Behind the Scenes with Pearltrees

The video clips take a deeper look at Pearltrees from behind the scenes with Patrice Lamothe at their Paris office last week. The second video is with Julien Wallen about how and why they got started. Below is a shot taken of some of the engineers and product masters behind the machine.

MobileGlobe's Yoann Valensi on Cheap Calls

MobileGlobe's CEO Yoann Valensi hosted Traveling Geeks for a dinner last week in Paris in the Marais. His mission is to make mobile calls cheap and easy from anywhere in the world. Listen to why you should care.

Stribe's Kamel Zeroual on Embedded Community

This past week in Paris, we spent time with Stribe's Kamel Zeroual who won an award at TechCrunch 50 this past fall. Listen to why he thinks embedding community into your existing environment is so important. On stage at LeWeb last week, they showed a white label version that ToysRUs had implemented.

Chris Pirillo on Mobile Speech Recognition: It's So Accurate Man #tg09, #leweb

Imagine hearing this Dragon stuff from Nuance works so well ten years after we launched it in 1997, at a VIP speaker dinner in Paris. Well, last week, I did. Take a look.

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan on Social Media #tg09 #leweb

Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah gave an amazingly inspirational talk....on social media and how powerful it can be to mobilize social issues and causes, on passion, on having a voice, on Twitter, on taking action because action is so easy for all of us now with the free and easy-to-use online tools we have at our fingertips.

Dancers at Paris Web Event Make an Impact #leweb

Loic and Geraldine brought in some magical, multicultural dancing talent for this year's LeWebhttp://www.typepad.com/site/blogs/6a00d83451c79e69e200d8341c665653ef/post/compose#'s speaker dinner. I could have watched all night.

(Parts I and II)

Paris City Hall and DotParis #tg09 #leweb

The Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe and Jean-Louis Missikia, Deputy Mayor responsible for Innovation, research and universities hosted LeWeb attendees for an evening of champagne and decadent walls, ceilings and floors.

As we entered, the city set up cameras to interview people on their opinion about dotParis. Should there be a dotParis and why? Should there be dotCityX?

Below, a few of us were interviewed and below that, a short video I took inside City Hall, talking to some of LeWeb attendees, speakers, Traveling Geeks and random folks who made it into my zoom. (the best part of the video of course are the gorgeous ceilings)

Drilling Down with Zoomorama #tg09

At a Paris incubator this past week, I had a lengthy chat with the Anne-Celine Jeanneau from Zoomorama. We received a number of demos from early stage startups, who were all located in one of five incubators run by Paris Developpement. (Martin Guerin hosted)

A Chat with Gary Vaynerchuk #leweb #tg09

Below is a chat with Gary Vaynerchuk on LeWeb stage in Paris this past week. As passionate as ever, he takes over the interview, wanting to make sure he doesn't leave the stage without the audience knowing that they 'must do what they love.'

He touts that most people don't although LeWeb audience seemed to respond differently than the typical yank crowd he's more accustomed to addressing. While clearly this isn't scalable, he says - answer every email, answer every direct message tweet. Not only scalable but highly inprobable once success really hits unless you give up ever seeing your child or a tree again. At some point, something has to give.

That said, what he's talking about is the personal touch, the value of connecting with your audience and a large reason for his success. It's not because he's a master of wine above and beyond everyone else.

His success is because of his resilience, his determination, his ability to connect to the every day man - in their language and in a genuine way. he wears his immigrant status on his sleeve and as second and third generation Americans, we can still relate to that. Rags to riches and of course social media makes that reality more possible than ever. The second gold rush is in play.

On Taking IT Global (#leweb #tg09)

A very short clip of Jennifer Corriero from Talking IT Global on LeWeb's stage last week.

Mike Arrington Interviews Google's Marissa Mayer #tg09 #leweb

Traveling Geeks On the Paris Metro (200 Meeting a Day? Okay, Not Quite) #tg09 #leweb

Loic LeMeur Interviews YouTube's Chad Hurley #leweb #tg09

Loic LeMeur interviews YouTube's Chad Hurley on LeWeb stage in Paris this morning.

Answers.com Announces Availability in French, Italian, German and Spanish at LeWeb #leweb #tg09

 At LeWeb today, the Answers.com site announced its availability in French, Italian, German and Spanish. Adding the most widely spoken European languages to Answers.com extends the power of the popular wiki Q&A platform beyond its English language user base.

Given that they have 6 million answers in nearly 6,000 categories already in English, adapting their product for new languages is a logical step forward. Their English-language sites reached an audience of 56 million in the U.S. in October according to comScore, ranking them #15, hitting a total audience of 84 million worldwide.

Answers.com is also a sponsor of LeWeb as well as a sponsor of the Traveling Geeks tour to Paris.

LeWeb Speaker Dinner Kicks 6th LeWeb into Motion #leweb

Loic and Geraldine LeMeur kick off LeWeb starting with a speaker dinner in the center of Paris last night.

Microsoft Traveling Geeks Geek Pad

Microsoft BizSpark is hosting the Traveling Geek Pad at LeWeb'09 this week in Paris.

Those looking to connect with the Traveling Geeks should stop by the Traveling Geek Pad in the Microsoft Lounge and also meet some of the BizSpark One startups- Huddle, Lokad, WAYN, Xobni, Club Cooee, Calinda Software, Artesian Solutions, Dezineforce and more.

Orange Highlights at LeWeb #leweb

Orange is showing a mobile application shop at LeWeb in Paris today. Additionally, Orange VP of mobile multimedia products and services Christophe François will be on a roundtable at 10:40 am.

Also available to view is the Orange Box Application "ON",  a mobile application for social network convergence, Tabbee, a home multimedia device, 2424 actu, a news portal, audio & video and People Project, a Facebook application to create and share projects. 

Jean Louis Constanza, CEO of Orange Vallée will also be part of the Startup competition Jury.

Other Orange speakers include:

--Eric Barilland - Director of digital media for Orange group

--Stéphanie Hospital - Audience Marketing & Development Vice President

--Pascal Thomas - Director of Orange Community Services

--Laurent Billard - Products tests & events

 Topics: In the living room

1 - the home ecosystem, the TV and entertainment experience - livebox: flybox, fibre 2.0, ecosystem Tabee, catch-up TV, Orange Cinema et Series, and Homelibrary

2 - the enriched experience of community and web with my mobile 

Pearltrees: A Unique Way to Discover & Organize on the Web

Pearltrees CEO Patrice Lamothe meets us at the door of their offices on rue de charonne in a funky, artsy area of Paris that houses other early stage companies and ad agencies, not unlike San Francisco's SOMA in many ways.

Coffee waiting? You betcha and hot chocolate too.

He's not an unknown personality in Silicon Valley so some of us had heard of, tried, tested and demoed Pearltrees before. He knows this so he gets a little creative and we dig a little deeper into their service.

"Building an organization on the web touches on how you organize your stuff in the real world. If you like books, you will likely get a lot of pleasure organizing books into your own library on the web," says Patrice.

Pause....a nearby church bell rings on the half hour. (Okay, so not quite like SOMA)......

Pearltrees allows you to get in touch with others who share mutual interests around the way you 'organize yourself on the web.' "Bookmarking and tagging alone doesn't allow you to accomplish this," says Patrice.

Visually it looks a bit like the brain......not unlike a mind map, but that's not the point of the app, which is all done in flex btw. You can import files from delicious and export as RDF.

Coming out this week, any URL that you tweet will automatically turn into a pearl inside Pearltrees. Pearltrees in a sense becomes your 'memory,' allowing you to store useful data by category or by interest -- all organized in your Pearl-Tree. (visually displayed the way you think and want to store and view data).

Who uses it? In France, a lot of art and political bloggers use it as a way to visually tell a story or drive people to the web around a particular topic or interest.

One third of their users are early adopter users who are social media savvy and one third are under thirty and mostly women from France and the U.S. 

You can embed your pearls on Twitter, email Facebook or directly inside your own blog. 

To-date, they have raised roughly $3 million. As for their revenue model? "Either through premium services or advertising," says Patrice. Their cost per user is very very low however.

Zorap Creates Traveling Geeks Virtual Geek Pad for France Blogging Tour

Zorap, which creates digital-rich media collaboration and group video communication experience experiences on the web, has created a Virtual Geek Pad for the Traveling Geeks team in France this week for LeWeb.

It is the only technology that lets you view and listen to music, video and photos with groups of up to 50 people anywhere in the world, using real-time audio and video communications.

While other real-time web communications tools like Twitter and Facebook provide value for active web users interested in quick soundbites, Zorap is the only service available that allows engagement using all forms of media in real-time, not just text, links and photos.

Check out the Virtual Geek Pad they designed for the Traveling Geeks.

Zorap allows individuals and groups of individuals to travel to movie sites and watch trailers together, listen to new music with their friends, sports events with their buddies, see wedding photos where everyone is viewing and sharing in real-time, shop for travel destinations with classmates or family, participate in a lively auction where you can see other bidders in real-time and more.

Traveling Geeks Kick Things into Gear in the Marais

A few visuals to get you in the 'traveling geeks' frame of mind. The Traveling Geeks are getting ready to roll.........and move, non-stop for the next four days.

We had a 'geek' session to ensure we'll stay connected and can create content, anytime, anywhere. Thanks Orange, Skype and MAXroam. Below, Amanda, Olivier, Sky and Robin get the scoop.

Amanda, Beth and Eliane -- on the move. Off to explore the city and well, yeah eat. Night one.

Olivier Ezratty shows up with the Canon 85 mm 1.2 portrait lense. Ahhhhh, what a magnificent lense.

 

Beth Blecherman and Eliane Fiolet en route to the kickoff dinner in the Marais.

David Spark and Tom Foremski (yeah, well, we're still in the Metro)

Ah yes, ambience. Get used to it, she says with a smile. You're not in Kansas anymore. Silicon Valley either. Renee Blodgett, Jean-Xtophe and Eliane Fiolet in ambience-rich Les Bougresses.

 

MobileGlobe's founder Yoann Valensi was our host so typical "traveling geek" style, we looked at toys and saw demos over dinner. Thanks Yoann, look forward to trying out your service. Rodrigo, what was your question again?

 

Thank god for SMS and some of the phones that did work (we've had issues with 'em - unlocked devices can have its complications)....Ewan Spence from Edinburgh made it with luggage in time to join us. A joyous Frederic Lardinois to his right.

 

And as for the food, what can I say? It's Paris after all. We didn't starve nor did we complain. Great job Les Bougresses (located in the Marais.....most definitely worth a try).

Traveling Geeks LIVE Video - Thanks for the Laugh Mashcast (#tg09)

Mashcast, a very cool company that does video mashups and much much more created a very creative and humorous video of Traveling Geeks heading to Paris. (Oh yeah and potentially inheriting the earth).

Below is a teaser and here is the video. Be prepared to laugh. A lot.

Paris Tweet-Ups

Tweet-Ups in Paris this week. Traveling Geeks are ready for a busy schedule from early AM to late PM. Thanks for everyone's support and help. Look forward to meeting local bloggers on the ground.

 

 

The Parisians most definitely understand ambience -- its even important for geeks.

DEMO Innovation / Alumni Tour

The DEMO Innovation / Alumni Tour had their holiday soiree tonight at San Francisco's Mighty - the DEMO Jam session was part of the deal. In other words, the DEMO tradition continues.

Traveling Geeks friends and supporters Microsoft BizSpark and Invest in France Agency also supported tonight's Demo shindig. We're looking forward to learning more about some of their early stage companies and innovations on the ground in Paris next week.

Answers Summit This Weekend in Atlanta

Answers Summit 2009, a new Q&A community event is being hosted by Answers.com December 5-6, 2009 in Atlanta, GA.

The Answers Summit will include workshops on growing, improving and celebrating WikiAnswers, the community-generated Q&A platform of Answers.com. A guest speaker from the Cyberbullying Research Center will conduct a workshop titled 'The Fight Against Cyberbullying.'

A second workshop, conducted by a Performance Specialist, will focus on communicating effectively online. The conference will be addressed by keynote speakers Bob Rosenschein, CEO, and Bruce D. Smith. Additional highlights of the event include a trip to the Georgia Aquarium with a catered dinner.

Gratitude, Paris.....and Upward

This was in a friend's celebration invitation earlier today. I couldn't help but think gratitude. It's been a long year and not an easy one for most people I know in AND out of Silicon Valley. Love the image.

Gratitude baby. Am heading to Paris this week and even though it's supposedly slated to be 30-40 degrees and rainy every day, how can you beat walking the streets of Paris anytime of year regardless of the reason?