A Travelling Geeks personal retrospective
by Ewan Spence on December 12, 2009 at 12:21 pm
During Blog World Expo this year, Renee Blodgett asked if I would be free for the few days before Le Web, as she would be planning “a little something” with her Travelling Geeks project. In essence it was asking if I would like to meet with some of the newer French start-ups in the city in a more intimate environment than Geraldine’s 2,300 attendee strong conference.
It sounded like fun to me, so I agreed.
In reality it was asking if I’d like to run round Paris as part of a modern day version Tom Baker and Lalla Ward in The City of Death (except the Louvre was on strike), so we had to resort to looking at the latest companies, and their plans either as they started in the world or expanded out from France to the world.
The companies (of which I’ll discuss a few in an upcoming post) was part of the reason – the other part was very much a social need, to meet other bloggers, writers and reporters… people who were in the same space as me. Who day in and day out face the same challenges as I do. From this Travelling Geeks edition I knew many of the names by reputation, but very few of them from the real world.
There was a perception that the group was “American Bloggers” but let’s dispel that right now. Apart from the Scottish flavour from myself the group also had Belgium, South Africa, France and Morocco represented. How can you not have fun (and culture clash) in a group like that?
I definitely had fun, and the links and stories I made from spending time with everyone was probably one of the highlights of the TG experience (plus of course a bundle of in-jokes that would be dead to you if I tried to get them on Twitter). So a big thank you to all!
