Likemind Coffee morning in London

Leweb for me was about two things, meeting my seesmic friends and meeting new people. It’s through meeting friends that are familiar to me on the web that I had the best times. In particular I enjoyed meeting with Alex, nutrisionist 2.0 as is mentioned in his tagline. What was great about meeting him is the amount of hours we spent just chatting about one thing, then another. It was fun to get to know the person behind the persona.

What was also fun was meeting someone like Tiil. I hardly knew him until Leweb but he’s a friendly person as well with some interesting ideas and a different point of view to my own. In particular it was interesting to watch as he described Seesmic to people that were not yet familiar with the social network.

Of course there’s Marion. She’s the one that asked me whether I actually wanted to come to Leweb and for that I’m grateful. It’s not often that you get invited to such an exclusive event to meet with so many interesting people.

After this of course there’s Whitt and Clare. During the actual conference we didn’t get to chat much but over the past few hours we were in Paris enjoying some organic food before some macaron at Ladurée and some very thick hot chocolate. That was a nice place. What was interesting about this meeting, aside from the food was the conversation, just hearing about things from a different angle and seeing why certain people should be appreciated more than we give them credit for.

Of course it was a pleasure to meet KDFA. He’s often on seesmic filling the timeline and he’s known for “Le Bar est ouvert”, an occasion which happens on a daily basis when he opens a bottle of wine and the community follows suit for a more convivial atmosphere.

Then there’s Dean. I know him from a few meetings in London and at a podcamp in England and he’s another interesting person to talk to. Another person that has some ideas and is trying them out. He’s the one that got John Cleese to give an interview to seesmic in seesmic style rather than the traditional kind.

Then there are Seb and Virginie, two seesmicers I see a lot because they live just 20 minutes away by car. They were both working on providing some coverage of the events in the form both of pictures of participants and the layout as well as of interviews that should be online shorty.

Then of course you have Valvert, Baptiste, Patrice Gabin and many other seesmicers who were present as well. They’re interesting to meet. I also met some other people of interest working on a number of projects.
Kate carruthers is an Australian friend I’ve been tweeting with for many months now and I finally got to meet her at Leweb and that meeting was pleasant. We sat in one of the lounges and it was an opportunity to discuss the social media and explore, at least to some extent how we picture the word within a broader context. Two words she liked to use together were Social computing. It’s not that I understand in depth what she means but it’s nonetheless an interesting branch of thought to be explored, in parallel to my own ideas.

Sandrine Passeriaud is a person I’ve met at a number of events in London but I never really got to chat to her till leweb. It might be because, as we were in a french speaking Environment, and away from London, we felt more comfortable. That’s another occurence I’m happy about.

Taylor Barr was often present on the seesmic booth but I didn’t make one connection yet. The day before he was meant to fly out to Leweb his plane was cancelled and so he was delayed. We exchanged a few videos on the topic and it’s only two days later, during the seesmic dinner that we understood that we actually knew each other from seesmic. That’s why seesmic is a great tool. It’s about meeting a few people you may not have known beforehand, even if at first hand you don’t remember why you knew someone.

Hermione was one, Stephanie booth was another, then people like Dan martell. We talked as we walked from the seesmic post Leweb dinner to the techcrunch party and that was long enough to get an understanding of what we both do. I’m speaking about this because I didn’t stay more than twenty minutes at the techcrunch party because it was overcrowded and I was too tired to spend much time present there. As much as networking is about the event and the organised parties, it’s also about the walking from one location to another.

There are many more people I met but I’m pretty tired now and I wanted to mention by name or nickname those that I found most interesting to meet during Leweb. If you’re not mentioned it’s not that you’re not interesting. It’s that I need to get to know more of what you do before being able to speak with any authority on the topic