Le Web 08 Day 2

I dipped in and out of the Le Web videostream on this 2nd day (which seemed less reliable, I had hoped to see Marissa Meyer of Google talk, there were rumours of Big Things - not quite so big as it turned out). Anyway, I had noticed that the IM stream that I mentioned yesterday, though still irreverent, had attracted what seemed to be PR flacks - Prof Brian Cox and especially Gary Vaynerchuck getting a bit of pimping ( or were they just groupies ) before their talks - and people trying to divert users to their websites plus the standard people trying to "bark" for their agenda. Interesting that it took about a day for the "marketeers" to find the IM stream though, and how much less pleasant it was once they had.

But it only hits you en passant that what you are doing - dipping into a live video stream from somewhere else in the world, interacting with other observers and attendees - was something unknown just a few years ago, now its just something you get irritated with when the stream crashes for a while or the "ads" are too invasive. (Next step for TV IM - the ability to block some posters from your text stream)

And that, treasured readers, was the Future of TV in action - that was an interactive channel, up for 2 days, the videos are all up for watching again.

Incidentally, my overall take on Le Web was that it was not so much a Web conference as a sort of EuroTED play, with a wide variety of stuff - from romantic love to far off nebulae - that was fairly marginal Webgeek stuff. Interesting to the average renaissance man or woman, but I wonder whether "Le Web" is the right term for it?

Still, seemed like the attendees had a good (if cold and starved) time

Update - sharp write-up here by David Galbraith on GigaOm - amongst the observations:

- All companies that would have been described as portals, 10 years ago, are now described as Social Media
- One of the few Americans here, Marc Canter, in a bright orange Hawaiian shirt, stands out against the sea of metrosexual black like a ray of sunshine

And "a panel on brands talked about spreading the love; Susan Wu, CEO of ohai, spoke of selling love in the form of virtual goods; conductor Itay Talgam discussed how to orchestrate it; and Helen Fisher of Rutgers talked about how to recreate it with drugs."

Ah, a bit of California then