Henriette Weber

well last blogpost I gave you my expectations of les blogs 2 – here’s my afterthoughts from the les blogs 2 conference in 2005.

now when the bloghosphere is cooking over with the “Mena Trotti vs. Ben Metcalfe” issue that happened at les blogs ( Im not going to link to it – just look at technorati) – I want to adress some issues that was completely absurd to me at the conference.

first I want to be a real good kitten and say that the crowd was interesting, variated and lots of people conversating ( I never managed to get to talk to any french people btw). but the networking part of the conference was excellent – there could have been more youngsters though.

I mean – you could always talk about the lack of food – so the first obstacle to start a conversation was removed.

anyway there was nothing especially remarkable on day 1. except I liked Nikolaj Nyholms
question saying to the “fon” guy on the panel ” now, DIDN’T you delete comments?”
and the french guy from monputeaux.com the blogger who was putted to trial by the city he lives in.

the evening party was (except for the lack of food and a bar running out of beer after 1½ – 2 hours) real nice. I got to talk and mingle with a lot of excellent people from all over the world. my point of being there exactly…

day number two was a bit better and Ben Hammersley kicked ass as always, Hugh Macleod and Anina
did real good. I don’t know how I would have reacted on a panel with Hugh Macleod and Mark Canter – so you go girl.. ! excellent.

but in a retrospective, these two talks are all that I found made me wonder, and take notes -the rest was panels and I had to stop liveblogging it – the structure was nonexistant. the moderators did not do a good enough job- sorry guys.. my opinion

now the absurd parts:

I am in PR myself, and it was so completely ironic that you had the head of Edelmans ( one of the sponsors – and one of Europe’s biggest PR companies doing a speech where she claims that they are in control of PR blah blah blah… and you have 300 hungry people sitting there.. that’s not exactly what you will call good PR is it – it’s basic PR – it’s what needs to be in order.

Also Mena Trotti doing a keynote on ethics in the blogosphere, lashing out after a blogger who is not of the same opinion as she is.

to me, she was the perfect example of a business leader who tries to control the organic and uncontrolable, and I wasn’t impressed…

anyway I will stop here, but it could have been a whole lot better – and a lot more interesting, and please stop doing panels all the time ?