About Us
Traveling Geeks is a consortium of entrepreneurs, thought leaders, authors, journalists, bloggers, technology innovators and influencers who travel to countries to share and learn from peers, governments, corporations, and the general public to educate, share, evaluate, and promote new, innovative technologies. The initiative was founded by Renee Blodgett and Jeff Saperstein in 2008.
Trips are funded by sponsorships from corporations, organizations and governments. The first tour was sponsored by the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a trip that successfully marked the proof of concept that could expand to other countries around the world.
Read MoreLeweb 2009 – Gurus and illustrious speakers
Let’s talk a bit about these “TED moments” from Leweb, when speakers really shake the audience and create a strong emotional connection. In most cases, it was with substance. There were at least 4 to 5 such occasions at this year’s Leweb.
It’s always amazing to watch the differences of communication styles between speakers. Corporate speakers tend to care about every word they say, keep a stable voice, and they avoid to hurt anybody as if their legal department was hiding behind the black stage curtain. Some were even reading their speeches, huh oh. On the contrary, good speakers move, shake hands, speak loud, use common sense, and they make a hit. Could you have both? I wish Corporation could. In the long run, they’ll have to. Otherwise, fireside chats with Loic were fine.
So, let’s look at the main session speakers in a decreasing impact order: (Continue reading this entry…)
Leweb 2009 – Sponsor speakers
There were many sponsor speakers at Leweb. Although they seemed to be everywhere in the agenda, there were hopefully more non-sponsor speakers!
Twitter was a preeminent company at Leweb since it was not only a sponsor but it had its CEO and founder Jack Dorsey talking. And it made a lot of sense since Twitter is a huge part of the real time web phenomenon. Jack spent also significant time in Paris, going to the City Hall for the “.paris” reception, meeting with Queen Rania, talking to @nk_m, etc. (Continue reading this entry…)
Leweb 2009 – Weird stuff
Since 2006, I’m playing the photoreporter role at Leweb, on top of blogging and networking.
This year, I took with me my two Canon reflex cameras (DSLR) with a wide angle lense and a zoom lense. Every year, I learn the way to improve my shootings. This year, I got very nice results with using a mix of high ISO sensors (5D II), wide apperture lenses (2.8), fast speed (1/400s) and with caring about good focusing. My pictures are not retouched at all beyond basic RAW files processing using Adobe Lightroom, with some color balance and lighting adjustments. Despite the gear, I’m NOT a professional photographer. It’s just a hobby!
You’ll find all my pictures from this year’s Leweb here and there. (Continue reading this entry…)
MobileGlobe’s Yoann Valensi on Cheap Calls
MobileGlobe’s CEO Yoann Valensi hosted Traveling Geeks for a dinner last week in Paris in the Marais. His mission is to make mobile calls cheap and easy from anywhere in the world. Listen to why you should care. [Click (more…) for the video] (Continue reading this entry…)Stribe’s Kamel Zeroual on Embedded Community
This past week in Paris, we spent time with Stribe’s Kamel Zeroual who won an award at TechCrunch 50 this past fall. Listen to why he thinks embedding community into your existing environment is so important. On stage at LeWeb last week, they showed a white label version that ToysRUs had implemented. [Click (more…) for the video] (Continue reading this entry…)
My first batch of Companies at Travelling Geeks
Here are some of the companies from the first full day of my recent time with the Travelling Geeks project in Paris. I’m not going to write about all the companies that I met during the trip, just the ones that caught my eye and made me want to know a bit more for various reasons, both good and bad. (Continue reading this entry…)
In From Around the World
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Paris Diary: LeWeb Roundup – Vacuous Social Media Messages; LeWeb A Pay-To- Present Platform; and YouTube Millionaires…
(LeWeb conference floor – photo by David Spark.)
The beauty of the blogging approach to news is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. If someone has written up a great story, you can simply point to it instead of trying to recreate it.
At LeWeb I was part of the Traveling Geeks group, and the group was producing a lot of great content. Here is a selection: (Continue reading this entry…)
Chris Pirillo on Mobile Speech Recognition: It’s So Accurate Man #tg09, #leweb
Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Social Media #tg09 #leweb
Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah gave an amazingly inspirational talk….on social media and how powerful it can be to mobilize social issues and causes, on passion, on having a voice, on Twitter, on taking action because action is so easy for all of us now with the free and easy-to-use online tools we have at our fingertips.
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