Welcome to this second edition of Les Blogs.
Introduction
Why have we started to organize the Les Blogs conference ?
A frustration. I have always been so sorry that there were not enough cool conferences around the Web generally in Europe. If you are European, you have to go often to the US to meet the key players and network with the movers and shakers. I am not saying there are none, but not enough, and there was no international event around blogs.
A new World is here
Don't you feel the rules and our world are changing ? Don't you feel changed by what many people call the Web 2.0 ? We believe as most of you that the way we work, the way we learn and teach, the way we interact with one another and more generally our expectations and relationships to other people, the institutions, the business world and politics are changing dramatically.
It is not only about blogging, it's about changing the way we think
What defines this new way of thinking and acting ? Difficult to say, let's try to define it together. I would say that transparency, openness and collaboration are the key values that drive this phenomenon. It is not only about blogging, not only about social software and other tools, it is much broader. Of course bloggers are at the forefront of this way of life: unformal, friendly, no powerpoint and no ties...
Let's define together these new values and understand :
1. How they challenge the corporate world
2. How they change the media landscape
3. How they bring more democracy in politics
4. How education evolves
5. What are the tools used and how we can all best benefit from them
6. Where we are going in the near and longer term future
If the first edition of Les Blogs was a successful gathering of 250+ people from 25 Countries, we would like that the second edition on December 5th and 6th translates into something more concrete.
Of course we will be there to meet each other, have fun and business, but we could also build together a collaborative document on a wiki that helps everybody better understand what's happening and help change a bit our World using these tools in the best possible way.
Everybody is welcome to join and just listen and network, however as I see that hundreds of posts were posted during the first edition and more than 2000 pictures posted on Flickr, we could may be also use our willingness and energy to share with everybody to try to build something together, as we started on the European Blogosphere Wiki.
If you wish, you can enter the conversation and contribute to the Les Blogs companion wiki it is just starting.
The idea is to go through these six questions together both speakers and participants. Every participant can contribute to the panel before the session on the panel to help build the conversation.
After brief introductions, our panelists will engage with the moderator, each other and the audience to discuss the topics on the wiki.
Welcome to this second edition of Les Blogs.
Loïc Le Meur, Guillaume du Gardier and Elisabeth Albrycht
As Senior Business Development Manager of Lifeblog team in Nokia Multimedia, Jian Ni is responsible for creating new business opportunities and developing strategic partnership around Nokia Lifeblog application and services. 
Nokia is a world leader in mobile communications, driving the growth
and sustainability of the broader mobility industry. Nokia connects
people to each other and the information that matters to them with
easy-to-use and innovative products like mobile phones, devices and
solutions for imaging, games, media and businesses. Nokia provides
equipment, solutions and services for network operators and
corporations. Nokia is a broadly held company with listings on four
major exchanges.
BullGuard specialises in best-of-breed PC and Mobile security solutions for home users and
Skype aims to delight you by offering free global telephony, to make unlimited,
superior quality voice calls via its next-generation peer-to-peer software.
Skype’s mission is providing a simple, reliable and friendly communications tool
that just works. We aim for people to communicate with friends, families, and
colleagues more flexibly, more cost effectively, and with better sound quality
than ever previously imagined.
Hubert Burda Media is a privately held global media company with origins in printing and publishing. In addition to its core magazine publishing, it is active in printing, online, radio, television production and direct marketing. Considered to be one of the most innovative companies in the media industry, it provides 235 publications worldwide, 64 in Germany and 171 outside. In 2002, group turnover rose to 1.857 billion euros.
Altaïde est avant tout une équipe d'hommes et de femmes d’expérience, du secteur high-tech, et cumulant une expertise et un savoir-faire dans la gestion des ressources humaines, de l’ingénierie financière et du marketing stratégique.Aujourd’hui, nous vous offrons d’intervenir en tant que partenaire de votre entreprise sur 3 environnements complémentaires : Recrutement et Gestion des Ressources Humaines, Ingénierie financière, Stratégie / Business development
Dr. Marcel Reichart (1972, Germany) studied corporate management, political science and history in Koblenz (WHU), Lyon, Washington D.C. and Rome. During his doctorate (Stuttgart University) he acted as personal advisor to former German Federal Minister of Economy Dr. Otto Graf Lambsdorff and as a consultant, amongst others, for Roland Oetker. In 2000, Dr. Reichart co-built the European media incubator ‘Venturepark’ formed by Pixelpark, Goldman Sachs, Telefónica and BertelsmannSpringer as well as its investments (Sportgate). 
A doctor of science and prolific writer on scientific matters, de Rosnay is a specialist in advanced technologies. Currently director of strategy at the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie in Paris' La Villette, he previously worked as research associate at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and director of research applications at the celebrated Pasteur Institute in Paris. His most recently published work is "Symbiotic Man - A Look Into the Third Millennium". 
, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Loïc is a well-known French entrepreneur, Executive Vice President at Six Apart, the leading weblog software company and founder of Ublog, one of Europe's leading blogging tools providers and hosting services. Prior to joining Six Apart EMEA, Loïc founded and served as CEO for several companies in France, including Tekora, an ASP-driven website publisher for small businesses; RapidSite France, the first shared Web hosting company launched in France. Rapid Site France was sold to France Telecom and B2L, one of the first Web agencies launched in France, with clients including Chanel, 20th Century Fox, and Mars, which was sold to BBDO, a leading advertising group. Loïc is also a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. 
Neville Hobson, ABC, is an accredited communication practitioner with 25 years hands-on and leadership experience in public and media relations, marketing communication, employee, compensation and benefits communication as well as investor and financial relations. He helps companies use effective communication to achieve their business goals.
Guillaume du Gardier is Director Online Communications at Edelman
Paris.
Philippe Borremans holds a Public Relations Diploma from the INIREP, Institut International des Relations Publiques and started his career at Porter Novelli International, a global public relations agency. During his 4 year stay as a PR Consultant he worked for companies like FedEx, Iomega and the Association of Plastic Manufacturers in Europe. In October 1999 he was asked to join IBM Belgium in the function of Public Relations Manager for IBM Global Services for Belgium & Luxembourg. Today he is responsible for all external communications of the company in these 2 countries and holds a European coordination role for IBM’s activities in the context of online PR and blogging. Next to his full time job at IBM Philippe started his own training company called Conversation.be in June 2005. He coaches PR and marketing professionals on the use of blogging and RSS and provides media training for business executives.
Ben Hammersley is an English emigré, living in Florence, Italy, with
his wife, three greyhounds, and the Renaissance. Galileo's little
finger is in a jar only 400 yards from his desk. For a day job, he
writes for the British national press, appearing in The Times, The
Guardian and The Observer, but in his free time, he blogs excessively
at 
Reid is currently CEO
and co-founder of LinkedIn. Prior to LinkedIn, Reid was Executive Vice
President of PayPal. At PayPal, Reid was in charge of all business
relationships: business development, corporate development,
international, government relations, and banking/payments
infrastructure. During his tenure at PayPal, Hoffman was instrumental
to the acquisition by eBay and was responsible for partnerships with
Intuit, Visa, MasterCard and Wells Fargo. Reid also has held management
roles in large technology companies, including Fujitsu Software
Corporation and Apple. Currently, in addition to LinkedIn, Reid serves
on the Board of Directors for SixApart and Mozilla Corporation. Reid
graduated with distinction from Stanford University with a B.S. in Cognitive Science and from Oxford University with a Master’s degree in philosophy.
Yat Siu is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outblaze, the first
company to tap the market demand for multi-lingual community-oriented
Internet messaging services. In 1998 Outblaze pioneered the provision
of multi-lingual online community services that allowed other companies
to offer such services to their users without having to develop or buy
expensive platforms themselves.
Mr. Calacanis is a highly regarded expert on issues related to media,
finance, technology, the Internet and public policy. Calacanis regularly appears in the press and has been featured in
and appeared on media outlets including The New York Times, The New Yorker, Wired, The Charlie Rose Show, 60
Minutes, CNN, CNBC, CNNfn, Bloomberg, Fox News, ABC News, and Nightline.
Robert Scoble is a "technical evangelist" who works for 
As an ESSEC graduate, Yann Motte started his
career with Paribas in Tokyo and Paris, in the M&A department. When
he first discovered the Internet, he decided to move to the U.S.A. to
pursue an MBA at the Harvard Business School. Upon returning to Europe,
he integrates the Yahoo! European Headquarters in London, where he
becomes a Product Manager-communication & personalisation. In
February 2003, he is named Product & Services Director for Yahoo!
France, and quickly becomes VP Product Management for Yahoo! Europe in
June 2004.
David Sifry is
Founder and CEO of Technorati, a real-time search engine that keeps
track of what is going on in the blogosphere — the world of weblogs. A
serial entrepreneur with more than 19 nineteen years of software
development and industry experience, before founding Technorati, Sifry
was cofounder and CTO of Sputnik, a Wi-Fi gateway company. Before that,
he cofounded Linuxcare, where he served as CTO and vice president of
engineering. Sifry also served as a founding member of the board of
Linux International and was on the technical advisory board of the
National Cybercrime Training Partnership for law enforcement. He
appears frequently on panels and lectures on a variety of technology
issues, ranging from wireless spectrum policy and Wi-Fi, to weblogs and
open-source software. Sifry earned his bachelor’s degree in computer
science at Johns Hopkins University.
Salim Ismail, CEO and co-founder, brings to the company a combination
of technology expertise, general management and several years of
successful entrepreneurial experience.
Marc is involved in promulgating open standards for new kinds of
micro-content; including people (FOAF), media (OpenMedia) and events
(OpenEvents.) Broadband Mechanics designs and builds digital lifestyle
aggregators (DLAs) for customers like Ziff-Davis Media (1UP.com),
Tribe.net, and AlwaysOn Network. Broadband Mechanics is also working
with Laszlo Systems to build hot compelling interfaces for these DLAs
(which are the next generation portal.)
Prior Marc founded a company named MacroMind which became MacroMedia.
Marc was part of the team that created the first multimedia player, the
first cross-platform authoring system and the world's leading multimedia
platform. 
Richard Edelman is the president and CEO of the world's largest
independent public relations firm with 1800 employees in 40 offices
worldwide. Edelman, named 2003 Agency of the Year by The Holmes Group, has been a leader in public relations since it was founded in 1952.
Greg Reinacker is the Founder and CTO of NewsGator Technologies, which
is the leading platform vendor for content aggregation software and
services. Greg's background includes extensive technical consulting
work for companies such as Galileo International, as well as several
successful commercial software ventures including companies such as
McGraw-Hill. Greg is widely recognized in the weblog and RSS arenas,
publicly speaks about RSS, and is a vocal proponent of business uses of
RSS and syndication technologies.
I'm Dana VanDen Heuvel, a Wisconsinite living
in, well, Wisconsin! At present, I am the the Director of Business
Development for 
Santiago
Iñiguez de Onzoño studied at Madrid~s Complutense University and Oxford
University, UK. Iñiguez de Onzoño is a Doctor of Law and holds an MBA
from Instituto de Empresa. 
Mena Trott is co-founder and president of Six Apart, the company behind
The Movable Type publishing platform, TypePad weblogging service and,
after an acquisition in January 2005, LiveJournal, an online community
organized around personal journals. Named one of Fast Company's "Fast
50 for 2004" and PC Magazine’s "People of the Year" for 2004, Mena has
been involved in the weblogging space since she began publishing to her
own weblog, dollarshort.org, in early 2001. She speaks regularly at
industry conferences -- having appeared at Supernova, AdTech, DEMO 2004
and The Wall Street Journal’s "D: All Things Digital." Mena can be
found writing about weblogging and Six Apart at 
Fergus Burns is the CEO of Nooked. Nooked
provides on-demand services that help enterprises create, publish,
syndicate, discover and measure RSS feeds. 
I am currently Development Officer for the Modern Languages Virtual Environment. This learning portal will be the model for every subject area in the world's biggest intranet, the Scottish Schools Digital Network - so we'd better get it right! I am an employee of the 
Eric spent fifteen years in the academic world as a Professor of Finance. After having taught at the CERAM, and then in Canada and the United States, he joined the Groupe HEC, chairing the Finance and Economics department, the Doctoral Program and the Institut Supérieur des Affaires (ISA).
Elizabeth Albrycht is a 15-year veteran of high technology public relations practice co-founder of the 
Adriana Cronin-Lukas was released from Balliol into the community in 1996, serving her time as a management consultant with a Big Five firm in Central and Eastern Europe - ‘management’ and ‘consultancy’ meaning something to businesses in those parts of the world. 
Founder and Managing Partner, SoftTech Venture Consulting
Suw Charman is a renowned social software expert who specialises in the application of blogs and wikis in business. An independent consultant, she works with companies in the UK and America advising on the use of blogs both behind the firewall and as marketing and external communications tools. A well known blogger, Suw keeps a number of blogs, including 
Senior writer, Business 2.0
