Loic Lemeur posts a long and passionate post. Won’t appease everyone, but didn’t leave a stone unturned in last week’s Le Web 3 controversy, and had me cheering for Loic by the end.
Last night I was listening to Teresa Williamson at a neighborhood party where she was sharing her life’s passion: helping women travel (she runs Tango Diva and has a book coming out on that topic). She should be on Oprah. Seriously.
But she and Loic are coming at this from the same point of view. For us to really move forward we’ve gotta get outside the little boxes we all put ourselves in. Teresa wants to do it by taking women to places unusual. Loic wanted to change the Web by bringing in politicians and seeing if he could get a conversation going.
Heart is in the right place, even if mistakes were made (and Loic admits some were, and shares his learning with the world).
I like hanging around folks like Teresa and Loic (and it’s why I like having harsh critics here too).
It’s good for us to change our scenery and start conversations with people we wouldn’t otherwise talk with.
On this topic I wish I were at the Global Voices Online event. I rarely link to that blog, but learn so much from it and it forces me out of the Silicon Valley geek-centric bubble I live in and love talking about.
Anyway, I’m taking the rest of the day off, gonna go have dinner at Dave Winer’s house. Hope you’re having a great weekend.
Scobleizer 
Wasnt this the guy that attacked TechCrunch a few days ago?
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Wasnt this the guy that attacked TechCrunch a few days ago?
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Nick: yup, that’s one of the mistakes he made. It was TechCrunch UK, by the way.
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Nick: yup, that’s one of the mistakes he made. It was TechCrunch UK, by the way.
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Wow, he didn’t leave any stones unturned. I only wish he had given half as much thought into his infamous *asshole* post which was the start of a guy losing his job. Lemeur and Arrington come out of this looking like two guys with huge egos.
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Wow, he didn’t leave any stones unturned. I only wish he had given half as much thought into his infamous *asshole* post which was the start of a guy losing his job. Lemeur and Arrington come out of this looking like two guys with huge egos.
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“seeing if he could get a conversation going” ???
Robert, I respectfully disagree. The guy was speaking in french and not taking questions – hardly a start for a conversation.
OTOH, the blogosphere sure got its discussion 😉
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“seeing if he could get a conversation going” ???
Robert, I respectfully disagree. The guy was speaking in french and not taking questions – hardly a start for a conversation.
OTOH, the blogosphere sure got its discussion 😉
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I was in Paris and i agree with Koehntopp: if you want to create a conversation you have to create conditions to make it happen. Inviting politicians during the electoral campaign is not the right way to do it, because you do not need the crhystal ball to forsee the results.
I believe Loic was looking for the recognition of MSM and institutios: it is like television or newspapers can legitimate you. Many bloggers want to became famous and pass from the conversations to the celebrity. This is a betrayal of the essence of the conversation!
Loic tought he could have done bingo: a standing ovation from the blogosphere for demonstrating he is familiar with people that matter; a standing ovation from the politicians; a standing ovation from the media for being such a vip between the bloggers.
Instead he finished like Zidane at the WorldCup: with his head crashed against something very hard 🙂
Ciao
Nicola
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I was in Paris and i agree with Koehntopp: if you want to create a conversation you have to create conditions to make it happen. Inviting politicians during the electoral campaign is not the right way to do it, because you do not need the crhystal ball to forsee the results.
I believe Loic was looking for the recognition of MSM and institutios: it is like television or newspapers can legitimate you. Many bloggers want to became famous and pass from the conversations to the celebrity. This is a betrayal of the essence of the conversation!
Loic tought he could have done bingo: a standing ovation from the blogosphere for demonstrating he is familiar with people that matter; a standing ovation from the politicians; a standing ovation from the media for being such a vip between the bloggers.
Instead he finished like Zidane at the WorldCup: with his head crashed against something very hard 🙂
Ciao
Nicola
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I think getting out of the “Silicon Valley geek-centric bubble” is a good idea and the content mall concept you spoke of earlier is a great way to do that.
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I think getting out of the “Silicon Valley geek-centric bubble” is a good idea and the content mall concept you spoke of earlier is a great way to do that.
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Hmmm… After reading many, many posts, including Loic’s last one, I’m still convinced he tried to pull a fast one by inviting the pols to be on the conference, blew it big time and is now in ‘damage control’ mode.
Hey, it happens: you push your own local agenda on people from 37 countries, it’s bound to blow up in your face. We’ll see if it was worth it, look for Loic in a political position after the next election and you’ll know (‘new technologies advisor to the president’ sounds good)… 😉
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Hmmm… After reading many, many posts, including Loic’s last one, I’m still convinced he tried to pull a fast one by inviting the pols to be on the conference, blew it big time and is now in ‘damage control’ mode.
Hey, it happens: you push your own local agenda on people from 37 countries, it’s bound to blow up in your face. We’ll see if it was worth it, look for Loic in a political position after the next election and you’ll know (‘new technologies advisor to the president’ sounds good)… 😉
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Last year the buzz word from Loic’s conference was Bullshit, this year it was Asshole, so are we surprised that he selected an infamous politician who called the Arab youths in Paris Scum….?
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Last year the buzz word from Loic’s conference was Bullshit, this year it was Asshole, so are we surprised that he selected an infamous politician who called the Arab youths in Paris Scum….?
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Sometimes criticism is best answered by silence. Jimbo is doing it!!
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Sometimes criticism is best answered by silence. Jimbo is doing it!!
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“Loic wanted to change the Web by bringing in politicians and seeing if he could get a conversation going.”
Don’t forget Loïc is member of Sarkozy’s party. He is not neutral…
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“Loic wanted to change the Web by bringing in politicians and seeing if he could get a conversation going.”
Don’t forget Loïc is member of Sarkozy’s party. He is not neutral…
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Almost everyone else but the blogging community either ‘just listens to’ or ‘just ignores’ politicians, or, if they are from the mainstream media (MSM), asks them very predictable questions.
Is it realistic to expect the blogosphere, now that it is finally arriving in force on the international scene, to let these guys carry on getting away with not being questioned by anyone but the mainstream media?
Is everyone so satisfied with how the MSM questions politicians that we don’t think bloggers can do it any better, do it any differently, or at least do it any more often?
I do hope politicians are naive enough to keep coming to blog conferences expecting to just give keynote speeches filled with populist predictability and get asked the same old softball questions.
I think most bloggers (present company excepted, of course!) are too intolerant, too bad tempered, too geekily socially inept to let such a nice thing happen to people as unashamedly opportunistic as politicians, even if the politicians were people they actually supported.
Remember the scene in ‘Roots’ where Kunta Kinte’s father holds up the infant to the starry night sky and says: ‘behold the only thing greater than yourself’?
This is what the blogosphere needs to do to politicians.
As far as they are concerned, bloggers are the new sky.
The MSM, which used to be the politicians’ sky, was really only a large room with some stars painted on the ceiling.
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Almost everyone else but the blogging community either ‘just listens to’ or ‘just ignores’ politicians, or, if they are from the mainstream media (MSM), asks them very predictable questions.
Is it realistic to expect the blogosphere, now that it is finally arriving in force on the international scene, to let these guys carry on getting away with not being questioned by anyone but the mainstream media?
Is everyone so satisfied with how the MSM questions politicians that we don’t think bloggers can do it any better, do it any differently, or at least do it any more often?
I do hope politicians are naive enough to keep coming to blog conferences expecting to just give keynote speeches filled with populist predictability and get asked the same old softball questions.
I think most bloggers (present company excepted, of course!) are too intolerant, too bad tempered, too geekily socially inept to let such a nice thing happen to people as unashamedly opportunistic as politicians, even if the politicians were people they actually supported.
Remember the scene in ‘Roots’ where Kunta Kinte’s father holds up the infant to the starry night sky and says: ‘behold the only thing greater than yourself’?
This is what the blogosphere needs to do to politicians.
As far as they are concerned, bloggers are the new sky.
The MSM, which used to be the politicians’ sky, was really only a large room with some stars painted on the ceiling.
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I quite like to answer criticism by saying:
“Why thank you, I completely understand that comment you just made.”
All the while, in my head, I’ll be thinking:
“You suck.”
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I quite like to answer criticism by saying:
“Why thank you, I completely understand that comment you just made.”
All the while, in my head, I’ll be thinking:
“You suck.”
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I don’t think it’s *possible* to have a conversation with politicians: their ears are only functional when addressed by their corporate sponsors. The rest of us are just subjected to marketing.
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I don’t think it’s *possible* to have a conversation with politicians: their ears are only functional when addressed by their corporate sponsors. The rest of us are just subjected to marketing.
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Leaving aside the issues with the politician in question (and calling a colleague a trou du’c), the biggest problem with Sarko’s delivery was not that it was in French (it was in France after all) but that he didn’t take questions. That made it a classic example of ‘WE do the talking – your job is to shut up and listen’. In the world of media Web 2.0 is seen as being precisely about overturning that dynamic so it’s a shame to seemingly send out the message that ‘Web 3.0’ is about a return to dictatorship by a narrow elite. I support Loic’s vision of engaging with the politicos, but suspect this didn’t do much to help
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Leaving aside the issues with the politician in question (and calling a colleague a trou du’c), the biggest problem with Sarko’s delivery was not that it was in French (it was in France after all) but that he didn’t take questions. That made it a classic example of ‘WE do the talking – your job is to shut up and listen’. In the world of media Web 2.0 is seen as being precisely about overturning that dynamic so it’s a shame to seemingly send out the message that ‘Web 3.0’ is about a return to dictatorship by a narrow elite. I support Loic’s vision of engaging with the politicos, but suspect this didn’t do much to help
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