This year I decided to deviate a bit from the 100% SEO/SEM conference route I typically attend (like this one or this one), and went for an Internet conference that takes place in Paris: LeWeb. It is organised by the founder of Seesmic: Loic Le Meur, a French entrepreneur based in San Francisco.

The target audience for the event is diverse: entrepreneurs, technology leaders, investors, bloggers and visionaries, online marketing senior managers trying to buy or sell products, and of course start-ups. The focus of the event is clearly on tech content, digital innovation, marketing and ideas in the Internet world, social media and online games. They try to capture the latest in the digital world not just from the US but also in Europe, Asia and the rest of the world. There are more 60 countries represented. The average online audience is 250, 000 as the event is streamed.

LeWeb is definitely a great conference, the atmosphere is vibrant, fast-moving and quite international. I have never seen so many ipad devices in one single place ever before. The Twitter stream was so fast that it was virtually impossible to keep up with it all. There was bustling stream of people moving in and out of the three conference buildings and everyone seemed keen to interact and engage into conversation, exchange cards, speak at fast pace and move onto the next track...

As you can imagine, being SEO only a small fraction of the overall online marketing mix, there is probably not much scope for it to have greater representation on the big stages. However, I would have probably set up workshops of things like: ‘practical SEO basics for startups’. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed this conference, but I couldn’t help missing a stronger ‘Search’ element throughout the conference, at least on the workshops track.

In contrast I have to say that there was some indirect SEO-based advice throughout the event typically aimed to start-ups or entrepreneurs:  

1. Alistair Croll spoke about ‘Lean Analytics for Startups’ which gave practical peformance-related web KPIs to help you measure the effectiveness on your internet business and your online marketing efforts, even usability-based KPIs. He addressed the need to segment your sets of metrics, and avoid giving data such such No. of RTs to the Managing Directors.
2. There were however sessions on using social media Facebook plugins and APIs, which if used the right way can help your increase the number of social votes needed to grab the engines attention about your sites and perhaps get a little boost in the rankings.
3. A couple of sessions on development technologies and Cloud computing  run by Google and Facebook could have been of interest to Technical SEOs.
4. The were some great sessions on social media worth attending for those that do SEO in-house and work to common strategic goals colleagues in other marketing teams where social media is gaining recognition, higher budgets and interest from the Managing Directors.  You can read about those two sessions on a post in my in my personal blog called ‘LeWeb 2010’

Amongst the people I networked with, there were, in particular, three smart guys who were running their own Internet start-up businesses.

The questions I got asked by these three individuals were similar:

1. How to get better website visibility  and more traffic to their websites, and subsequently how to how to get more inbound links.
2. SEO tools to help them do the SEO themselves. None of them knew about Google Webmaster Tools and other basic ones like the Adwords KW Tool, and much less about paid tools like Linkscape of MajesticSEO.
3. Change of domains and/or site migration issues

 Based on the above these would be my three workshops recommended to run for next year's LeWeb: 

1. Link building techniques for start-ups
2. Existing free and premium SEO tools in the market
3. Technical SEO 101 and/or dealing with tricky technical tasks

Should you consider attending LeWeb next year? I'd say if you happen to be based in US, and unless you are invited to speak/present and product or service, you don’t need to be at LeWeb as there are surely similar conferences in the US and this one is aimed at helping European entrepreneurs become more innovative and successful. However if you are based anywhere in Europe, and you are either a start-up, and self-proclaimed Internet entrepreneur or have an online marketing in-house job where you want to make a difference and develop yourself, this conference can surely inspire you into developing stronger overall marketing strategies for your company.

Personally I am just a simple in house SEO working for a government-funded cultural relations organisation, so, although it was a fulfilling experience I don’t feel like I got the most of it.

What I also liked about the event:

1. the bustling atmosphere and the networking opportunities
2. the diversity of sessions, workshops, product demos
3. catching up with what’s on in the internet, and looking at it all from your critical SEO  eye.
4. the event organisation:  free Internet via wifi, the great food, the reception at the Town Hall, free drinks and although I couldn’t attend, I guess the free clubbing for all participants was good too.

What I didn’t like much about the event:

1. The Media Panel discussing the wikileaks… Without wanting to substruct importance to this session, I thought this was a bit outside the scope of this conference to focus so heavily on this.
2. Not enough prominence to Search engine marketing strategies specific to start-up.
3. The shuttle back to Paris never arrived... wasn't there supposed to be one. 
4. The sound volume was too low at times which made it difficult to hear some of the speakers.

Lastly I would like to present some figures about Internet usage at the venue, which I thought, was both impressive and interesting. Notice the much higher percentage of Apple vs Intel devices: 

If you would like to watch some of the sessions from this conference, visit LeWeb youtube channel, or visit my own blog to read a more in-depth recap.