Loic Le Meur Blog

Business Week: Europe's politicians embrace Web 2.0

Thanks Kerry Capell for your quote in your article Europe's politicians embrace Web 2.0

Citizenbay opens focusing on local information

My friend Oleg Tscheltzoff has just opened Citizenbay, available at launch in english and french. It is focusing on local information (by city) and has an original model has Oleg pays the authors between $1 and $5 per post that makes it to the home page (top 10 articles voted by the readers). Oleg explains what makes Citizenbay different in the below video podcast. The video file is here. disclosure: I just invested in Citizenbay.

Andries Molenaar, Enterprise Ireland

I like the Irish government approach with startups. Instead of investing hundreds of millions of euros in search engines nobody uses, they invest the same amount in startups, along with VC funds. One could argue that public money is not here for that but Europe does not have enough entrepreneurs and when they start their business it is too difficult for them to find seed money. Andries Molenaar explains us how Ireland helps. Congrats.

Google Zeitgest Europe: my rant on citizen journalism

Google had invited me to speak at Google Zeitgest Europe and just sent me the video of my rant, thanks again, Sandrine and all the Google team. Note: I started by a mistake saying most of our 15 million blogs are paying, I meant "many of them", apologies I was under light stress in front of such an audience of a few hundred european personalities and speaking just before Peter Gabriel ;-)

Google Zeitgest Europe: a few thoughts.

Eric Schmidt and Larry Page, Google CEO & co-founder

I just had two wonderful days at Google Zeitgest Europe. As I said, this was a private event and no blogging was allowed unfortunately except David Cameron and Eric Schmidt & Lary Page sessions. The event gathered about 300 people, European partners of Google, Advertisers, CEOs of large corporations, press and Internet personalities. I was invited to speak about citizen journalism and blogging and it was a great pleasure in front of such an audience. I'll remain quiet about what was discussed in details but it was basically focusing on the future of the Web, we talked about the information democratization, the recent evolution of commerce (lots about the long tail of course), entertainment 2.0, globalization, citizen journalism and generally how the world is changing. As always, I liked the ideas Larry shared with us, here are a few quotes.

About product launches in the new web environment: "Look at the movie industry, it's really difficult regardless of the budget to forecast what movie will be a success. It's the same on the web, the best way to know if a product will work or not is to actually launch it and see what happens". "Google really succeeded by giving people what they wanted, including the ads, targeted and non intrusive".

About innovation: "Focus on what people don't do yet or don't do well rather than on what everybody else is doing" said Larry about how they innovated on products where we thought everything was done (such as gmail/gtalk).

These two above quotes seem very obvious and straightforward however if you really think about how most non-web products are launched, they go usually the opposite way. They are conceived in secret without involving much customer feedback and fearing that the competition may steal the ideas when on the web today most products and services which succeed are almost built with the customers, integrating their feedback and also criticism since the very beginning. Brands that use blogs and accept open comments know exactly what I am talking about.

Anyway, I had lots of fun and met tons of incredible people (and friends such as Martin who spoke too), thanks Google friends for having invited me and the honor to speak just before Peter Gabriel ;-)

update, thanks, Pond, for your comments about my speech

Why Quaero will fail on the BBC

Peter Day interviewed (and podcasted) me in his BBC show "In Business", "Euro Everything" on why I thought that Quaero would fail. Thanks again Peter.

"European politicians are worried about how the continent is falling behind the United States in innovation.

Some of them are placing their faith in big industrial and internet projects to boost the continent's ability to compete. But can taxpayer's money help innovation, or does it actually hinder it?
And does Europe really need a European rival to the current American-run Global Positioning System and its own version of Google? "

Quaero: 10 reasons why the French search engine will fail.

Here are 10 reasons why Quaero, the French search engine, will fail, and "by a frenchman".

1- Can't spell it.
How can you trust a project that has not been even able to get its domain name and that nobody can spell right

2- Centralized.
There are no centralized projects on the web that succeed. The web is a web and decentralized by essence. Look at Firefox and the way it takes market share against the centralized Internet Explorer, look at Wikipedia

3- Secret versus beta.
There are no successful secret projects anymore. With 60 million bloggers out there and the dramatic shift from an era of vertical communication into a many-to-many conversation, you have to build your products with the consumers using beta versions, going live and improving the product as you go, not in secret.

4- No buzz, no adoption.
Darwinism is the way the web goes and darwinism is the way startups go. At the very beginning you can feel immediately if an idea or an innovative project is catching up. Look at Skype, 100 million users without advertising but a huge conversational buzz since launch. Nobody knows what Quaero does and what it is exactly, when it will be released. Worse, if you search, you find Exalead, a french search engine supposed to be "better than Google" but that few people use.

5- A galaxy of actors who compete to get the subventions and don't get much noticed for their latest web innovations
About 25 organisations are involved in Quaero, mostly french. Even though many have excellent reputation, none of them are really known for their innovation around the web today, I mean around the latest standards RSS, conversations, tags, etc. Of course there is Lycos Europe but is Lycos still on the cutting edge of Internet initiatives ?

6- Not really international.
Quaero is introduced by Jacques Chirac as a Franco-German initiative when Deutsche Telecom has already announced it will not take an active role anymore but just be an observer. It looks much more like a French patriotic initiative.

7- A neverending story.
Quaero has been announced as a 5 years project when Google is only barely 8 years old, where will Google be in 5 years when Quaero is finally launched ? In a French podcast, François Bourdoncle, President of Exalead, a company that is said to lead the "multiple heads missile" as he calls the "programme Quaero" admits he does not even know when it should be launched. It was supposed to be introduced in January 2006 and we are still waiting.

8- Not enough euros.
Microsoft barely exists in Search marketshare against Google with his MSN Search. Still, it will invest 1.1 billion $ in 2005 only on search against 260 M€ on 5 years for the French engine. Google generated more than $2 billion in revenues last quarter... We're launching a competitor which will be five years late with fifty times less money...

9- Subventions euros are not worth venture capital euros.
Maybe Jacques Chirac was not told that Yahoo! and Google were created by Stanford students in their rooms. Sure Jacques Chirac was not told either that they were financed by venture capitalists. People who know the industry, know how fast it goes and help the startups as they grow on a daily basis. They also fight against each other to invest in the next round or decide to sell or let the company die if it fails. Subventions are allocated in a totally different way. Too much politics involved in who will get the "euro shower" and not enough results driven.

10- Google is a thousand startups
These are only a few of the ongoing Google projects. The entire company operates as a thousand startups as employees who have ideas are encouraged to launch them in-house. That is why it is so innovative. How many european startups could the Government help launch if these 250 M€ were invested in them ?

Open source is probably the only possible threat to Google. Wikipedia has more audience than Britannica, Mozilla with Firefox and its hundreds of volunteers is the only organization that is really threatening Microsofts's dominant position with Internet Explorer. These two last examples are thousands of individuals who decided one day that knowledge should be free and non commercial on the one hand, and that browsing should not be left to a monopolistic Microsoft that does not invest in it anymore. The same may well appear against Google and have chances to succeed. To my knowledge however, there are no such initiatives, probably because not enough people think Google "can be evil" with its dominant role. Why not open source Quaero and engage all individuals who would like to challenge Google's position ? If the aim is to have an alternative and successful search engine, that it probably the way to go. It's certainly not by trying to create centralized "multi-heads missiles" in a decentralized World where building communities matter more than the Country they originated from.

Austria's way of celebrating their new European Presidency

...original ! Article (in French) from Luc on Agoravox.

"on January 1st 2006, Austria takes the EU Presidency for 6 months, succeeding to Tony Blair. To celebrate it, the Austrian Government has given 75 artists from the 25 EU member Countries the mission to create 150 pieces of art that "reflect social, historic and political differences in Europe". This collective creation, called "euroPART" has been displayed on 400 advertising billboards in the Austrian Capital. This project, called "25PEACES" has had a total budget of a million euros" Below, another picture of a billboard in the street.
"

Tell Europe's ministers and top e-governement officials what we want

William Heath has a very interesting initiative, Ideal Government Europe:

"The aim is to do a blog-based collective brainstorm across Europe on the theme "What do we want from e-government". I'll do this with an "ideal government/Europe" blog, and I want to create more or less a manifesto of what online Europeans want from the Euros60bn/yr that government spends on IT.

When it's done I have the chance to present it live to a big audience of Europe's e-government Ministers and officials at the EU Presidency e-gov conference (Manchester 24 November). It's a good opportunity for us all (once in a lifetime for me probably)."

If you're interested to contribute to this initiative, visit William's blog or email him at William.Heath (at) kablenet.com. William may contact you as well if you contributed (thanks!) to the European Blogosphere wiki.

Hubert Burda's site launch !

We're here in Paris with Marcel Reichart and we're so proud to announce the launch of Hubert Burda's blog site powered by blog software. Thank you very much Dr Burda and Marcel for having chosen Movable Type as platform. Hubert Burda does not need an introduction I guess but just in case here is a bio. I had the pleasure to meet Hubert Burda and Marcel in Davos where we shared a blogging panel. This was two years ago and I was impressed how Dr Burda understood the power of blogs at that time already.

We wish Dr Burda a great experience !

update: I see congratulations but also some criticism appearing around this blog such as the style, the closed comments and the RSS feed. The RSS feed is in but not linked yet, I am sure they'll add it. As far as the other remarks are concerned, my take is that it is always excellent news that a CEO of a large company -who by definition does not have much time and is not a geek- starts the blogging experience. I don't think we as bloggers should be tough on these initiatives and on the contrary welcome them to the blogosphere. On the contrary, we should make suggestions and help, don't you think ?

update2: having discussed with Marcel, the intention is to begin by a Dr Burda's website and our mistake was to present it as a blog. You're right, it's not one (comments, style) and they don't pretend it's one, blame my blog post, sorry about the confusion...

Off to the U.K.

I'll be leaving tonight to the conference OurSocialWorld, one of the first conference in the U.K. around social software and blogging. I'll be mainly talking there about the European Blogosphere and meet with pleasure everybody, many friends in the speakers list. See you there !

"French culture is calcifying and utterly saturated with bureaucrats"

It's not me saying that, it's Hugh, and not only on his blog, also in the Evening Standard. Here is the comment I have just left him:

"I am sort of happy to arrive late in the discussion to see that nobody argues on the French "calcifying" culture and the bureaucrats. The explanation is probably that everyone agrees including me ?

I agree there is not enough creation currently in our country and it extremely slow moving and changing, like a fat cow with the french being well installed in comfort.

I would not quote however the U.K. as much more creative forward looking either, it is just the same in all old Europe, we'll look more and more to China and India for that... Except for entrepreneurship [Hugh also said France was much worse than UK], agreed."

TypePad Italy launched

We have just launched TypePad Italy, thank you Paolo for all your permanent help. It took time but it's here, it always takes more time than we wish. I hope the Italian bloggers will like it and that there will be so much activity there that I will have to go often, I love Italy :-)

The news was already reported by several Italian bloggers such as Sergio, Pandemia and Carlo, thanks for your interest. And... oh yeah, I know that the domain typepad.it is under severe squatting, unfortunately they don't want to give it/sell it back to us. It is one of the very few countries where it was already gone when I woke up.

Is German culture against blogging ?

Udo Schroeter comments my interview:

"blogging means being critical, it means you have to talk about what you think is good and what is bad, so you'll expose yourself in a bad way as far as German culture is concerned. For example, I'm glad that my clients don't read blogs (or even know what blogging is), otherwise I would get some pretty serious fallout - even for simple comments about software platforms and stuff like that! Also important to note: Germany is generally slow when it comes to change (with a few notable exceptions)."

If there are cultural differences, i don't buy that Germany will remain a low blogging Country. I trust this will change soon. Thanks Udo for your comments, I would love to get other perspectives from my German friends on why Germany catches up so slowly !

[apologies again for having said there were no books about blogging in Germany, stupid, I am]

Technorati Tags: europe, germany

Podcast of my presentation on the European and French blogosphere

Thanks, Florian for having uploaded a podcast of my Reboot presentation about the European and French blogosphere and Jason for the picture ;-)

Technorati Tags: blogosphere, europe, podcast, reboot

Diffusion software and improved reality rock

Just had an amazing presentation from Total Immersion that is a French startup with global customers that integrates virtual objects such as cars or the above Star Wars sword in real time video, just with the help of a standard PC. We played with virtual cars driving them live on a real table, built a castle that helped get a sense on what the reality would look like.

Update: the buzz word for this promising business is "improved reality" I love it..

Technorati Tags: innovateeurope05

Off to Spain

Holidays ? No, I am going to Innovate! Europe for two days to (try) to contribute in a (very) modest way to wake up the European steamer boat that is going deeper and deeper into comfort and unemployment, France especially.

Innovate! Europe is a new conference aiming at showcasing the best innovations accross Europe and bridging the entrepreneurs in need for funds with investors. The result can only be jobs created and... fun. I will be speaking there about entrepreneurship and exit strategies and will as always blog my ideas. Go, Europe, go!

Technorati Tags: europe, innovate, entrepreneurship

Four options to blog multilingual... or remain local

I am confused by a discussion that happened on my French blog today, when you live in a Country like mine where english is not the natural language, you have four ways of approaching the problem:

1. blog only in english, then you're not close to your local audience, or blog only in local (French for me) and you can't create a global conversation

2. mix english posts and french posts, like Martinepage this of course is a problem for those who only read English (or French) because they are disturbed by other posts they cannot read

3. translate every single post in both languages, like Emmanuelle is doing, probably the best solution but that is very difficult for the author because he has to translate every single post and that takes a long time. Also, it prevents the author in a way to talk only about local topics as even though they would be translated, they would probably not be interesting to a global audience. I should say I am tempted by this option

4. two blogs, one in English, one in French, the option I chose. This option has some drawbacks too, the blogs are less powerful in search engines because split in two. For example the Technorati links are spread in two and do not add-up here is what happens for me:
-my French blog has 1219 links from 750 sources
-my English blog has 468 links from 320 sources

the result should be 2906 links from ? sources where the entire domain shows 2195 links from 1213 sources. This shows that the numbers do not add up easily and that there are many people not linking to the blogs but directly to the domain...

When you look at the ranking of the European blogosphere we did with 50 bloggers, it clearly shows the demand for local Country rankings and a global European one. But Europe is a mix of languages and cultures, and also of ways of blogging (people like Heiko are Germans but only blog in English, while others only blog in their language...)

So what should be the right way of blogging multilingual according to you ?
What should be the right way to show rankings of these blogs using Technorati ? Thanks for your help...

More on the European Blogosphere wiki pages

I'd like to say first I started this page not because I was lazy (but Euan was joking I know that), but because there is nobody in Europe that can pretend to be able to present honestly the European blogosphere: do you read Italian, Portuguese, Danish, and the other 19 languages (I believe we have 22 on the 25 EU countries, plus the other ones like eastern...) ?

The best we can all do is help each other understand it better.

Please add your name to the main page if you contributed to this work otherwise it is difficult to know. Thank you Jacques, Nicole, Matthias, Neil, Euan, Thomas, Francesco, Julio, Fernando, Christophe, Justin, Frank, Stefan, Max, Marco, Hugo, Michael, Ton, Alex, Pedro, Björn, Janne and Jose, Paolo ! I have listed people who have identified themselves but I know many others like Tom actually helped.

I knew I did not know that much about the European blogosphere, and I learned a lot today about it, such as Nancy White, who has very good comments.

Doc said that I should play more with the new search options of Technorati because it works very well, so here I am playing with the European blogosphere watchlist and I must say it works terrific (it looks like it has missed your post however).

I was curious to follow how the page with the top european bloggers changed and of course I was very surprised to see Michael Hellemann showing up #1 with 8033 links from 7152 sources. I regret that I missed the opportunity of discussing this with him in Copenhagen so I tried to understand and it looks like the WP plugin he designed, Kubrick, got him out of the Technorati 100 where he peaked #8 in spring of 2005. This leads me to two questions: why has he been deleted from the list and should he be removed from this one too. I guess it probably creates artificial links, sorry for my ignorance. What do you think ? Michael ?

Last idea, I wonder if we should have all put this work on Wikipedia ? Clearly, the manual ranking by Technorati links of top european bloggers has nothing to do there for example, especially as it is out of date the minute you write a name. I would be interested in your thoughts as well. Thanks again.

Update: Florian has a podcast of my speech about the wiki and the European blogosphere.

Technorati Tags: reboot

The long tail of fashion

Ulla-Maaria Mutanen had a great talk today about how The Long tail of Fashion and how thousands of fashion bloggers exchange their creative work, learn about each other's ideas and problems.

Ulla-Maaria showed pictures of self made shirts and hats, ipod covers and said:

"Craftblogging is based on the idea that people like to create outfits. They can be t-shirts, tops, bags, skirts, hats or the very famous ipod covers. People blog a lot about them.
The biggest group of craftblogs belong to young woman, but not only woman, from older ladies to snowboarders, and skateborders. Outwear.com was established by a group in Finland and the business is developing fast.

Craftblogging is based on the idea that people like to create outfits. They can be t-shirts, tops, bags, skirts, hats or the very famous ipod covers. People blog a lot about them.

New forms of social and economic behaviour emerge around crafting, like sharing techniques (Stencil revolution, for instance) or swapping: you post something you like and expect to swap with someone that likes the things you do. You just post the picture of the fashion work is sent to you. Sampling & Personalizing is also beginning to be popular through blogging.

Ulla-Maaria also talked about ShowStudio:

“SHOWstudio is based on the belief that showing the entire creative process—from conception to completion—is beneficial for the artist, the audience and the art itself.”

Ulla-Maaria is always asked when she talks about it if there is a market and she took the example of Japanesestreets.com that grows on the fact that people think it is much cooler to buy clothes that your friends or yourself have made than the ones made by big fashion brands. The long tail of fashion will create a totally new market.

David Weinberger (who already posted about it) says that "marketers who look at the long tail usually say "great we'll be able to target markets of one" and you have made a great example of how wrong they are". Picture: Heiko.

The European Blogosphere: help me get the key facts if you like

Thomas Madsen-Mygdal, organizer of Reboot, asked me if I could make a presentation on the european blogosphere tomorrow.

This is quite ambitious, of course I know very well France that has millions of blogs already, I also know some good cases in a few countries, but I would really appreciate if you could help me, so I have put a wiki page up, the european blogosphere.

It is really the beginning of this assessment, I am planning to add as much as I can until tomorrow, as well as during and after the presentation.

Technorati Tags: reboot

U.K. most linked-to British blogs

It looks like a manual ranking based on Technorati results of the British most linked-to blogs. Technorati has open APIs, can this be done automatically ? Via Hugh.

France says no to E.U. Charter: what did you hear in your Country ?

After 50 years of european integration, France said NO yesterday to the E.U. Charter. The first reason according to polls is fears from the French to lose their jobs on account of lower labor cost countries in the E.U.

What did you hear about it in your countries ? What do you think about this major event in Europe ? Has your image of France changed ?

Thanks very much in advance for your comments, I am very interested to have your perspective (don't forget to mention where you are).

Pierre Chappaz, founder of Kelkoo, blogs from Geneva

Pierre Chappaz founded Kelkoo and sold it last year to Yahoo! It was one of the hottest european startup with LastMinute.com, just sold as well. Both of them are owned by american companies now. There is only one pan-european Internet startup (successful) not owned by a US company left to my knowledge, Meetic, Marc Simoncini's baby going public in October in France.

Pierre blogs in French from Geneva, on Kelblog.

Speaking at Reboot 7.0

It is going to be vacation for me to speak at a conference I did not organize ! Thank you Thomas for having invited me to reboot 7.0 and too bad we did not find the time to meet last monday. The list of speakers and participants is here.

In Amsterdam on April 21st for blogonomics

Will be talking at blognomics next week. Thanks Guido van Nispen for having invited me to speak there. My last time in Amsterdam was 6 years ago...

Applying the Ebay principle to banking ?

Erwan, a reader of my blog, pings me to discover the new Zopa startup, presenting itself as "the first lending and borrowing exchange". Interesting, they put people who want to lend in touch with creditworthy people who want to borrow, mutualize the risk, and take a 1% commission.

I don't know the management (or anybody at Zopa) who has quite an impressive background. It looks like it was started by the team who launched Egg.

Interesting concept, the interesting part is to see if they will be successful in getting people lend money to others on the Internet. I guess with reputation and risk calculation it may work.

I am not sure how legal it is in many countries, I wonder about France.

Do you think it will work ? Would you lend or borrow money from Zopa ?

France invites you at the French Senat for our conference !

I just had the confirmation that Le Sénat (the French Senate) will host our one day conference on April 25th on blogs and social software ! You are all welcome to join, there are 200 seats in the room we have and we already have 85 people booked from around Europe so don't take too much time to decide... There is a 100 euros participation fee to cover all the costs, lunch and coffee breaks provided etc.

T-Online Germany launches weblogs on TypePad !

T-Online Germany, the #1 ISP in Europe, just opened its weblog service on TypePad. Thank you T-Online for choosing TypePad and congratulations for all your team work to launch the weblogs.

Many thanks as well to Six Apart members who worked hard to make this happen and especially Heiko.

Design, Innovation and Blogging in Denmark

Hans launches a new blog in Denmark and launches a company devoted to weblogs. It is amazing to see the blogging phenomenon touching all countries around the world.

Podcasted by the Hobson and Holtz Report

Thank you so much Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz for having podcasted me via Skype on "For Immediate Release".

I am very impressed by the quality of the show and much less by my accent and the number of "euh" I pronounce every ten seconds but he, that's my accent...

The show is available at For Immediate Release and on Neville's blog. I think you are really doing an amazing job in new PR, congratulations.

The new Moscow generation

I am in the plane back from Moscow, just spent a few days there with Pierre Mechentel. We have had many meetings in a very short period of time with russian entrepreneurs and of course as we are both french, the local french entrepreneurs. My goal was to try to understand if we can and should launch TypePad in Russia and better the market. Only based on word of mouth we already have more than 120 000 livejournal blogs in Russia.

The last time I was in Moscow was 12 years ago, a few years after the fall of the USSR. I had spent some time there as I learnt russian as a first language and unfortunately lost most of it today. Obviously the way Moscow changed is impressive. The price of a flat in Moscow is catching up fast with largest cities in the world with $5000 per square meter, there are more Mercedes 500 sold in Moscow than New York and I would be there a more hip restaurants (and better decorated) in Moscow than London and Paris. Don't expect to have dinner in one of these high end restaurants for a good price, they are more expensive than in London. Walking around the Kremlin is an experience, the former popular shopping area Goum where the average russian used to go and buy fruits and bred has been transformed in the most luxurious shopping mall I have ever seen. Vuitton and other luxury shops are just in front of Lenin's tomb, looking at the "mosolei lenuna" as if capitalism had taken its revenge over communism.

The young generation has the latest mobile phone and spends anything between $20 to $150 on it every month. The largest russian mobile operator, MTS, has more than 30 million subscribers and was the worlds fastest growing phone operator last year. The PC sales in 2005 should reach 500 000 units, twenty times more than only 7 years ago. Samsung and LG Electronics who have been one of the first electronics brands to invest in the russian market have reached dominant positions on the computer screen and TV markets.

Don't be surprised in the street or your hotel if your bill is in... "units". The first time I heard "units" to pay a bill I was quite surprised. A few years ago the Government made forbidden to show prices in dollars in the streets but the russians got fed up to change the prices all the time with inflation so they launched a new "currency" that is difficult to describe as it has no official existence but is everywhere. You might think is it in dollars, well it is close, but it looks like the russian start to say it is closer to the euro now...

The picture of Moscow we usually have of an underdeveloped city is totally wrong. I felt also very secure in Moscow, another "cliché" that disappears quickly when you walk around is insecurity.

Meeting russian and french entrepreneurs who live there was a pleasure. Some of them built amazing fortunes in a very short amount of time in the Internet, direct mail, luxury goods or real estate industry when others have built world leaders such as Plesk. I had been very impressed by China and clearly I was underestimating the way Russia moves. Coming back to France will be difficult with all this energy around as "Old Europe" has setup itself into a very comfortable socially protected situation where the most important thing in France or Germany is to defend it. I the eastern countries as well as China the only way is "up" and the energy of the entrepreneurs and the young has nothing to do with what we see in western europe.

Of course all the buying power and the wealthy people in Moscow cannot hide a very poor bulk of the population living everywhere else, mostly from agriculture revenues. Still, Russia is catching up and fast, stay tuned before it becomes one day the capital of Europe. Russians I have met tell me that the situation varies very much from one city to another, from one region to another, Moscow looks like a country alone with its 15 million inhabitants.

Thank you again Pierre for getting me there and thank you all, Olivier, Alexandr, Laurent, Boris, Philippe, Nikolai, Pascal, Stanislav for your help and fun there !

Before I forgot, do you think russia is Europe and should join the EU one day ? I personally do. Russia joining the EU would be a huge strength for Europe towards the US, India and China.

BlogConference in Madrid

The conference is happening right now and I am blogging from the panel. Spain is really growing fast on blogging these days. Very interesting talks in Madrid today, we talked about corporate blogging, blogs and journalism and of course blogs and politics. As on blogs, the discussion that started after the presentations were the most important.

We could listen to:
Julio Alonso
Alberto Knapp
Octavio Rojas
Juan Varela (I am sure Juan is a politician and if not he should be one as he is very convincing)
and Enrique Dans

One blogger in the audience talked about arcadi.espasa.com a publishing company sponsoring a well known journalist to blog and will write a book based on the blog, about politics.

Julio talks to me about escolar.net that is another influential political blog, left wing as I understand. There is also libertaddigital.com which is a network of liberal blogs on the right wing.

Thank you so much Julio, Victor, Alberto, Octavio, Juan and Enrique for organising it all and the Instituto de Empresa for hosting us.

Off to Madrid

So many posts I have to write from last week's thoughts... No time.

I am leaving for Madrid tomorrow morning and I can't wait for our first Madrid EuropaBlog, I see 50 people are joining this is so cool, see you there !

Italy quits smoking

I love Italy's creativity. In France we had a law years ago that did not let anybody smoke in public places. It never worked. If you drive in Italy or get into a Taxi as I did las week in Roma, you will feel that Italians don't really like following rules. Just notice how many people stop when the lights get red.

This time they made it. I was having with Paolo an amazing Mozzarella in Roma last week and I can certify there were no smokers around in the restaurant. The recipe is very simple, they made the restaurant owner responsible. He is the first one who gets fined if one of its customers complains.

Viva Italia... Well actually if you think about it, you can't drive fast anymore, you can't drink, you can't smoke, you can't... I wonder what is going to be left !

Hear the voice of the Spanish bloggers in English

The Spanish bloggers who blog in English aggregated, created by Victor. That's really cool, we should do that for all countries. Via Julio.

Margot Wallström Vice President of the EU Commission blogs

Markot Wallström. Too bad there are no comments (yet ?) activated

An Italian blogger hosts a TV show !

Marco Montemagno has been invited to host a Sky News television channel show. The first time in Italy that an Italian TV news channel uses a blog as an information source. Congrats, Marco !

France and Germany lost control of Europe

This article of the WSJ today reminds me of Internet startups growing fast enough so that their VCs fire the CEOs to get going. France and Germany started it and they have just been fired, probably they are too slow now with the 10 new members.

"Since the European Union's birth almost 50 years ago, the Franco-German axis has been driving its agenda. So when the new president of the European Commission announced the composition of his Commission late last week, it marked the end of an era.

As Jose Manuel Barroso read the names of the Commissioners he had chosen for the key portfolios, it became clear that the center of gravity has shifted. France and Germany are no longer calling the shots. Almost none of the duo's central demands were met while all important economic positions went to avowed free-marketers.

It all began when 10 new members, mostly from the former Communist East, joined the EU in May. In contrast to Paris and Berlin, the newcomers pursue largely free-market policies and support the U.S. war in Iraq. Heralding that tectonic shift in the balance of power was Mr. Barroso's own nomination in June. France and Germany had pushed for Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt. Particularly in foreign policy, Belgium had been toeing the Franco-German line.

But in this new Europe, Portugal's Prime Minister was chosen instead. With his free-market credentials and support of the U.S. war in Iraq, it was hard to imagine a greater setback for the Franco-German ambitions in Europe than Mr. Barroso's nomination. But last week it got even worse for Berlin and Paris."

Discover Plazes: the social software based on your location

Congrats Felix and Stefan for having launched your new venture, Plazes.

I just joined this new social software and I like the idea, when you are in, Plazes allow you to fill-in new places you have been to (or you are at) and find people and things of interest around you. Really cool, give it a try !

There is also a Plazes blog if you want to follow how Felix and Stefan grow their startup.

Off to Barcelona for the Forum 2004, Speech on the role of corporations in the 21st Century

I am going to Barcelona, to speak at the Forum Barcelona 2004 about entrepreneurship during the day partly about the role of corporations in the 21st Century.

The contents of this conference day is in pdf if you are interested, I will try to blog from the panel...

The third political party in the UK is now an anti-Europe one

Just heard it on the late news: Robert Killroy Silk and his anti-Europe party the UKIP got huge success yesterday in the UK.

The Times online article says:

"Robert Kilroy-Silk said today that he was looking forward to "wrecking" the European Parliament after being elected as a UK Independence Party member in the European elections.

Eleven of the UKIP's new MEPs gathered in Westminster this morning to toast their party’s spectacular election success with English sparkling wine."

They never drink champaign in public because it is French !

Hey friends from the UK, what do you think about this anti-Europe raising movement in your country ?

I think it is really bad that we have such parties across Europe.

Record low European elections turnout

Europeans do not care about Europe.

The European elections gave 350m voters in 25 countries the chance to vote, but the mood of discontent was also reflected in a record low turnout of about 45 per cent - down from 49 per cent in 1999.

Naples last week, thanks again for the mozarella !

I had to take down my last post with the pictures as there was something wrong on my blog with it but here is a fantastic place we drove close to with Giuseppe (I believe it is Salerno)

and thank you so much again everybody for the conference, the fun and the mozarella there, many pictures were posted here and there.

Paolo posted an amazing picture of Joi and me talking in the ex-Church conference room in Naples

Presence check the attendance of your Members of the European Parliament

Shame on the low attendance of certain Members of the European Parliament, check your country, here are three examples;

France
Germany
Italy

and all others are there, too ! Thanks Laurent for the link.

Is Entrepreneurship important for the EU policy ?

Philippe talks about the speech of the European commissioner Erkki Liikanen, and says things move in the right direction. I don't buy it. I heard a speech of Erkki Liikanen on European Entrepreneurship in Davos two years ago and I saw nothing happening after. I guess in this fiels the EU is excellent for speeches.

Here is what Philippe says about it:

European commissioner Erkki Liikanen, responsible for Europe Enterprise, made a speech on the subject of "Entrepreneurship: an integral and vital part of the EU policy mix" at an extraordinary meeting with the Employer’s Group of the European Economic and Social Committee.

Abstracts of Liikanen’s speech :

As you know, entrepreneurship and small businesses are – particularly for the European economy – a key source of jobs, business dynamism and innovation. Some 25 million SMEs in Europe provide more than two-thirds of total jobs in the private sector. This means SMEs employ more than 100 million people. Our most dynamic SMEs account for around 80% of new jobs created. < However, there are still too many barriers stand in the way of entrepreneurs. With our new Entrepreneurship Action Plan, we therefore intend to target practical issues such as: - How do we encourage entrepreneurial initiative and are we doing enough to ensure small firms can grow? - How do we handle the handover of family businesses from one generation to another? - How do we make sure that if a business fails people are given a second chance? - This initiative, together with our initiatives in the areas of industrial policy, innovation and competitiveness – together with our ambitious work to achieve better regulation – all have a positive contribution to make as key elements to ensure growth in Europe.

Article about the Euro Identity Caravan in Japan

Maki Kimura (blog in Japanese), a Japanese journalist who participated in the Euro Identity Caravan with Heiko, Ulli and many other people from all around Europe, has just written an article about it.

I had unfortunately not blogged much about it, just my talks about saving the Planet with Tachi, and the discussions we had about changing the image of entrepreneurs in Europe, as well as some pictures of our trip (in the bus, Bratislava, Prague -and its nice hotels :=)-, Budapest, etc).

We visited 5 of the accessing Countries, quite a crazy trip, it was really fun.

Estonia: 40% of the street car park payments made via mobile phone in some cities

I wish it would be the same in Paris, I had two fines in the same day in Paris last week, because you have to buy there a street car park paying card available only in certain shops, then get a paper ticket, put it on the car and it is only good for two hours, so if you don't come back, you get a fine. Paying by mobile phone would be really cool.

Micah Sifry pinged me after my speech on the Future of Business in Europe at the WEF, as I quoted some numbers that really impressed me in Estonia.

Here are some hard facts I got from this document on E-Estonia, really interesting.

Ministers peruse draft bills and regulations, make comments and suggestions, and vote entirely online at computer terminals. The system, coupled with the use of digital signatures, eliminates the need to send mountains of papers between ministries for consultation. It gives ministers a possibility to participate in the session from any location. The system, created by Estonian IT companies, saves approximately three million Estonian kroons (192 000 EUR) per year in paper and copying costs.

In the summer of 2001, the Government created a web page Täna Otsustan Mina ("I Decide Today"). Ministries upload all their draft bills and amendments there, allowing people to review, comment on and make proposals on the legislative process as well as propose amendments to existing legislation. Ideas that gain substantial support will be reviewed by competent bodies. Approximately 5% of all ideas are used as amendments to bills.  

In April 2002 the Look @ World Foundation started an ambitious training project – the goal being that by spring 2004, 100,000 Estonians will have been taught basic computer and Internet skills. In October 2003 more than 75 500 people have passed the training. Primary feedback indicated that 59 per cent of the participants have become regular internet users.

Since January 2002, the Citizenship and Migration Board (www.pass.ee) has been issuing a new primary domestic identification document - the ID card. In addition to many advanced security features, the card has a machine-readable code and a microchip containing the visual data on the card and two security certificates (long number series), to verify the individual and supply digital signatures. Possible future uses of the card include integration of ID cards and banking cards and various access cards. By the end of 2003, 350,000 ID-cards were issued.

By 2004, all state and local government agencies should be providing services through the Internet, 60 per cent of the population are everyday Internet users.

People all over the country can access the Internet from over 700 Public Internet Access Points (PIAP), 51 PIAPs per 100 000 people (autumn 2003). The PIAP has a special traffic sign, with the @ symbol, showing its location. Most of PIAPs are located in libraries and other municipal buildings across the country.

A survey conducted in the Autumn of 2003 by TNS EMOR indicated that 47 per cent of the Estonian population aged between 15 and 74 regard themselves as active Internet users. Almost all public employees have computerized workplaces. 38 per cent of the population have computers at home and 71 per cent of home computers are connected to the Internet. Most home Internet users have high-speed Internet connections.

Is Estonia leading the way in E-government ? Ross, may be some thoughts ?

Video clip of my rant on the Future of Business in Europe panel at the World Economic Forum

So, after a session to prepare for my first Plenary at the World Economic Forum, I asked for your suggestions on how to prepare it and I thank you for your ideas, for those of you who just want the summary I wrote one 20 minutes before my speech and I have read my blog post in front of the European leaders (and gave your comments to them in print - quite fun !), I was quite scared but I think it went Ok, but please please please let me have your comments about my speech (streaming Real Audio and Windows Media player) which is available on the World Economic Forum Website.
The questions I had were very interesting:

Antiglobalization and Social Entrepreneurs: how do feel about that ? Excellent questions, I talked about my good old and close Social Entrepreneurs friends, Ethan Zuckerman (blog Africa and Geek Corp), Daniel Lubetzky (One Voice) and Mel Young (The Homeless World Soccer Cup).

Tax issues in the EU: we (the 15 Old Europe countries) should really adapt to the new 10 ones "hunger to succeed" and not the opposite. I even said "I feel more European than French" and criticized France's 35 hours a week maximum work time law strongly. Somebody told me on the panel "be careful France will not allow you to get back in your Country"

Last question was: you have great suggestions but how do you make them happen... Well, I guess we tried to get our points understood by politicians in the room but I agree, nothing will probably happen.... How should we actually make it happen ?

Anyway, yeah, I really have a French accent, and what do you think about my speech ?

The BBC Show on Migration from Accession countries and Low European Fertility Rates

by Martin Varsavsky, who kindly sent me his report on that session by email. Thank you Martin !

Very interesting session TV show on Migration.  The session was attended by various ministers and presidents from Europe and it was both a session with a moderator, and a TV show for the BBC channel.  Highlights of this session which blog readers can view on BBC this weekend:
 
Firstly we learned that as opposed to what British and German tabloids are saying, migration from accession countries will be minor.  Population experts told us that presently there are 800,000 people from accession countries living in the European Union out of 370 million and that the new EU will have around 450 million but we should only expect around 2 million people to migrate from accession countries to the rest of the EU.
 
Secondly we learned that rather than fearing migration it is time we start fearing population extinction....yes Malthusians get this, extinction and that is because regardless of the Italian minister´s comments that Itaaaaleeans like making babies....they don´t, and neither do the Germans, or Spaniards, or everyone else in the EU to the tune of 2.1 babies per couple that is needed to keep population levels as they are.
 
So why is it that we don´t