That seems to be the general consensus at Le Web 3 today.

Three times today we have had the conference interrupted by politicians.  The first Shimon Peres talked to us.  He came across well, talked openly, took questions, had gravitas and I think was generally well received.

The next two were French political candidates who came across really badly.  Based on the feedback (Sierralog, Dave Weinberger, Shane Richmond Christian Jung, Paulo Gagliardi, Nicole Simon's, Tom Raferty .....) not very many people enjoyed it, me included. The main reasons were that

• they only spoke in French when both speak English
• they talked about France when it kept being mentioned that we had 36 countries there
• one of them didn't take questions
• other more relevant/interesting speakers were badly treated
• it wasn't what attendees had paid to see

In his open letter to Loic Dieter Rappold says that he won't come back because of this.  I won't go that far at the moment.  Why I come to events such as this is passion.  The passion of  the audience, some speakers and people you meet are what makes it for me and Le Web 3 had loads of people with passion.

When you work for an largish agency you have a number of clients demanding your attention, rightly so, on projects which aren't always the most cutting edge as it can often be seen as a risk to do something that nobody else has done. I'm lucky enough to get the chance to work on a number of very interesting projects and technologies but always enjoy meeting people with passion and find events such as le web a way to not only come across some new ideas but also to remind me why I work in technology - because we're all able to come up with new ideas that can change how the world works.

Tag: leweb3