cruel to be kind

Leweb in Paris is one week away, and it’s about time to start the pre conference podcast again. In the past, I have interviewed speakers but found that people are much more interested in who else is coming and what they want to achieve when being in Paris. So this year I ask:

• Why are you coming to Leweb?
• Who do you want to meet?
• What would you like to present / showcase / tell others about?
  

What is your personal reason for attending? Is it to meet ‘the americans’ as some might call it or because you want to catch up with your fellow Europeans? Are you there as a startup who wants to connect with bloggers / VC or do you want to find new customers? What ever it is, I want to hear from you.

Send me your audio or text comment and I will include it in the podcast. It even can be a bit commercial (but not too much, it should still be valuable to listen to!) See at the end for more instructions.
To give you an example, mine would be something like this:

Hi, my name is Nicole Simon from Germany and I am coming to Leweb to meet other Europeans and exchange thoughts about how to bring Europe more together, how to foster those relationships, like for example meeting the Organizers of the Girl Geek Dinners from Greece and Brussel, Despina Bakirtzi and Clo Williarts.

Also I’d like to know more about local events with a european relevance. For Germany for example, you should learn about Next10 which happens next year May in Hamburg.

I want to find more podcasters to submit for the European Podcast Award and finally want to find out if this year we will have milk for our coffee – or if I need to go shopping again!

The guys at the Social Media Club House for example want to create a physical place to meet:

Social Media Club House Le Web edition is a home for bloggers in Paris before, during and after Le Web during the week of 7-12 December 2009. It is a place to create media, to sleep and to share the camaraderie of distant friends. In the Club House in Paris is Cathy Brooks, Dana Oshiro, Robert Scoble, Stephanie Booth, Kristie Wells and me, Chris Heuer. While the lease necessitates that we do not host any open parties, we are going to be inviting guests in for interviews and breaking bread with some leading web thinkers from around the world.

The travelling geeks on the other hand go out in the field and want to meet startups and locals:

Traveling Geeks is heading to Paris to participate in a series of meet-ups, briefings, demos and activities in and around LeWeb, the renown web and Internet conference in Europe.

The new site is live, and there’s now a Facebook fan page, so please sign up and follow along for an interesting ride over the next few weeks and beyond.

The France team includes: Eliane Fiolet, Tom Foremski, Robin Wauters, Kim-Mai Cutler, David Spark, Frederic Lardinois, Matt Buckland, Sky Schuyler, Jerome Tranie, Ewan Spence, Olivier Ezratty, Cyrille de Lasteyrie, Renee Blodgett, Amanda Coolong, Beth Blecherman, and Phil Jeudy.

Our goal is to collaborate with innovators and
influencers, and then share that knowledge and insight to a collective
global audience through blogging, video, social media tools,
traditional media and meet-ups.

This is how you can participate:

• leave a comment here or tweet with the words why leweb
• send me your audio file to
  
• leave a voicemail via Skype
  

Looking forward hearing from you!

Disclosure: As one of the official bloggers I am receiving a free ticket for Leweb.

Tags: leweb, leweb09, preconferencepodcast