My experience traveling around France this summer was quite eye-opening. At the first household I stayed at, they had no connectivity when I was there. Tech support put them on hold for half an hour, then said they'd send someone to fix it within two weeks.
Two weeks! Things happen on a different time-scale there. This wasn't rural France, it was in the University area of one of the major cities. The longest I've been without Internet in the U.S in the last 3 years with roadrunner is overnight, during a thunderstorm. And things always get fixed promptly.
That wasn't an isolated experience either. Many French cities, always the same story. Even when the connection did work, half the time it was so slow as to be unusable.
I'm totally with Arrington on the overall coverage of LeWeb. The amount of hanging out, drinking beer and chatting about politics that goes on is pretty absurd (not just in France, other European countries as well). That's actually great if you have a normal job, but definitely a problem if you're trying to do a startup. Europeans need to get real before they can catch up with Silicon Valley.
1800 people attended Le Web 08. If SwissCom charged E100,000 total, that makes 55 euro per person to provide 2 days of Internet connectivity! That costs more than 2 months of residential DSL per person. Ridiculous, even if it had worked.
Day 1 was a complete writeoff and I left mid day to work from my hotel.
He couldn't listen to the talks, take notes, and post them later? Unless he means that the talks were a writeoff because the presenters had no net access.
I presume that, like most journalists - just because he was at a show, it didn't mean he was just writing about the show. I was a tech journalist/edit for many years. When I was at a show I spent my time talk to people at the show, yes - but also had commitments - to edit copy, handle other stories that the office was sending me and deal with other administrivia remotely.
Combine that with the fact that half the demos you had booked in advance to see would not have been working and yes... I can imagine having to bail from the hall. Of course, that's why we gave all the journalists cellular data cards for emergencies.
Is that really a big deal? What really goes on at conferences that makes any difference to us?
A bunch of self appointed "experts" echoing each others enthusiasm for the next ridiculous meme? How are conferences relevant in our always connected society?
Two weeks! Things happen on a different time-scale there. This wasn't rural France, it was in the University area of one of the major cities. The longest I've been without Internet in the U.S in the last 3 years with roadrunner is overnight, during a thunderstorm. And things always get fixed promptly.
That wasn't an isolated experience either. Many French cities, always the same story. Even when the connection did work, half the time it was so slow as to be unusable.
I'm totally with Arrington on the overall coverage of LeWeb. The amount of hanging out, drinking beer and chatting about politics that goes on is pretty absurd (not just in France, other European countries as well). That's actually great if you have a normal job, but definitely a problem if you're trying to do a startup. Europeans need to get real before they can catch up with Silicon Valley.