My final Monday morning commute of the year last week was to Paris, for the now-infamous Le Web conference, where I participated in a panel about Enterprise 2.0. A lot has been said about this event, probably enough, but I found it so fascinating as a social phenomenon that I cannot resist adding to the noise with a few reflections of my own, because I think the event told us a lot about the state of the European social software scene at the end of a very exciting year.

First, thanks are due to the extraordinary Loic Lemeur and his team for putting on a spectacular event. Loic took risks and arguably got a bit carried away by turning day two into a political 'happening' (which was ironically more in the tradition of the situationists than the new centre-right ;-), but he does not deserve the firestorm of criticism that has ensued. The conference was the biggest social media event so far in Europe, but whereas the LIFT and Reboot events are about ideas, new thinking and the development of an authentically European network of practitioners, Le Web was simultaneously an attempt to create a more venture capital driven US-style Web 2.0 event and also an audacious play to harness the energy of this new sector in pursuit of market-driven social change.

*Update: See Loic's comprehensive account of the event and his thinking here*

On the plus side, there were some fantastic people and a very positive energy, assisted by a great venue, which was conducive to informal encounters and conversations; fantastic service (except for the WiFi and dumb PR cabaret in the breaks - Orange were to blame for both); and an imaginative lunch offering, which as you may know is a subject close to my heart. Hans Rosling gave probably the standout presentation, but there were some other good performances as well throughout the two days.

On the other hand, I think there are some lessons to take form the event in terms of format. There were too many panels, and these were often over-populated and under-prepared. There were also too many rhetorical or overblown panel titles that meant very little, and debate was not really encouraged by the format. Aside from explicit or implicit sales pitches, there were not that many new ideas.

The Enterprise 2.0 panel felt like one of the worst from where I was sitting. Originally billed as Enterprise 2.0 (i.e. the use of social tools within large organisations), the unecessarily ideological sub-title "Distributed Capitalism" was added before the event, which threw me completely. Capitalism as ideology? process? mode of production? Is there a non-distributed form of capitalism they failed to tell us about in economics classes? To make things worse, in addition to myself, Thomas and Ross from Socialtext (all of whom are at least engaged in helping companies use social tools internally, two other panellists appeared at the last minute, making five people plus questions in a 30 minute slot. After initial intros from each of us, it was evident we were going nowhere, so I tried to provoke debate by suggesting the title was meaningless and trying to get back onto the (more interesting, to me at least) topic of how to achieve the benefits of Web 2.0 ideas inside the enterprise, which Ross patiently managed to do. I still cringe.

(In case you missed it, the idea was that Thomas talk about the photo sharing site 23hq and how they are finding business uses for photo/presence sharing tools; Ross launched the latest in a series of clever API extensions of the Socialtext wiki platform, namely Socialtext unplugged, based on Jeremy Rushton's brilliant Tiddlywiki code; and, meanwhile, I would share some lessons from the field about doing Enterprise 2.0 projects with an offering of tools, services, data and user engagement.)

Overall, however, the event was most enjoyable and very impressive (see for example, Hugh's account), and it provided a useful snapshot of the current state of this fast growing European sector. The event was more American than other European events, which was both a good thing (US markets are ahead in this area and many leading lights, thinkers and entrepreneurs hail from the other side of the Atlantic) and a bad thing (too much focus on 'bubble' PR and chasing dotcom valuations rather than value). France was an interesting setting for this, as the political establishment wrestles with the need to develop a more entrepreneurial economy without becoming a cheap clone of the US economy and losing authentic French and European values built up over the long term.

Central to that debate in France is the figure of Nicolas Sarkozy, currently the Minister of the Interior and a strong candidate for the Presidency in 2007. Seen by some as a refreshing opponent of "politics as usual" and by others as a dangerous anti-immigrant demagogue, Sarkozy is without doubt one of the most Internet-literate of modern politicians. It was his performance at Le Web, compounded by the addition of another French Presidential candidate to the agenda, M. Bayrou, that caused such a fuss ("Hijack", "Political Propaganda" "Old Fashioned Propaganda", "I want a refund").

We began the second day with police everywhere and airport-style bag checking and security (which I thankfully managed to avoid completely thanks to a quick thinking venue hostess). The first presenter, Pierre Chappaz, gamely tried to begin a session about new media before being bundled off to make way for former Israeli Prime Minister and current Vice Premier Shimon Peres. Peres was engaging and interesting, and said some popular things about the importance of technology and commerce in pursuing peace. But this was Peres the ambassador-at-large for Israel coming to address Europe's self-appointed technology elite, rather than the former hawk who played a key role in arming the state, supporting settlements and creating a dangerous nuclear weapons programme that continues to de-stablise the region today. It was very hard to square the two at times. Nevertheless, I am glad I listened and it was a valuable monologue (no questions were allowed) that was in places inspiring. After Peres, the conference continued with more "death of xyz" sessions (radio, TV, old media, old people, etc.) and most of the action took place in the (rather wonderful) public spaces, until the French hustings began, but luckily I had to get back to London anyway to speak at a Headshift event, so I missed that part. Three political speeches, all from quite partisan positions that were inevitably not shared by many among the 1,000+ attendees is quite a lot to ask when many people are paying to attend a conference about Le Web. I think that explains the backlash, and perhaps Loic just didn't see this amidst the craziness of putting together such an ambitious event.

Regardless of the incongruity of different aspects of Le Web, I think such a "happening" is to be celebrated, and only Loic could have attempted something on this scale. Whatever happens, it will have given birth to conversations and connections that will help accelerate the development of European business in this area. But it also reflected an emerging European sector that has multiple, sometimes conflicting identities: there are VC-chasing wanna-go-global startups who will be the first to go if the G-Y-M acquisitions dry up; small-scale practitioners doing interesting things but not really making an impact on the market as a whole; European VCs who are helping grow an equity market for the sector; and finally, some profitable businesses (or at least businesses with a non-build-to-flip model) who will be there in the long term.

The European business community is certainly more conservative than in the United States, which means the gulf between the culture of Web 2.0 at Le Web and the boardrooms of major corporates is wide. But surely that's the challenge? If we really want to engineer change in Europe, shouldn't we be taking on the crunchy problem of making European businesses more responsive, more agile and more connected using the ideas and tools of social software, rather than focus our energies on shooting off little dotcom fireworks that burn brightly but don't achieve traction in non-geek markets? I was surprised that there not more people at Le Web who had the insights and the patience to tackle this issue over the long term. I know they are around, because Headshift are putting together a Europe-wide network of associates to help deliver projects for international companies, but I guess I hoped to discover some new businesses who we might work with on this challenge.

I spent a fair amount of time this year travelling around Europe and meeting senior people in some large businesses, and my feeling is that they are ready for a dose of internal change using social tools or Enterprise 2.0, just as long as it is focused on business basics and the bottom line, rather than being a novelty pitch. Headshift have spent 2006 creating a strong foothold in these businesses, and our mission for 2007 is to move beyond the pilot stage to create a deliver the undoubted benefits of Enterprise 2.0 at scale within large organisations and really start to demonstrate the transformational potential of our ideas.

If that sounds like a New Year resolution, it is. The famous situationst graffiti in 1968 claimed Sous les pavés, la plage, but I am tired of puling up paving stones, so I shall be offline in the Caribbean for the rest of the working year ;-)