LeWeb: How the Largest European Tech Conference Began
LeWeb is the biggest tech conference in Europe, bringing you big names from the tech, startup and online media industry. The first day of the conference had some great speakers like the founders of Flipboard, Instagram, Foursquare and even Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt.
Thanks to the free live webstream, you could attend the conference virtually, and if you missed your shot with it, here’s a short summary of the first day.
Karl Lagerfeld
Karl Lagerfeld was the first speaker at this year’s LeWeb. He’s a well known fashion designer who spoke of the ways how he uses the iPad, iPhone and the Internet in his creative process. We also had a chance to see his latest video which was shot using only the iPad 2. Karl also showed us how he carries four iPhone 4’s, 4 iPod’s, an iPad and a digital pen 🙂
Travis Kalanick
Travis Kalanick had a nice conversation with MG Siegler; he talked about UberCab, his transportation company which allows you to call a cab via text message anywhere in Paris or San Francisco. You also don’t need to have any cash with you as the fee will show up on your credit card. Travis also used the opportunity to announce that UberCab had just gotten a $35 million investment.
Mike McCue
Mike McCue, CEO of Flipboard, explained how they got to the idea for such an application. Twitter, Facebook and many other sites and social networks are generating a lot of content. But all of this doesn’t have the print quality that, whether we would like to admit it or not, is still more eye appealing than any website. McCue also talked about his revenues which comes from advertisers that can work similar as they do in print.
Leo Laporte and Sarah Lane
If you’re a podcast fan, you probably know who Leo and Sarah are. The TWiT team interviewed Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, who actually talked about his mistakes; from employing the wrong type of developers to buying the wrong hardware. Kevin is now the head of Milk, a company specialized in mobile app development. Their core product at the moment is Oink (http://www.oink.com/), a mobile app which allows you to rate specific food in restaurants or drinks in the coffee shop etc.
Leah Busque
Leah is the founder of Taskrabbit and she demonstrated how this application works. Taskrabbit isn’t just another to-do app, but a tool which will find people who can run some errands for you. If you have some laundry to take care of or need some groceries, Task Rabbit will find a person who will do your choirs.
Joanna Shields
Joanna Shields works at European subsidiary of Facebook; she talked about Facebook as a revolutionary platform for fresh entrepreneurs that build their businesses exclusively around the biggest social network in the world. “Facebook is a truly global platform which brings you the global market, right there on your desktop” Joanna said.
Dennis Crowley
Dennis Crowley, founder of Foursquare, talked about the changes made since the previous LeWeb. He also stated that now, with Gowalla being acquired by Facebook, Foursquare was the true king of location-based networks. Foursquare now has an extensive user base and they are developing different integration options of Foursquare with other sites.
Kevin Systrom
Kevin Systrom is the founder of Instagram. We had a chance to listen why Instagram got so popular; after all, it isn’t the only photo-filter app nor is it the only photo app for the iPhone, yet here it is with its 14 million users. Kevin thinks that Instagram’s success lies with the future of the media itself, not just the ability to publicly publish the content.
When talking about Instagram’s future, Kevin says that they are working on an Android version as well but they still don’t know when it will be released.
