Loïc Le Meur blog

Ublog.com goes business

Ublog.com is one of the first european solution in blogging, clearly the first French professional one with a dedicated team in France and Belgium.

I was waiting for Stephane Le Solliec, Ublog's founder to announce it on his "Creation" weblog.

Stephane and I discussed two months ago and decided to join forces in Ublog.

A dedicated team is now in place to grow as fast as we can in France and Belgium. We have started our first partnerships and meeting investors who are very enthusiastic about ublog's growth (I will stop blog transparency here for the time being !).

I have applied to myself my "create a company" articles (see entrepreneurship category) and talked to Stephane from Joueb and Benoit from HautetFort and I am sure we will continue some kind of collaboration and dialog.

Thanks JLR and all others for your good comments. Look here for more comments about ublog and blogging.

We will appreciate all your comments, (constructive) criticism, insults, ideas, ... ! Thanks.

Ublog.com goes business

Counting how many bloggers

I know you all know where to find these stats about blogging, but this is more for me. If any of you have better sources, please let me know in the comments, I will add them to the list. Thanks.

• Perseus Blogging


• Perseus Blogging by language


• NITLE Census News


• Blogcount


• Technorati


• Journal du net in French

Southern California Fires Moblogged

Textamerica has opened a special section about fire in California with hundreds of pictures taken by mobloggers.

I do not know if it is the popularity of the fire pictures but textamerica is very slow.

Thanks JLR for emailing me this.

Southern California Fires Moblogged

Carl von Clausewitz three principles of war applied to entrepreneurship

I was talking on the phone with Pierre Mechentel who told me that creating my new company I was applying without knowing it Carl von Clausewitz three war principles:

• concentrate my efforts (I am only talking about blogging to everybody)


• save my forces (I am not investing all my money into the company and will open to investors)


• freedom of action (I do many partnerships and do not try to do everything myself)

Clausewitz said you have to apply all three to win a war, only one or two will lead you to a failure. I may have to read more about his work. Anybody read it ?

Getting people in your network to blog

As I am now an active blog evangelist in Europe, I have two types of reactions, there are some people who get it immediately, some who only understand personal home pages and do not understand the use.

Via Halley Suitt here are top 20 definitions of blogging and Jeff Jarvis (Instapundit) gives excellent things to say about why weblogs rock.

This should help me better explain it to people who keep telling me that I am interested in 2004 by old 1995 boring community sites...

Google answer, the Ebay of knowledge

Just discovered Google answer thanks to Google.weblogsinc who interviewed Carlos, who is now a full time Google Answers "consultant" in Philippines.

I like the model, here is an example of an answer correctly given. The "client" even gave a tip.

Interesting and helpful. I am trying to think how we could get the same working inside blogs, without Google.

Google answer, the Ebay of knowledge

Using voice over ip in a network of Mac and PCs

Working in 4 different places in my company, I have tested AIM, ICQ and Yahoo Messenger. I could not find one that allows quality voice over IP that works between macs and PC (such as Ichat/Isight between macs). I could not make any voice connections between these tools between a mac and a PC (aim mac does not see aim PC voice enabled for example).

Just tested Skype that does voip using peer-to-peer technology and the quality is really great. Too bad it does not work on a mac (yet?).

Any suggestions ? Thanks !

David L. Sifry wrote 15 rules for entrepreneurs

Via TJ's Weblog

David L. Sifry has a nice Presentation with just 15 simple rules for entrepreneurs. I share most of them, unfortunately there is no text with the slides, I may actually develop some of them in my own weblog.

Arnold Schwarzenegger's great commercial in Japan

Thanks Joi for this incredible entry, I am totally addicted to the music !

Check out ABSOLUTELY the commercial. (Quicktime)

Can you help me get a good designer for my weblog ?

I would like to have a good looking weblog, so I googled weblog templates but there is a lot, any advice for a good weblog designer I can use ?

Create a company: 6 - Networking, networking, networking !

Business is people. Networking is key. To my knowledge there is no successful company without a highly networked person managing it.

You should look at what business associations exist for the business you want to start and join them.

There is none ? Fine. Start one yourself.

This is what I did back in the early Internet days when Isabelle Bordry (from Yahoo, Patrick Robin from Imaginet and ROL at that time, Guillaume Buffet from Singapour, Catherine Barba from at that time Optimum Media, Jean-Pierre Levieux from Microsoft, Godefroy Jordan from Alpaga and many others -who will forgive me for not quoting them- started the French Chapter of the Internet Advertising Bureau. We were either competitors or in some kind of client/suppliers relationships but we all had interest in the internet advertising to be better known in France, and we succeeded. Many well known brands joined us or listened to our presentations and press releases and finally bought on-line advertising.

It was a great way to get known, get our companies known, and finally get new customers.

If you are an alumni from a business school or another kind of school, that is also a good way to network of course. I actually never used the alumni book "cold calling" someone to try and get a new customer. I do not think it works really. What I thought more efficient was to go to the different events of the Association HEC and get to know people on a different topic than your business. It can be anything, including sports (in my case, sailing races, golf).

Yesterday I had a few drinks with Pierre Reboul who started his own network, the Electronic Business Group EBG. Pierre did an incredible job gathering all the key large companies e-business managers and specialists together in France. It is now the number one e-business association with 350 members and weekly events on e-business. One of his key to success was to get fast enough into the club very well known and influential French business men, such as François-Henri Pinault.

When I had my first successes achieved selling the companies and getting some buzz, I joined more networking clubs outside of my e-business business, such as Le Club des Jeunes dirigeants of Loïc Tribot La Spierre, Le Cercle des Vigileants around Marc Ullman, La revue des deux mondes of Marc de La Charriere, head of Fimalac.

This was all very French. So finally I got lucky enough to be invited to join the Global Leaders of Tomorrow network of the World Economic Forum. Its flagship event is of course in Davos every year, where I met Joi and Antoin, early bloggers.

Business events are also very good for networking.

Now I think blogging is excellent as I am much more interested in international matters, businesses and people. This is real time networking, no need to join any association or event.

Any other idea about networking ?

Create a company: 5 - Raise funds or not ?

This is a question I am currently totally asking myself right now for my future company.

If you start your business and execute it well, one day will come when you will either want to look after funding or better, investors may call you.

Here are the pros and cons as I see them.

-Raising funds allow you to go faster by hiring more people, doing advertising campaigns, opening new countries, etc. -Raising funds help get you in a leadership position when your competitors do not get as much funding. -The investors on board provide you with support, ideas, constructive criticism, partnerships, etc.

Yesterday I had a meeting with one of the best entrepreneurs I know, Denis Payre, who started Business Objects and recently Kiala in Brussels. Business Objects is one of the rare French startups that managed a great international growth, a successful Nasdaq listing and thousands of satisfied clients around the globe. Launched less than three years ago, Kiala has bridged the last mile for many ecommerce and mail-order companies in Europe. It has achieved a leadership position in Europe with about 6M€ in revenues in 2003, 30 forecasted in 2004, 25 000 deliveries a day right now and about 5000 Kiala points where you can get your delivery. Basically its concept is you do not have to go to the Post anymore to get something you ordered, you can go to Kiala points such as Fuel Stations, anytime you want. Kiala has a team of 50 people in Brussels from 12 nationalities with clients such as Quelle, PPR and Otto. It even managed making great deals with La Poste and TPG, the Dutch post, who looked at Kiala as a competitor at the beginning.

Well, despite the tough environment for investing, Denis managed to raise about 20M€ in less than three years. Denis argues that of course he got dilution, but he could have never achieved a leadership position without these funds. He has less and less of his company but it is worth more and more. Of course in paper for the time being, but Business Objects transformed the paper into cash in the past so when your company is successful, exit comes one way or another.

Let's now have a look at the negative points

-Especially these days, the investment comes most of the time with preferred shares, anti-dilution clauses, full rachet and other bad news for your founder shares. Basically if you fail to sell the company at a higher price than the one they invested in plus a high interest rate (25% ?!) sometimes, your shares will just be worth nothing until they get this exit. I understand it, of course, but it is sometimes very tough for the entrepreneur and can create difficult relationships at a board level. -Having more cash can lead you to more mistakes. How many Internet startups have we seen burning way too much too fast (sometimes with the influence of the investors themselves, sometimes only because the entrepreneur just wanted to go fast and forgot the P&L). The worst thing: you wait for the next round to get refinanced and it never comes... -Spending a good share of your time managing investors relationships (Denis has 7 investors, it takes time) than creating value for your company. Because a board also comes with monthly reporting, that you need anyway, but maybe if you were alone you would not do it that detailed. -Raising a VC round means also a lot of time preparing it and closing it. It also comes with lawyer fees that can make 100s of thousands $ disappear from the cash you raise. -Usually very fast the entrepreneur loses control on the company. Talk to Denis, he does not care, he says "If they fire me it is good news because it means they have found a better CEO and my shares will get more value".

Well I agree with you Denis (start your blog by the way !), only if their judgement of what a better CEO is is the right one ! In any way the entrepreneur will always have more power, even if he lost control, just because investors do not manage the company.

So now that I have thought of pros and cons, I still think achieving a leadership position and fast growth is a good deal over tough negociations and possible control issues. So I will probably raise funds again -if investors are interested and trust me- as I did in the past.

Any other pros and cons you see ?

The NY Times totally gets the blogs and takes them seriously

Len Apcar, editor in chief of NYTimes.com was interviewed by Chris Lydon here. It is a very interesting interview showing how traditionnal media can embrace the blogging phenomenon.

"We are a news company and interested in news, I want to better understand the news side of blogs. Many bloggers are turning up good information that can be a source of information for our readers.

Two gangs: bloggers try to learn journalism and journalists try to learn blogging.

Nick Christophe a journalist at the NY Times, writes a column twice a week and also writes his own blog (not sure I spelled his name right and I could not find his blog if any of you knows it).

More people read NYTimes.com than the print edition.

1 to 1.5M people come to NYTimes.com everyday. During the war in Irak, they were up to 2.5M people.

There is no really official edition of the NY Times anymore, as the NY Times online is much more updated and alive."

Via Blogads

Create a company: 4 - Respect and talk to your competitors

Talking to your competitors is key. I know a lot of people who keep criticizing them all the time. I have always discussed with them, met them, and on the contrary try to build something with them.

I created RapidsSite France in 1997, we were the very first to launch "shared web hosting" in France. At that time France Telecom and others were offering web hosting services at around $800 per month minimum.

We launched our service at $25 per month, and managed a 20% per month growth during two years, starting the business with only $10000 , like I did for B2L. We managed to get to a number one position on the French market, with about 600 resellers throughout France and more than 15 000 clients in less than 18 months.

We had a marketing campaign with a picture of castle on the ad, reassuring people that our web hosting service was rock solid (it was not made by a great ad agency but it worked). One day at the end of 1999, I almost felt from my chair reading a monthly paper when I saw an ad from France Telecom. This ad was for the launch of a direct competitor to our services and... they used a castle on their ad too !

Imagine that, France Telecom, so much more powerful than us, copied our advertising !

Here two reactions are possible. One, you sue them, call them to insult them, criticize them in public. This is an option many business men like. I took the opposite one. I called them, took my nicer voice and asked them why with all the financials means they have -working with the best ad agencies- they took the same ad as we already had. I kind of joked and said you could have chosen something different or are we such a model to you ?

Well that was clearly the best option. They changed the ad immediately, invited me too lunch and... bought my company to become the French leader in shared web hosting one month after, integrating it into their Wanadoo Internet offer in 2000.

Would that have happened if I would have taken the wrong way to react to their ad ?

Create a company: 3 - Work always long term rather than short term

Your business life is like living in a very small city.

Each time you work with somebody, you leave an impression. I started my business in Paris, and I thought it was big. I realized fast that information goes so fast about you and your company providing a good or a bad service. So fast.

I looked at my very first clients as gods I had to worship, think all the time about the trust they had given me. I had to give them back much more than their trust, exceed their expectations, not just what they had paid for.

Shortly after I had provided that great quality with my team I realized how fast the word spreads around, we won many new clients thanks to our first clients recommandations.

Of course when we made mistakes the word spreads even faster.

Working long term for me is just asking yourself the question: will this client or person going to call me for another business in the future ? This may sound so simple but I have seen so many people and suppliers think short term. Like taking an opportunity to charge much more than the market price for a product or service. It is likely you will not have a repeat and loyal customer, it will be a one time only. Short term.

Now with blogging it is going to be incredibly fast. Transparence everywhere. Your clients will start blogging soon about you, your company and the quality of your services. Your employees may start blogging about the way you manage it, I actually wonder why trade unions have not started blogging much (do you know any trade union blogs ?).

You will have to answer these blogs, especially the ones criticizing your services, so that they do not appear higher than your own website on google and other search engines. By the way, where is the answer from the Hippopotamus restaurant chain on my post ? ;=)

Joi Ito maps the Blogging space

Joi Ito maps the Blogging space

Is email going to die soon ?

I know there has been a lot of blogging about this but I just wanted to understand it better.

Yesterday, Gene posted a comment on my blog about how the brands are affected by blogging. I answered Gene's comment on my blog and thought I could also post him email just in case he does not come back on my blog.

Here is what I got: This message could not be delivered to the following recipients: <no@thank.you> Interesting !

Joi is already also saying that email is officially borken and that he treats it only as low priority.

With the number of emails we have everyday I fully agree with it. Blogging solves the spam issue in some way (even though spam blogging starts).

Blogging shares the discussion with anybody else interested and enrichs it.

I think email is just going to be left for conversations that require some confidentiality or one to few discussions. I prefer ichat for that.

Create a company: 2 - Find the best people and trust them

One of the most important part of creating a company is getting the best people with you for what you want to do.

When I launched B2L, two friends, Antoine Bello and François Lamotte who launched Ubiqus, hosted me in their company as I did not have the means to rent offices. I had an "office" in front of the lift entrance. Launching a web agency, I naturally thought I needed to hire a good engineer as I only have a business school background.

Hiring an engineer from a good technical school when you are the only employee in the company, when you have no offices and three months of cash ahead of you and no references is not an easy task. Finally I could convince Vincent Maurin to come to the interview and I remember it very well, as I was actually taking an interview, not him. This was normal as I had basically nothing. I had to convince I would get my first clients, I would have enough cash to pay his salary.

The person who probably impressed me the most was Jean-Jacques Borie (I am getting him blogging... but did not start yet). He sent me a CV at the very beginning of B2L that was quite empty I should say without offending him I hope. I was one of the few that received him in interview because his CV was expressing passion. Most people at that time did not have Internet experience so experience mattered less than passion and passion to learn. Jean-Jacques was reading an Internet developtment book every night and learnt as fast as crazy, he quickly became the best technical person of the team and the fastest to add value for our clients. The lesson here is be careful with large and full CVs, I have made a lot of mistakes when I forgot that passion was the most important.

Another important thing is to provide your team with vision, vision about what your long term aim is, your own passion in building the company. Managing a team is not about giving orders, it is about sharing a long term view with your team and their motivation comes from your own passion. If you are not very highly motivated yourself, do not expect your team to be motivated.

Trust. I have never checked anybody's work or working time. My only concern is result. This is especially important when I experienced having employees working on a distant site, you just cannot check anything but results. I always had good results with distance work and will start it again with my new company. The more trust you give to your team, the better the results.

Create a company: 1 - the idea has no value

Create a company: 1 - the idea has no value

Here is an opening conference I give each year to the students of HEC Entrepreneurs. I thought I could share it here. Notes will come on my weblog has I have the time to add them.

I think the idea has clearly no value when you create a company. This is what makes most people afraid of launching their own business, they wait for the idea of the century and never have it !

I had a powerpoint slide showing 50 different ideas of creation. My point is that execution matters much more than the idea itself. Very few people actually execute an idea and execute it well and fast.

This is why when I start a company, I am never afraid of sharing it with everybody. Few people will do the same as you, just bet you will be faster. Sharing it with everybody gets you new ideas and very often constructive criticism, so share it.

I think creating a business is about filling empty space. There is empty space everywhere. How many times today you felt a service or a product was perfectible ? How many times you needed something that no company actually provides ? This is empty space. Just consider how big is the demand for this empty space and you have got your idea.

When I started my first company, B2L in 1996,a web agency, there were just one or two other web agencies in France. I started with a students loan of $10 000 and a client, Automobiles Peugeot. As a student, doing a research for them, I just told them they should launch the first car selling service on the Internet in France. Paul Sevin, the head of Peugeot Sales in France at that time, gave me my chance and said "well, just do it". So I created B2L and executed as best I could.

Clearly this was all about execution. About getting the first person who ever gave me his trust in my business life as happy as I could. We over exceeded any of his expectations and launched Occasiondulion.com, the very first site in France selling cars over the Internet. With this reference and the fact that they were extremely satisfied, we then won tens of competitions against other web agencies, Chanel, 20th Century Fox, Unilever, Mars, etc and grew B2L doubling in size every year, with 20% profit before tax.

The idea does not matter. It could have been anything else. I just thought the Internet was about to launch fast in the business sector and large corporations would need our services.

Currently I have about 10 ideas to create a new company, but I will focus only on one, because execution is key and it is very hard to be multitasking. One idea which I like very much but will not do as I am focusing on my new startup is about security.

Home and personal security is a growing issue for most of us. I got car-jacked once and my home was visited several times. There is a great idea here, very simple. The webcams which have webservers inside such as the Axis one I just bought can recognize automatically any person or object move in front of them. Imagine a company that would video monitor 24hrs a day your house and immediately tell you and the police if there is anything, with proof of evidence, the picture by sms or email...

I love this idea, but do not have the time to execute it properly, if any of you is interested, let me know, I would be happy to invest and be the first client !

The founder of Priceline.com has just launched US Home Guard aiming at protecting the key US locations with networked video cameras. You can just signup and look after a nuclear powerplant or other key locations ! Great idea. Visionary.

Don't you think so ?

More on B2L: was created in 1996 under the Looping name (not good, I know, this is why I changed it !). Check out the look of the first under-construction web site here with our first references, Peugeot was not launched yet. Unfortunately somebody registered looping.com faster than I renewed it, I wanted to keep it as a souvenir. B2L looks better now. I sold it to BBDO at the end of 1999.

Blogads is an advertising network devoted to Ads on Blogs

For those of you who do not know it yet (I know I am still just discovering how all the blogosphere works, please be nice with me) Blogads does a good job in specialized ads on blogs which look better than banners.

Seems to be growing fast, especially since Seyed Razavi, the Blogshares guru, wrote about it and integrated it into blogshares.

Blogads is an advertising network devoted to Ads on Blogs

The winferiority complex

D. Weinberger talks about the winferiority complex here.

Having had a PC for fifteen years I could not resist to shift into the 17" Powerbook a month ago. Now I love it. The most surprising thing is how many friends in my entourage are shifting from PCs to Mac, I guess they cannot bear the winferiority complex anymore.

The winferiority complex

Compare Blogs and Journalism

Excellent article from Jay Rosen comparing Blogging and Journalism. Thanks for the notice on Le Petit Calepin's weblog (in French).

Compare Blogs and Journalism

18% of the Japan population will be calling over the Internet rather than phone

18% of the Japan population will be calling over the Internet rather than through the phone system within 4 years, with the growth of the broadband high speed access. From today's Wall Street Journal Europe. Will the Telcos experiment the same business disaster as the music companies with mp3 ?

18% of the Japan population will be calling over the Internet rather than phone

Mori Art Museum

We had a private visit of the Mori Art Musuem thanks to Joi who also talks about it here. Was very interesting and impressive. The exhibit will only be up for 3 months.

Mori Art Museum

Good blogs are so much read because they are credible

Good blogs are read because it is what people think, about a country, about a product, about a brand. Take an example, I just bought the latest and smallest Sony digital camera because I wanted to do more moblogging.

Let me say what I think of it. I like it first because of the size, second the design and third the general quality that most of the time goes with a Sony product. What sucks is the type of battery it uses as it obliges you to carry a big charger. So what do you think about my comment ? Credible ? I am not working for Sony and have no interest in them, I am an active digital pictures taker so you may want to believe me. Ok Sony may like this comment.

Now have a look at this one: I had two years ago lunch at the Hippopotamus restaurant –a French steak house- in Boulogne Billancourt –a French city immediately close to Paris. We were having lunch with Marc Perrin –I blog my friends so that they have a little pressure and make their own blog- and when my steak arrived there was a bug in my (French) fries. Do you think Hippopotamus like this comment when they search google on their brand name ? This gives any individual so much power. Just to give a perfect report of what happened, they immediately changed my plate and offered us the lunch, a minimum of course.

This is power to any individual. So much power. Allconsuming.net has started gathering the users comments for books. Great stuff. Transparency.

Distances do not count anymore, just live where you like

I actually like the way blogging and the Internet get distances shorter. I have decided this trip to Japan with Joi on an ichat conversation as he was in Boston and I was in Brussels just four days before the trip. From Japan I can just manage my company as if I was in Brussels or France. Joi actually moved an hour and a half outside of Tokyo and he is trying not to get everyday to the office as he gets so much things done online, where you stay is less and less important as you can get immediately up-to-date when you return on-line. Blogging and chatting is just changing our relationship to time, people and places. The only remaining problem is sleep, I just feel I should just sleep less and less so that I can talk to friends in the US or Japan with different time zones, being always on-line. This is not going to be solved soon...

Where does privacy start and you should stop blogging ?

The more I blog and the more I find it difficult to find the limit between “I would like to share that with everybody” and “may be not this”. Let me have a closer look and understand why.

Security - you do not want everybody to know your address

Public image – think about what you blog, it may go against your interests (criticize a company, they read it and you want to make a partnership with them later on)

Respect of others people privacy - some people would actually not like you blogging about them, so I feel like asking often, is it ok if I blog that ?

Do you see anything else ?

The best sushi restaurant in the World. Just do not try to get booked there.

Incredible. I wish I would have moblogged all of the 50 different type of sashimi and sushi we had but taking pictures would have deteriorated my experience.

I told the Sushi Master (if anybody by the way can help me find his name on the card he left me I would appreciate) that after having had these sushi I would feel bad each time I have sushi in Europe or in the US. Joi told me he felt about sushi restaurants in Japan. They are very bad compared to this one.

It is like comparing the cheese you get in a [Mc Donalds|http://www.mcdonalds.com] burger with the cheese a traditional shop in France has selected and grown with love. Yeah it is cheese, of course. Just a totally different experience. So first do not try to get booked in this restaurant in any other way than by knowing the Chef or a friend of the chef, you just cannot.

The entrance door says closed (not kidding). Actually this Chef was so popular in Tokyo that he had a big restaurant in a high class neighborhood of Tokyo. He went to the top of the Tokyo Jet Set and just got bored. He got bored about serving the best possible sushi to people who did not really care anymore and talk about business. He then moved to one of the least hype residential place in Tokyo and he just serves food to friends and friends of his friends.

Do not try to talk business there, he would ask you to leave. You actually cannot talk business, you talk about sushi and the pace at which they arrive is so fast that between two just comment the last one. The fish you eat has usually been caught the same day and the Chef has directly bought it from fisherman. No middleman. The taste is totally different than the one you get from a standard nice looking salmon or tuna european sushi.

The rice is different and very important in the whole experience (for example I learnt to never put sushi in the fridge as the rice gets hard and loses taste). Now I will not myself in describing you the type of fish I had as it was translated from Japanese into English for me by [Joi|http://joi.ito.com] but I lack food vocabulary in English so I could not always understand what it was in my own French language, apart from maquereau.

Let me then give you thoughts about the way they are served: the Chef makes the sushi and puts them directly in your hand. They are so sophisticated that they would fall in parts should you try to have them in a plate. Put them directly from your hand into your mouth and I also learnt you should put the fish side on your tongue so that you get the taste, the rice on the top. Same with what surrounds the rolls, it was crispy and incredibly tasteful.

And by the way do not try not to finish one sushi or sashimi, the Chef may take it bad and you would not be invited again. This is what it is all about, you are not a client there, you are just lucky to be one of his friends ([Joi|http://joi.ito.com] and myself were only two in the restaurant, with the Chef and three sushi master trainees). Eat it all, even the one year marinated fish that tastes very strong. This one actually reminded me so much of the complex tastes you find in some sophisticated French cheeses.

Update: I took out the address because Joi did not like me blogging it and I understand... Sorry...

Blogging gives you some kind of immortality

If you blog every day, at the end of your like you will have a book of every thought you had in your life, fully searcheable and categorized, with people commenting them and answering some of the questions they raised. Cannot do that with a book. Cannot write your entire life at when you are at the end (who would care anyway... ?). Well at least your children would care, I wish I could still read my father’s blog that I lost from a lung cancer and understand better his life. Your children will love to read your blog, and the children of your children.

Think global is difficult, think local is natural

Think global is difficult. Each time I go to a different continent and meet international people I have the same feeling. Traveling broadens your view of the world and when I get back I feel everything is too locally focused. Most people think about their local job, their home, their local friends, how and when they will go and buy some bread (at least in France and Belgium). This is absolutely normal because for most people traveling is expensive and do not speak English. I was actually very surprised during my last trip to Japan that very few actually spoke english, for a country that conquered the world in so many business sectors and with great worldwide brands such as Sony (France is actually worse in speaking english on a broad scale). As I have more and more friends living in different countries I realize how it makes you smarter to understand their culture, the way they live and why. It lets you understand better your own culture.

France is small in the global village, few global brands made it global such as Vuitton

Being French I just feel like the French are just too French. Globalization goes so fast that we just all compete against everybody regardless of his country of origin. Take education. I have graduated from HEC, which is the best business school in France but its international popularity is very poor (look as I felt obliged to add “the best business school in France”). I want my three children adopt and be players of this international race, so even though my French culture would push me to have them follow the best French schools I will not do it, I want the best internationally and right now this is the American MBAs. France managed to roll-out globally few brands, however these ones are successes. Just walk around in Japan and count the Louis Vuitton bags you see. I have heard there are more than 30 million Vuitton bags that were sold in Japan, its population being about 120 million. Great French success, but why ? Why do Japanese girls like Vuitton bags that much ?

Japan is Clean Clean Clean and share it...

I am not saying that people in Europe are dirty, of course, but cleanliness in Japan is something different. First, I have never taken in and out my shoes so often. Apart from shops your shoes will always stay outside of the house and I loved that as it brings another level of cleanliness everywhere.
The typical Japanese bathroom is interesting. Basically you clean in a shower and then you take a bath in a nice wooden bath that is common to everybody. This is strange at the beginning as the water is the same for everybody. It is based on trust that you will only get in this bath when you are perfectly clean. When we had the evening with Geishas there is a similar sharing habit. You drink Sake in a glass served by the Geisha and when you finish, you clean your glass in a special recipient of water each time you drink, then it is your turn to fill in the glass with Sake, give it to the Geisha by maintaining eyes contact. Also, you give the glass to the Geisha in her hands, not on the table. She then executes the same, drinks it to the end, cleans it, serves Sake and gives it to you the same way. Of course it does create some level of intimacy that is comparable to sharing the clean bath (I am not saying I shared the bath at the same time with the Geisha...).
The washlets is another story. This unknown type of restrooms in Europe is very surprising... I guess we will also have that in Europe and the USA too. It reached 50% market share in Japan.

No doors locked in Japan

Usually there are no locked doors in most places where we went, the inn manager would know we would arrive because the cab driver would have called before our arrival, would know I am taking a bath because my indoor shoes are in front of the bathroom door. Everything is transparent, the walls are small layers of wood so everybody know where you are just by listening to your steps on the floor.

Luxury the Japanese way, loose your freedom and forget about choice

Getting organized by somebody else in Japan is the latest luxury. When you stay somewhere you do not have to organize anything yourself: the inn where we stayed took care of our wake up time, our breakfast time (if anybody apart from a Japanese person can call that a breakfast...), the cab driver that took us around, the temple visits, the Geisha evening. What was very surprising is that we did not have to carry our wallets most of the time as everything was taken care of. I have not seen any money exchange during most of the stay, it was just hidden. Joi woke me up the first day and I just had to follow what was organized by the inn in the exact order they had decided, bath, breakfast, visits. This was very exciting as you can just continue thinking about what is most important, talk to Joi, just not care about all the logistics as they are self organized. I did not have to think about what I had to do or prepare for the next thing we would do as it was all pre-organized. I will like very much to come back there when I have something important to get done or to think about as you can really focus on that and just forget the non important logistics things, forget about booking for dinner, forget about choosing your menu. In most Japanese restaurants we went to, nobody chose the menu and knew in advance what we would eat, dishes would just arrive as decided by the chef. No choice. Some people would think it is not good to have to eat what the chef thinks is good for you I actually loved it.

Moblogging in Japan

I will soon be posting more pictures and thoughts, the trip is so incredible, the culture is so different than European culture. I have posted some pictures on buzznett: temple tour and eating turtle soup and meat in Joi's favorite restaurant on earth. The red glass is turtle blood, very good for the health but I must admit I did not dare to drink it... More to come soon. Off to Tokyo now.

Off to Japan for a week !

I will be leaving tomorrow to Osaka then Kyoto and finally Tokyo, with Joi. My first time in Japan, cannot wait. My kids have asked the latest coolest Japanese animation cards set, if anybody know what's cool there and not yet in Europe let me know... Joi asked me to promise not to moblog too much there ;=)

Off to Japan for a week !

Hot or not people

Rate people and meet them. Cool, quite addictive. There should be the blog address for every picture... Some people have more than a 1000 votes ! Thanks JYS !

Hot or not people

Bush campaign'04 Blog

A Blog for George... If only the French politicians would get it a little faster... Thanks for the notice JYS

Bush campaign'04 Blog

More than 4 Million blogs worldwide

An interesting article from French ezine Transfert.net

More than 4 Million blogs worldwide

Best Medical Blogs

With a new blog every 12 seconds Sifry'alerts today, the need for quality blog browsing gets higher. Forbes launched a best of medical blogs as well as best of economy blogs and so on, check it out.

We will setup a best of the blogs in France too, there have been already some attemps, but I think one made in partnership with a media is a good choice. I will keep you posted.

Best Medical Blogs

Lost and found: it took four days !

In my note from Sept 29 I wrote "Well more than two years ago I had an article somewhere on me and an early blogger sent me an email asking me why I did not have a weblog and to be honest, I did not really get it."

Jean-Yves Stervinou was the early blogger I was talking about, has read my note, and even forwarded that email message to me 4 days after my post... Just how fast and cool social blog networking is...

Lost and found: it took four days !

Totally cool: rent Chris's chest for $20

Chris Pirillo is renting is chest for $20. Up to now he had more than 85 people renting it. Check Chris Pirillo's chest here. Too bad Chris is a man. Who wants to start renting a part of his body ? We could make a blog contest...

Totally cool: rent Chris's chest for $20

Be careful with 8 years old little girls

Sorry for those of you having tried to reach me on my mobile early this week, it was stolen on a restaurant table by an 8 years old little girl !!! The latest Sony Ericsson T610... We live in a great world, I hope I could have moblogged the girls' picture but she was already gone with my phone.

Geoblogging

Blogs localized on a metro map, nice idea, like Geoping. Excellent presentation. Shows and answers one of the needs of bloggers to get together physically as well...

Geoblogging

A portal for entrepreneurs in France (link)

Finally it seems that France is moving a little to help people create companies, a good thing. There was a survey some time ago saying that there were 6 million people in France (10 to 15% total population) who wanted to create a company. Clearly, they do not jump out and do it. Well, few people actually know it is not that hard, and few business schools or universities have entrepreneurs training such as HEC Entrepreneurs.

Let's see how the government helps it and hope the role of the entrepreneur will be better recognized in this country.

A portal for entrepreneurs in France (link)