Day One: LeWeb3

LeWeb3.0 – Early morning session.

Brilliant no internet connection as Orange managed to cut the wire. So far it’s all been a bit underwhelming. Have I learned anything new? No I don’t think so – just had a few prejudices and convictions confirmed.

So who has said what?

Niklas Zennstrom, founder of Skype and Kazaa said that English will be the language of the interent – which probably didn’t please our French hosts, adding that the developing countries will become more competitive by harnessing their skills in English through the best use of the internet. He added that anything that can be digitized will be digitized . Four out of five stars for content.

Lorraine Twohill, Marketing Director EMEA, Google. Message was Google is great. Two stars.

Has Rosling, Professor of International Health, Karolinska Institutet and co-founder of Gapminder.org. Best speaker so far who concentrated on how the global market was changing and the convergence between developed and undeveloped worlds. He prefers to divide the world into lower, middle and high income countries and gave a compelling argument on how the internet will further aid convergence. He reckons true globilisation is still 20 to 30 years away. An idea often thought but ne’er so well expressed. Simon Collister has point out this theory is almost like the Long Tail for developing nations. Five stars.

Panel session with bigwigs from Yahoo!, Orange, Nokia Multimedia and Widows Live. Message we plan to be around for a long time. Do we sound smug? Yes we do! Two stars.

More later when they get the wi-fi back!