LeWeb’12 is less than one week away, and when you’re part of the tech industry, you can really feel the general exitement over your facebook and twitter feed.
I will personally go to LeWeb for the fourth time, first time as an official blogger after three times as a student. Every time I made relationships that were valuable to me well beyond the two or three days of LeWeb.
But what’s even greater about LeWeb is that you don’t need to be an attendee to beneficiate from it. Indeed, there are now a lot of satellite events organized around LeWeb and that makes it look like SXSW festival in Austin, Texas, more and more (see our report of SXSW here).
We decided to organize our own with LeWeb Student Warm-Up on Monday, December 3rd, but there is much more going on.
Here is a list:
From Thurday November 29th to Monday December 3rd
The concept of this competition comes from StartupBus which was created by Elias Bizannes for SXSW 2010 with one bus. There were then 6 buses for SXSW 2011 and 12 buses for SXSW 2012. Startup Bus was brought last year in Europe with one bus and this year there are 6 buses competing (can you see the pattern here?). Actually the 6 buses are a joint venture of 3 buses from StartupBus and 3 other buses from FounderBus which was founded in Germany and the overall competition is called Buspreneur.
Buses are leaving from London, Cambridge, Berlin, Copenhagen, Toulouse and Barcelona. Participants have 72 hours to build a startup during the trip.
France has it’s own competition, the bus will leave on Thursday, November 29th from Toulouse and the winner of Startup Bus France will be designed on a semi-final on Sunday. More info here.
The grand finale with the winner of each bus will take place on Monday December 3rd at 3.pm at Microsoft Paris HQ. Om Malik (GigaOm) and David Hornik (August capital) are part of the Judges. The winner of the Buspreneur competion will compete in LeWeb Startup competition.
You can register here to see the demos on Monday.
Saturday, December 1st at 9.am to Sunday, December 2nd at 5.pm
Angelhack, the hackathon series that started only a year ago with a single event in San Francisco, as grown to an 11 cities 3 weeks competition where the winners of each cities get the chance to compete in the grand finale in Silicon Valley in front of a panel of amazing judges including Naval Ravikant (AngelList), Frank Chen (Andreeseen Horowitz) and Robert Scoble (Rackspace).
Moreover, the winner of the French edition will get a ticket for LeWeb’12. Therefore it’s called the “unoficial LeWeb hackathon”
You can still register here as there are still some spots left.
Monday December 3rd, 8.30.am
Microsoft will actually host a full day of events on Monday. Indeed, it will start in the morning with App Stories, an event organized by Appsfire. It will be all about hearing stories and tips about succesfull mobile apps, through founders, investors and partners.
Speakers include, Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC), Jean-David Chamboredon (ISAI), Frederic Mazzella (Blablacar), Julien Codorniou (Facebook), as well as Om Malik (GigaOm)
Registration is in two batches of 100 tickets and the second one opens…today
Monday December 3rd
Seedcamp is a London based European Accelerator/Micro seed Fund of which part of the selection process consists in touring Europe, doing a day-long event in major cities at the end of which they pick one team that they will invest in and help grow.
Of course Paris event is just before LeWeb. You had to apply beforehand to get in but at least now you can prepare for next year or for the next time Seedcamp is coming to your city.
Monday December 3rd, 12.pm
The Buddymedia team which is now part of Salesforce is organizing sessions and discussions around best marketing practices and how to use social media within your business.
This will take place place all afternoon at the Intercontinental Paris, Le Grand and you can register here
(Ok, this one is ours, but as you can see, we’re fair-play and put other events which are at the exact same time ;-))
Monday December 3rd, 2.pm
Prepare LeWeb and meet aspiring entrepreneurs from all around the world. This event is mainly aimed at students and under-26 (but is open to everybody) as we think that there are not enough international gathering for student-entrepreneurs that we can easily attend. Our lineup of (awesome) speakers include Michael Amar (Ifeelgoods), Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC), Robin Wauters (The Next Web) and Tony Conrad (About.me) who will all be speakers or startup competition judge at LeWeb’12 as well as Pano Kroko (Green Capital).
The event is free for students and under-26 and as we have to face the competition of other events (that we are highlighting ourselves, I know, kind of weird, right?) here is a 50% discount on the 20€ non-student ticket that will expire on Thursday Nov 29th at 23.59.pm (Paris time).
Monday December 3rd, 6.30.pm
This event is hosted by Rude Baguette, the only blog covering broadly the French startup scene in english. There are doing a lot to get more international exposure to French startups, and with this event again, their goal is to have french startups meet European business angels.
This is an invite-only event and if your interested I would advise you to contact the host on the eventbrite page
Tuesday December 4th, 7.30.pm
Swedish startups are supported by there governement as this event is hoted in the Swedish embassy. Come and meet startups like, Memoto, Oriboo, FundedbyMe, and more. There will be a total of 26 Swedish startups there and you’ll hear them all pitch during the night. RSVP by email to charlotte.stromback(at)swedishtrade(dot)se
Tuesday December 4th, late
Badoo is organizing a party on the first evening of LeWeb. We have no registration link to give for this one as the process to be invited is to tweet, share on facebook and plus on Google+ to get a chance to be hand selected by the Badoo team. See for yourself with LeWeb facebook post
Wednesday, December 5th, 5.pm
Remixjobs, the web platform to find jobs and freelance gig in the web industry is organizing another edition of it’s event RemixJobs day. Giant jobfair, where about 550+ candidates are expected and 60 startups will be presenting their opportunities.
More info here to register as a candidate or as a startup.
Wednesday December 5th, 7.pm
As they did last year, the evernote team is organizing a meetup during an evening of LeWeb. this time it will be at the end of the second day and will take place at La Mutinerie coworking, one of the finest Parisian coworking spaces. There will be food, drinks, and you’ll be able to ask questions to the evernote team.
You can register here before December 3rd, 5.pm to be able to join.
Wednesday, December 5th, 7.30.pm
Girlz in Web is getting older and is celebrating its third birthday during the second night of LeWeb. There will be 3 Open Mic sessions where people can pitch just about anything from fundraising to job hunting. To get a chance to pitch email hello(at)girlzinweb(dot)com.
Registration is here and the price is 16€ if you’re not a member.
Thurday, December 6th, 7.pm
Aperoentrepreneurs is a laid-back monthly gathering of entrepreneurs every third thursday of the month. And, as a matter of facts, this month, it happens to also be the last day of LeWeb. Aperoentrepreneurs was founded 4 years ago in Paris by Alexandre Delivet, Gilles Poupardin and Guilhem Bertholet. A new organizing team is now taking over, with Antoine Angot, Camille Roux, Edouard Foussier and Nicolas Grenier. Edouard and Nicolas were in charge of Drinkentrepreneurs San Francisco over the last year and you can watch a video here.
The event is free and you can register here.
As you may notice, some of these events happen in the same time. Therefore you may have a feeling that we rarely experienced in Paris, being frustrated not being able to go to an awesome event because you’re going to another awesome event. Get over it, that’s a rich man’s problem and we should be happy about it.
As a result, we can see that LeWeb brings more than a full week of events with repercussions on Paris ecosystem and on the people involved that will last for months or years…So, yes, LeWeb’12 is much more than three days!
*Note, this list is not exhaustive, (there are also secret parties) if you know about other events, feel free to post them in the comments.