Groundhog day at Le Web 3

It seems there are only about 25 people in the world who are allowed to go to conferences to talk about the web and related future topics. A lot of them were represented at Le Web 3 in Paris over the past few days. There was Hans Rosling, the third time I have seen him, big difference this time is that he did not reprise his sword-swallowing act at TED earlier this year – that's really probably only something you can do once. There was Philippe Starck, wearing the black version of the red jacket he wore at TED. Different presentation (hey – this time he used slides), same themes.

There is Jason Calcanis – never seen him before, but he spoke about people (Seth Godin, David Sifry) that I have. He was representing the responsible wing of the United Interweb Party. There was an outspoken Scottish guy in a kilt (generally, they are just outspoken Scottish guys), there were a couple of fat bearded American guys being outspoken ("None of your fucking business," – that to the outspoken Scottish guy in a kilt), there were some monotone rich guys, there were an English guys talking about really, really new things (generally the Americans are about money, the English are about developments). There is Scoble. Does he ALWAYS wear that baggy blue shirt?

There was Yossi Vardi, making a funny presentation about data transfer. He even mentioned his funny local warming presentation – saw that one at TED, too. Next year will be about internet for the dead, the biggest and fastest-growing population on the web. Bless her, there was even Anina, still talking about explaining the web to the closed old business world of fashion. Been to one, been to them all? And have you nopticed how I stopped linking to all the names after a while?

Le Web is a little different from other conferences. It is cheaper and bigger, for a start. This means you have less chance of talking to presenters afterwards. Also, because it is held in Paris and not, say, Monterey, they are less likely to stay afterwards, which reduces those chances still further. It generally runs spectacularly off-schedule, mainly because they try to fit in some time for questions and answers, which is nice. Unfortunately, because it is so big, it is rarely you that gets to put the question.

As one conference goer said, it's not the speakers, it's their level. They are all super interesting people, why do they feel the need to explain to 1,700 people in a room, all of whom work with the web, what Web 2.0 is? They could – and should – take it to a higher level. Frankly, you can get that sort of stuff from the technology pages of most newspapers.

In the end, it all boils down to one question: do you like the organiser? Do you like Loic Le Meur, do you like Laurent Haug, do you like Chris Anderson? They are all likeable in their different ways, even Chris Anderson, and Loic won some more friends with his apology for inviting soon to be French President Sarkozy to speak at last year's event. That was a shame, really, as I was not there and it was the one thing that persuaded me that Le Web 3 might be the place to be this year.