After having attended several entrepreneur events in Belgium, like the Open Coffee and BetaGroup gatherings in Brussels, the 8th edition of the Le Web Conference is comparatively huge. I was amazed by the scale of the event and the clout of its attendees.

Except from several big wigs from Microsoft, Google, FaceBook and MySpace, the larger part of the audience consisted of mainly high profile bloggers, VC scouts and French entrepreneurs. I met people from quite a lot of interesting initiatives, like the SilverLight guys from Eeple with their digital picture board, the Three Melons advertising game development company, Yoowalk's nice looking 3D web village, SPARKEO, Weblin, Realmee, BloggersBase, dismoiou, NetVibes, and last but not lease our Belgian friends from Radionomy.

On a less positive note: I wasn't really convinced of the startup contestants. The people's choice Silentale not being among the three winners is an indicator of the lack of a clear winner. No wonder because a lot were uninspirational, lacked a good business model or couldn't really be classified as a startup anymore (5 years old, funded with $25 million, ...).

Many thanks to Robin Wauters, Clopin, Clo, Jonathan and Roland for grabbing a le Big Mac on Tuesday, you guys are hilarious. Also thanks to Kris Hoet and company from Microsoft for the cool GapingVoid drawing and for showing me the LiveServices, SilverLight and the BizSpark program. As mainly an Apple and open source geek I have to confess: Microsoft was probably showing some of the most impressive stuff at Le Web.

Well, I've had enough of Frenglish for quite some time, but as my namecard book shows: it was definitely worth it!