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 MoreDancers at Paris Web Event Make an Impact #leweb
Loic and Geraldine brought in some magical, multicultural dancing talent for this year’s LeWeb speaker dinner. I could have watched all night. [Click (more…) to see the videos] (Continue reading this entry…)
With the Traveling Geeks @ Orange
This is the last part of my report of the Traveling Geeks tour in Paris before Leweb.
We met with Orange to have a glimpse of all the solutions they provide to their consumer customers: IPTV, mobile solutions, web solutions, tablets, etc. It took place in the Orange Lab situated at Chatillon, in the southern Paris suburb.
Paris City Hall and DotParis #tg09 #leweb
The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe and Jean-Louis Missikia, Deputy Mayor responsible for Innovation, research and universities hosted LeWeb attendees for an evening of champagne and decadent walls, ceilings and floors. As we entered, the city set up cameras to interview people on their opinion about dotParis. Should there be a dotParis and why? Should there be dotCityX? Below, a few of us were interviewed and below that, a short video I took inside City Hall, talking to some of LeWeb attendees, speakers, Traveling Geeks and random folks who made it into my zoom. (the best part of the video of course are the gorgeous ceilings). [Click (more…) to view the video] (Continue reading this entry…)
Drilling Down with Zoomorama #tg09
At a Paris incubator this past week, I had a lengthy chat with the Anne-Celine Jeanneau from Zoomorama. We received a number of demos from early stage startups, who were all located in one of five incubators run by Paris Developpement. (Martin Guerin hosted)
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With the Traveling Geeks in Paris
Dear reader, this is my first post in English. The reason is I participated recently to the Traveling Geeks tour in Paris and the rule of the game is to publish content that can be shared by its participants and within the Traveling Geeks web site. So, no other solution than English. Time to get really international!
In this first post, I’ll quickly go through the agenda of this tour and then talk a little bit about my fellow international Traveling Geeks bloggers. We’ve spent four days together, two in a local tour and two at Leweb. That was a good opportunity to get to know high-profile bloggers from other countries, not just the USA, and to share some views on digital innovation as well as on Leweb itself. I enjoyed a lot this experience. (Continue reading this entry…)
With the Traveling Geeks @ La Cantine
This second part of my report from the Traveling Geeks tour in Paris is focused on the companies we visited during the first two days, Monday 7th and Tuesday 8th of December 2009. With startups with short presentations, startups with long meetings, then larger companies (Orange, Parrot).
I’ll start here with the startups we met at La Cantine. I realize I’ll need more posts for the rest of this two days visits. (Continue reading this entry…)
With the Traveling Geeks @ Paris Incubator
The Traveling Geeks visited one of the five incubators from Paris Development, a joint venture between the City of Paris and the Paris Chamber of Commerce.
Paris Development has been in place for 10 years and has two goals: have foreign companies settle in Paris and help local startups. All in all, they incubate 100 startups representing 600 folks. 200 work in the “rue des Haies” incubator we visited, one that is dedicated to digital medias. But the presenting startups came from all the incubators from Paris. Incubated companies pay for staying in the incubator, although it’s quite modest in comparison with normal commercial offices price. And it includes all services (network, phone, welcome desk, etc). They have a long waiting list of startups and welcome only 7% to 8% of the candidates. Companies stay in the incubator for a maximum 4 years. (Continue reading this entry…)
With the Traveling Geeks @ Pearltrees
The Traveling Geeks met with Patrice Lamothe from Pearltrees (@pearltrees) for nearly two hours at the beginning of the Traveling Geeks tour.
This guy is running the Internet startup buzz playboo
k like perfect, at least for a French startup: he did a tour in the Silicon Valley visiting local influencers and bloggers, sponsored the Traveling Geeks and Leweb, talking at Leweb in plenary session (twice…), creating plug-ins, buttons, that can be placed everywhere on social sites, his site is in English, and so on. As a result, he got heck of a good visibility. And we were very kindly welcomed in the company which looks like an US startup: lots of coffee and… US sized patisserie. (Continue reading this entry…)
With the Traveling Geeks @ Cedexis and Parrot
We are near the end of my report of the Traveling Geeks in Paris before Leweb. One startup and one mid-sized company.
Cedexis @ Club Melcion
We met Julien Coulon, the founder of Cedexis, a former business developer at Akamai.
The company provides a Content Delivery Networks optimizing service, identifying the ones with the best performance to optimize the traffic and quality of service of your web site. It provides both analytic tools to identify the best services and provide reports to both web sites and CDN services, and an automatic switching engine to select the right ones at each and every moment. CDN performance can always change and is not predictable, thus the need for a real time optimization solution. (Continue reading this entry…)
A Chat with Gary Vaynerchuk #leweb #tg09
That said, what he’s talking about is the personal touch, the value of connecting with your audience and a large reason for his success. It’s not because he’s a master of wine above and beyond everyone else.
His success is because of his resilience, his determination, his ability to connect to the every day man – in their language and in a genuine way. he wears his immigrant status on his sleeve and as second and third generation Americans, we can still relate to that. Rags to riches and of course social media makes that reality more possible than ever. The second gold rush is in play.
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