So, it seems that there were a *lot* of discussions and negative feedbacks about the conference leweb3, which took place in Paris – France on December 11-12, 2006.

I would like to give you and share with you my explicit feedback, specially because some people (sajonara.de as an example…) have used my “posting-silence” as a negative argument against this conference. Which is quite strange, because I was simply too busy to post (cf. my last post), nothing to do with leweb3.

Some thoughts about the conference

• Organization: first, I find that Loic did a great job by bringing some many people to this conference (participants, partners, speakers, investors), and the general organization with some many people (about 1’300) was definitely great.
• Food: the food was just…excellent! This is normally not the case, so let’s point it out!
• Quality: as usual, the quality of the presentations varied a lot, which is quite often the case.
• Broader scope: the great variety of the themes presented was to my point of view very positive, specially because it was “not just for geeks”, but much more “just for citizens”. I am a geek, there is enough conferences for geeks, so it is good and valuable to have *one* conference where we can talk about other stuff.
• Networking: the networking and meeting possibilities were just great! Worth a visit just for this part.
• Focus: as usual, not enough time for the different panels. Really a pity, because there were a lot of good discussions and exchanges that have been started. So, here, more focus could bring a better quality.
• Program: it seems that some people were not happy because of the program (mismatch expectation / reality). The program was clearly published step-by-step. So no possible surprise on this side. On the other side, I have reserved my place *before* any program was published. Room for improvement: publish a (draft) program before opening the registration.
• Energy: great positive energy, kick-your-ass atmosphere, open and challenging exchange.
• Think tank: Shimon Peres (hope, our role in the world) and Hans Rosling (misunderstanding of the current status of the world) were *absolutely* great. Both kicked my little and narrow-minded brain. I will come back separately to these presentations.
• Blogosphere: again, I personally find that the blogosphere is almost a closed-box where too many people are just repeating and amplifying some thoughts from just a little number of Key Opinion Leaders. Specially at the beginning of turbulences. No distance, no tolerance, too easy criticism. And also: violence, arrogance, rudeness. Not very interesting. Pfffuuuu.
• Politics: the 3 presentations (including the one of Shimon Peres) represented about 1.5 hour of the 2 days. If you don’t agree, you can leave the conference (nobody did that, the room was full). So, to my mind, no big discussion. And if you don’t like politics – i.e. if you want to live outside the city – why aren’t you just leaving our world (what about ascetic?).
• Elevation: personally, I am very happy to have participated to leweb3. I will surely come to leweb4. And I am very grateful to Loic for having integrated Hans Rosling and Shimon Peres in the conference, they have elevated me/us and opened my/our mind!

Dear all, sorry for the last very rare posting.

I was completely “out-of-the-blogging-world” the last weeks/months because of some negative events and some strongly positive developments, both on the business-front. Definitely more good than bad things, the balance remains greatly positive :-)

As Marc said, I have lost my voice…

I hope you had some good and restful time with your family and friends during the last Christmas Days. I had, really. This kind of champagne – a Dom Pérignon Vintage 1998 from Moët et Chandon – is really helping. A great and quite unique experience!

So, I still have quite a lot to share with you: new gadgets, new travels, new developments about Open Source, some great meetings, ecenter solutions, new picture and music, among other.

Very slow posting in the last weeks… Just too much to do :-) One of the reason why I am so happy to be in Paris on coming Monday and Tuesday at leweb3. Loic has managed again to create a huge buzz around this (sold-out) event. About 1’000 people from 36 countries will meet, as far as I know about 700 are bloggers. Great! Exciting program, with, among others:

• Niklas Zennström (Skype)
• Dave Sifry (Technorati)
• Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn)
• Ross Mayfield (SocialText)
• Brent Homerman (LastMinute)
• Martin Varsavsky (FON)
• Mena Trott (SixApart)
• etc.

I will me very pleased to meet again Marc (sorry for the GCS Dinner…), Rodrigo, Jeff, people from Switzerland (profession-web.ch, in French), and surely…a lot of others!

If you want to contact me, do not hesitate, could be cool! Below a (recent) picture from me, as some of you have asked me :-) Plus the link to my LinkedIn and OpenBC (sorry…xing :-) profile.

xing profile
linkedin profile

I was playing a bit with my Canon EOS20D with a Canon 28-135mm lens (with stabilizer) to make some pictures by night in the center of Mulhouse – France (near where I am living). I have tried different settings, specially with very high ISO (manual focus, ISO 1600, 1/40), without tripod but with the stabilization of the lens.

Some examples below:

I have participated last year to “Les Blogs 2“, where I had the chance to meet “physically” quite a lot of bloggers. Really a great and cool event :-)

I am now registered at LeWeb3 (number 8, not bad :-) in Paris (December 11-12, 2006). Already 160 participants confirmed, it is going very fast! You can register here. Registration fee 300 EUR before November 10, 500 EUR after. You can find a map of the registered people here.

A (fast moving) draft of the program is published, a blog is opened (RSS), as a Wiki.

Already some well-known speakers:

• Loic LeMeur (SixApart)
• Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
• Tariq Krim (NetVibes)
• Martin Varsavsky (FON)
• Pierre Chappaz (Wikio)
• Dave Sifry (Technorati)
• Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC)
• Rodrigo Sepulveda (vpod.tv)
• Marc Canter (BroadbandMechanics)
• Hugh MacLeod (GapingVoid)

If you are also joining, do not hesitate to contact me (didier DOT beck AT gmail DOT com).

[via Seth Godin]

I like this one. No, it is more than this, I fully and completely support this statement. It is resonating as a value.

“It’s just business.”

Nope, actually…

“It’s just life.”

Anyone who is willing to lie to you, cheat you or treat you with disrespect because it’s just business is doing more damage to herself than to you.

Work takes too much time and too much emotion for it to be just work. As far as I’m concerned, I don’t want to spend time or money with anyone who has this particular attitude disfunction.

[via Stephen Walli]

As already discussed, we had the chance to be in touch with Stephan Walli, ex-VP by Optaros and before, deeply involved in the Shared Source work by Microsoft. Stephan was helping us to define an international Software license for our components that is solid, not too complicated to understand and that fulfills our requirements, i.e. something like acting within an User Community based on Open Source mechanisms. I have presented some outcomes and our thoughts about that at the EuroOSCON 2006 conference.

Stephen has posted a great article about Hyperic for some weeks, which contains great inputs about such kind of mechanisms.

What is Hyperic doing?

Hyperic brings to the market an IT operations management solution. Founded in 2004 and based in San Francisco, they are delivering “web and open source management products that enable our customers to manage their web operations environment from a single portal at an effective cost. Hyperic combines an easy to deploy solution with subscription pricing providing our customer cost predictability and low risk.”

Have a look at their products.

Inputs about their model

It recognizes that the HQ development team can’t innovate all the plug-ins to keep up with all the customers scenarios and is creating and investing in their user community. This value provides value to all the other users and customers in the HQ world.

Hyperic recognizes that their potential customer base is a well connected group of people that share software and ideas constantly through multiple channels, and gives them something to share. System administrators have always believed in open source software (for decades before we called it open source) and have always shared tools and knowledge.

The enterprise subscription provides support, training, indemnifications, certified binary images, and a few additional features that a really large IT environment would want to add.

Hyperic has a flat pricing model and one that is inexpensive enough to creep in under the floor boards of large organizations. Contrast this with the more costly Draconian multi-axis pricing models of some of the Big Guys which essentially penalizes the customer for each new management point when they need it the most. This literally becomes self-limiting. There will come a day when the customer says “enough”.

Instead of engaging in a heavy expensive sales cycle with the C-level execs against the Big Four Incumbents around Enterprise Management, they can slip into the bottom of the organization buried in departmental budgets when the open source users become customers.

If you’re a business person thinking about open source, start imagining how to engage a community of users in the small (away from the internal toxicity of ROI and TCO discussions with the CxO and an incumbent sales force), so they grow into customers in the large.

Cross-posted on ecenter solutions blog.

[via CICLOPS]

This one is absolutely fanstastic!!

[…] This marvelous panoramic view was created by combining a total of 165 images taken by the Cassini wide-angle camera over nearly three hours on Sept. 15, 2006. The full mosaic consists of three rows of nine wide-angle camera footprints; only a portion of the full mosaic is shown here. Color in the view was created by digitally compositing ultraviolet, infrared and clear filter images and was then adjusted to resemble natural color.

The mosaic images were acquired as the spacecraft drifted in the darkness of Saturn’s shadow for about 12 hours, allowing a multitude of unique observations of the microscopic particles that comprise Saturn’s faint rings.

Ring structures containing these tiny particles brighten substantially at high phase angles: i.e., viewing angles where the Sun is almost directly behind the objects being imaged. […]

A second version of the mosaic view is presented here in which the color contrast is greatly exaggerated. In such views, imaging scientists have noticed color variations across the diffuse rings that imply active processes sort the particles in the ring according to their sizes. […]

Cassini was approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn when the images in this mosaic were taken. Image scale on Saturn is about 260 kilometers (162 miles) per pixel.

[via Seth Godin]

Again, an excinting input from Seth Godin. This time, about the right price.

Cheaper is the last refuge of the person who’s not a very good marketer. Cheaper is easy and cheaper is fast and cheaper is linear and cheaper is easy to do properly, at least at first. But cheaper doesn’t spread the word (unless you are much cheaper, but to be much cheaper, you need to be organized from the ground up, like Walmart or JetBlue, to be cheaper). They are, you’re not.

Cheaper is a short term hit, not a long term advantage. Cheaper doesn’t create loyalty, because the other guy can always figure out how to be cheaper still, at least in the short run.

Even free isn’t cheap enough to win in the long run. Not if other people can figure out how to match what you’ve got.

So, if you can’t be cheaper, be better.

Cross-posted to ecenter solutions’ blog.

Channeling Open Source in Europe: Ranga Rangachari

GroundWork – deliver IT operations management software built on open source

• Opportunities for retention and growth

• switch from existing closed source solutions (extensibility)
• service opportunities

• dramatically different from traditional software: value add becomes a huge differentiator, no role for “box pushers”
• no “one size fits all”
• don’t stay too focused on the “initial license revenue”, think 3-5 years customer life cycle
• 90% of customers with annual-based contract
• don’t get fooled by downloads, try to have information, but NO follow-up with people! they have to come back by their own

• training
• certification
• annual-subscription for the prof. model

Cross-posted on ecenter solutions blog.