Tractis will be in LeWeb3… so what?

Next Monday and Tuesday (11th and 12th), LeWeb3 will take place in Paris. It’s like the “Les Blogs 2″ conference last year but with a different name. The organiser is Loïc Lemeur, a French entrepreneur to whom I dedicated one of my first posts on the Negonation blog. There will be 1000 attendees from 36 countries. The event has a clear european focus but there will be entrepreneurs, bloggers and investors known internationally: Niklas Zennström (Skype, Kazaa), Gil Penchina (previously of eBay, now at Wikia), Danny Rimer (Index Ventures), David Hornik (August Capital), Dave Siffry (Technorati), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Ross Mayfield (SocialText), Hugh Mc Leod (Gaping Void), Mena Trott (Six Apart)… and Anina, a cool and beautiful model that blogs her life from a mobile (don’t miss her interview on NerdTV). From Spain, Enrique Dans will participate in the round-table discussion of “Education 2.0″ and Martin Varsavsky will present on “The challenges of getting Spaniards to build a global company”.

The organisers have set up a Start-up room. Over the course of the two days, next to the main hall, various entrepreneurs will get 10 minutes to present their company and services. While it will be my first public demo of Tractis, I’m not especially excited. Should I be? Nervous yes (clearly I hope all goes well) but I’m not excited. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a promising program and I want to listen to and meet all these people but they’re not the real judge. After the experience in Amsterdam, I know how it will be: Investors making an effort to demostrate that they are not searching for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs trying to look like they don’t need money. A necessary mating dance I don’t mind playing.

A potencial collaborator to whom I explain the project for the first time, a mailing list where problems corp up and everyone offers their help, an alternative system of production which really works, a software-challenge that no-one had dared to try before, a system that resolves a real necessity (legal security in e-commerce)… these are the things that truly excite me. Maybe it’s the end of the year that’s made me emotional but today what really moves me is to look back at what we’ve accomplished. Only this week we’ve closed our round of seed capital, found our first reference client and put Tractis 2.0 into production environment. So many things and such little time to post about them. Another stage finished with a mix of excitement and exhaustion. Time to take a breath and experience Paris for the first time. LeWeb3 is only the icing on the cake of an intense year.

By David Blanco
Saved in: Conferences, Tractis | No comments » | 9 December 2006