Occam's Razor

European Company Watch : Jamendo

One of my best LesBlog2.0 discussion was with Laurent Kratz, the CEO of Jamendo, an interesting Euro, Web2.0, community building , Music, Long-Tail, FLickr, CC distribution platform (is this a mouthful of what..).

It a good European example on how alternative legal distribution platforms are being launch to focus on the long tail, and dis-intermediate existing IP clearing houses: the local SACEM's which tend to be very cost-inefective IP monetization structures (in France 25% of the profit are used for the high internal SACEM operating cost( covering the salaries of more than 1400 employees....)).

Reflection on LesBlog2.0

Some reflections on this week LesBlogs 2.0 that I attended during the first day (got stuck in the office on Tuesday...) .

• Conferences are about synchronizing conversations.  If blogging is about conversation, Conferences are all about synchronisation of those online and offline conversations. There are more about the people (who show’s up) than about the content (who is on the scene and speaks). Based on the metric, LesBlog2.0 was a HUGE success, GREAT people, available, and all trying to engage into multiple conversations.

• The European VCs are clearly not focusing on the right crowd. If technology conferences are metric of the innovation ecosystem maturity, then what we saw in Paris this week if scary. If you attend any of the leading US conference (PCForum, Demo, TED, Web2.0, ETech etc…) you will have at least 20% of the participant from the VC community, attending conferences to get a pulse on where is innovation is unfolding. This week in Paris I could only count around 1% of VC in the 400 participants crowd, yes 1%.....

• Waiting for Godot, or why contents matters for conversations. The first keynote of the conference was an unreal conversation with no subject, no agenda, and no passion between Robert Scobble and Shel Israel. While the Waiting for Godot experience can be enjoyable, it’s important to remember that whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent...

• The entrepreneurs are back. With more than 5 new interesting projects resulting from some of my conference conversations, and more than 35 entrepreneurs participating in the post conference CGS dinner that Jeff, Rodrigo, and myself organised on Wednesday dinner, it was clear that the entrepreneurs were back, and working hard to build new ventures…