’t regularly travel to the US to see these guys speak and perhaps meet them. Standout highlights for me were Tony Hsieh from Zappos and Gary Vaynerchuk from Wine Library TV but there were plenty of others including David Hornik from August Capital and Chris Sacca of Lowercase Capital.

I have ordered the Zappos Culture book that Tony mentioned (just email ceo@zappos.com and they'll post you a copy) and downloaded the Tribal Leadership audiobook from here (use California 90210 for your address in the registration screen). Wonderful stuff.

Gary (NSFW audio):

Those who worked best on stage were generally the contrary bastards. In that batch I’d include Mike Arrington, Lukasz Gadowski, Andrew Keen, Paul Carr, Dave McClure and Martin Varsavsky. Guys who are not afraid to call bullshit on things but who also see potential in the most interesting of places. The sessions that they were involved in were far more useful and fruitful than the usual cheerleader echo-chamber gang.

In fact, the echo-chamber gang were the only real let-down of the two days. We’ve all heard their schtick non-stop for the past few years and it’s grown old and boring. I’d love to see a bunch of new US faces coming over next year who have something new to say.

The real-time theme of the event did become a bit of an unbearable Twitter love-in at times to the detriment of many other exciting things happening in the real-time web. As someone pointed out on a TWiT podcast recently, more people play Farmville on Facebook than are users of Twitter.

For those who think Irish startups can’t compete at the highest levels on an international stage, just watch Joe Drumgoole’s pitch in the Startup Competition. I was shocked that Cloudsplit didn’t get the win but rumour has it that Thierry Henry was one of the judges

Over a couple of days I met entrepreneurs, bloggers, VCs, techies and business people. That’s why I go. The energy in that room recharges my batteries and reminds me that fantastic startups are being built all over Europe and we all have more in common than we think.

Even if I didn’t get to announce our first US customer.

Nathalie Kosciusko Morizet, Minister of State to the Prime Minister, with responsibility for Forward Planning, Assessment of Public Policies and Development of the Digital Economy, speaking at Le Web with Loic Le Meur in Paris today.

€2B for broadband upgrades in France out of a €4B budget to invest in the digital future.

We reduce the price of booze and come up with meaningless buzzwords like Smart Economy.

Joe Drumgoole just presented Cloudsplit in the Startup Competition at Le Web in Paris. As always, Joe did a fantastic job.