I was taking with a friend, Sebastian, who runs Blogspeedway.com along with me, today who mentioned I should do a post on LeWeb03, Seesmic’s layoffs, the economic situation (which I covered in End of an Era and … The Man Who Won as Others Lost - Plus Social Media doing Good in the Recession?).
One thing that struck me last year, when I attended LeWeb03, was the point of it was to create the environment for a Silicon Valley in Paris - (see Paris is No Silicon Valley: Neither is Europe, plus Paris Is No Silicon Valley—Yet and Le Web 3.0: Silicon Valley comes to Europe).
But..with the recent changes in the World Economy and Seesmic’s layoffs (Loic’s company) (see Seesmic layoffs and a new reality? plus Seesmic’s newest feature: layoffs plus Seesmic steps up layoffs, look out below and Getting The UnParty Started: Seesmic Lays Off 1/3 Of Staff; does the idea of what LeWeb stands for make as much sense?
True, the Seesmic layoffs, Loic was quick to point out to Robert Scoble, were from Marketing people, those viewed as non-essential and outsourceable. However, by that same reasoning, Marketing positions, viewed as non-essential, should have been outsourced from day 1 - and they were not.
Sebastian and I agreed, the real story here is that firms want to be strong enough to make more money for their founders, and now that it’s clear they won’t, even well funded Web 2.0 Start ups, such as Seesmic.com, are laying off everything they can.
But, again, the logic suggests, if essentials was all they cared about - they could have done that much earlier. So the real story is profit. But the other side of it, if LeWeb03 is losing it’s value proposition (which it might well be - I’d have to go and take a look, to know for sure) wouldn’t that hold true for the Web 2.0 Conferences?
I was just at the Web 2.0 conference in NYC, and there was an overall sense that Web 2.0 companies need to grow up and make money - and most of them, don’t. And with the global economic downturn, it’s hard to see which one’s will - but one thing is for sure - they have to collect money, to make money - and that money has to come from somewhere - if not from Advertisers, then from Subscribers - or else you just sell the company to someone else who thinks they can make money off of it - but then, where’s the buyers (Investors) going to come from now? You have to wonder.
Which gets me back to LeWeb03 08. Any point in going? Even if they give me a Press Pass?
I don’t know, but being that Loic Le Meur is so closely associated with Seesmic - it’s hard to dissociate changes in his company (which TechCrunch is partly investing in) with the overall situation for European Silicon Valley. After all, if Silicon Valley, here, is hunkering down, what can be said about it’s European version?
Again, I don’t know the answers to this - of if I’ll even be there, this time; that remains to be seen.
I know this, I’m sure the World Economy will be a subject discussed at LeWeb03 08, that is obvious.
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