It is so sad. Something went completely wrong yesterday. I remember Loic announcing the extra speakers on Monday evening, he said something like every speaker has the same conditions or so, Shimon and Sarkozy will have the same 20 minutes like everyone else. For me it sounded that his intention was honest.
So i can’t totally believe what people are speculating about. What happened really? Was Loic overrun by incidence? That would be a explanation – in the run-up he might have made a different deal and just a few minutes before Sarkozy’s slot somebody came to Loic and said: hey, we have to change the plan – no questions – too many press around – something like that. In this case, hijacked would rather be the right word than raped.
I surely do understand Loic’s overall intention. He wanted to push the whole thing out of the geeky corner. Whether driven by his own ego or not doesn’t make a difference. He probably raised a lot of sponsoring so we a had lovely lunch and an awful lot of logos on the walls. For me this was not a surprise and i really appreciated it, because it is good for all of us when Web 2.0 thinking goes mainstream. Thats what we all hope to happen, don’t we?
The Tuesday began so promising. Shimon Peres’ appearance was impressing. I was looking forward to David Weinberger’s talk (i missed him finally, i had to rush to the airport). Hans Rosling was inspiring. Networking was great. The people were great. Paris is great.
What a pity. I surely won’t go there again.
Update: This is unbelievable. What does Michael expect to happen?