LeWeb 08 Paris-Prologue and Photos

PARIS-LeWeb08 managed to pull off a great event in a time of economic uncertainty, and despite the heavy atmosphere associated with the global financial system, it offered rays of hope as well as advice on how to weather the storm.

Many industry heavy hitters, from Marissa Mayer at Google to Marc Simoncini of Meetic, Maurice Levy of Publicis and Martin Varsavsky, serial entrepreneur, gave their take on future plans and opportunities in the market.

Marc Simoncini gave a very entertaining talk on different dating habits he had to consider when launching his service in different countries in Europe.
For example, in Italy, women were not overt in their dating habits as they normally 'had to ask permission from their brother to date' while in Sweden, the Meetic offer of free membership for women was met with a 'why should it be free for us' reaction.

Startup 2.0 Finalists Announced

BARCELONA-After several weeks of online voting, startup 2.0, a European-wide competition of web 2.0 sites, has entered its final phase.The competition, organized by Alianzo Networks and La Caixa, has the objective to promote and reward European startups involved in 2.0 technologies.

Over 300 companies applied online for the contest, this now having been whittled down to 10 finalists who will be giving 5 minute elevator pitches in front of a prestigious panel of judges including Martin Varsavsky, Loic le Meur and Luca Conti.

The finalists are:

- iFoods
- UnLtdWorld
- Bubok
- Geospace
- AllRise
- Planetaki
- Talicious
- Learnit
- Zilok
- Wolpy

From a personal point of view, I'm particularly keen to find out more about Geospace, who offer a Location-based service via web and mobile...their website is in Hungarian, so it will be a case of discovering what services they have during their presentation.

The other startups have (mostly) websites in English, and are an eclectic mix of socially-minded enterprises to social travel networks and talent communities....I recommend you take a look and see what is boiling in the European startup pot for yourselves....