Go to din­ner with the geeks and you’ll get lots of pho­tos taken

Let me set the scene for you. More than a dozen geeks have trav­eled to Paris for a week­long tech odyssey cul­mi­nat­ing with cov­er­age from France’s pre­mier Web 2.0 con­fer­ence, Le Web. I’m hav­ing a hard time try­ing to deter­mine what the dif­fer­ence is between “Le Web” and “The Web,” but as far as I can tell, it’s soft cheese.

Our group, the Trav­el­ing Geeks, has come from all over the world to meet, see new tech­nol­ogy, and report about it. Every­one is blog­ging from mul­ti­ple loca­tions, but if you want to catch everyone’s cov­er­age, no mat­ter where they write it, just fol­low the blog Trav­el­ing Geeks (RSS).

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

• “Trav­el­ing Geeks” pens look a lot bet­ter than they work. I’ve wit­nessed three run out of ink within one minute of use.
• Con­nec­tiv­ity at hotel is hor­ri­ble. I’m jonesing for a fast con­nec­tion so I can upload some videos. I’ve got a video of an aging accor­dion­ist play­ing and singing “I’m Just a Gigolo.” UPDATE: I got a fast con­nec­tion and I just posted the video. Take a look.
• Geeks bring their video and image cap­tur­ing equip­ment to din­ner. Things nor­mal peo­ple wouldn’t dream to pho­to­graph will not only be pho­tographed and video­taped, but you’ll have lots and lots of it. Here’s just the begin­ning of our pho­to­stream.
• The doors on the Paris Metro will try to crush you if you don’t get in or out fast enough. Tom Forem­ski of Sil­i­con Val­ley Watcher was unfor­tu­nately our guinea pig for that dis­cov­ery. Despite all the pho­tos of everyone’s meal and the close­ups of the pores on my face last night, nobody got a shot or video of Tom vs. the Paris Metro.

Spe­cial thanks to Mobile Globe for spon­sor­ing last night’s din­ner. I was privy to a rather cool demo of its mobile appli­ca­tion that lets you make inter­na­tional calls any­where in the world for just 4 cents per minute. Installs on Black­Ber­rys, iPhones and a bunch of other Java-enabled devices. And another thanks to Mash­cast for mak­ing that silly video of all us at top.David Spark helps busi­nesses grow by devel­op­ing thought lead­er­ship through sto­ry­telling and cov­er­ing live events at Spark Media Solu­tions. He blogs at The Spark Minute and can be heard and seen reg­u­larly on ABC Radio, Cranky Geeks with John C. Dvo­rak, and KQED in San Fran­cisco. See his busi­ness pro­file, con­tact David, or leave a com­ment below.

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