LeWeb 3 - Web technologies for the coming year

The recent LeWeb 3 2007 Conference in Paris was the fourth annual attempt to bring the buzz, community and experience of Silicon Valley to Europe. While there may have been a significant number of contributors to the panels from the US West Coast, the diverse range of companies and attendees from across Europe shows that internet development is alive and well on both sides of the Atlantic.

By Ewan Spence, 27 Dec 2007 at 12:56

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In the same way that the Seed Camp initiative has helped foster new start-ups in Britain and given the whole system a shot in the arm, so LeWeb is acting as an incubator to give Europe that same guidance and direction. It's noticeable that the European speakers are becoming more prominent every year, and the ideas are starting to look grander and more accomplished. Finnish based Dopplr (a social network for Business travellers) looks to be on track to be the European darling of Web 2.0 in 2008, and they announced their network had left an invite-only period of operation to fully open to whoever wants to join. This again reinforces the idea of public testing and high visibility while a company grows.

Probably the one thing lacking in Europe is willingness for people to become the managers and executives at a company. Silicon Valley thinks nothing of serial chief executives, who investors look to bring into companies to get them on the right road. There's a certain stigma to Europe to people with a long list of jobs, and I think that this is probably the last key to making a truly strong fabric in the old world.

The role of the enterprise

Enterprise is not sexy. At one point from the stage, developers of enterprise software were asked to raise their hands, and there were only a smattering of developers from some 2000 delegates (and interestingly the numbers were about the same as people who remembered using Usenet). The product launches that were on the main stage focussed on search, media and social networks, yet enterprise tools were being used by everyone at LeWeb. The number of Blackberrys and push email solutions in the hall provided a simple visual clue, yet when you look at the tools people were using, CMS systems to power blogs and non-publishing empires; massive amounts of audio and visual media uploaded to banks to server

Enterprise development has given the internet a huge amount of infrastructure and knowledge. Here at LeWeb there were clear signs on how the fabric of Web 2.0 is ready to reward business and enterprise with tools and knowledge to leverage large numbers of people, to help collaboration both internally and externally to a company; to use technology to make both internal and external communication cheaper and easier, and provide the ability to share and work on the same documents while hundreds of miles apart.