le web 3: strange visitor in the morning

There are some words that you just shouldn't be subjected to early in the morning. Amongst those are "first mover advantage", "click stream revenue sharing" and "open your bag please".

In a few minutes, the 83 year old former Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Peres, is going to address Le Web. There's nothing like a heavy security presence, including bag searches and vans full of police outside the venue, to get the blood moving in the morning.

What Peres is going to say to a room full of web start-up people and venture capitalists is anyone's guess. As I wrote in my BBC News Online Reporter's Log, Peres's people found out about Le Web and phoned the organiser on Sunday to ask if Peres might be able to come address the conference. It's a pretty strange thing to be in the situation where you can simply assume that a conference, even one utterly unrelated to anything you've ever publicly spoken about or been involved in, might want to have you get up on the stage to speak. It's a bit like a non-swimmer diving into the pool at the Olympics and no one thinking anything odd of it.

Loic is moving the warm-up speaker, who was saying something about RSS, off the stage so Peres must be here...

Comments

[Adrian Sanderson]

It seems you are not quite familiar with the works of Mr Shimon Peres. Above and beyond his political career [as one of the most respected [politicians left in our world] he is first and for most a visionary; sometimes dubbed 'a dreamer'. Mr Peres served only 2 years as elected Prime Minister, but in these 2 years he did more then any other Israeli PM; He crushed the raging inflation of 400% to just 2-3% a year [which still stands to this day] and made great paces towards peace with Jordan. I am glad young bloggers got to know this great man in this conferance.

Thanks

Adrian