my intention in mentioning that I was invited by a male individual was not to personalize the situation (I would have named names if that was my intention). it was to communicate that I was indeed invited to be there, despite my own experience — as witnessed — that seemed to send a different message. after the reactions to a talk about sexuality, I needed to make it clear that my subject matter was actually invited to be there. you may know that people who have said nice things about my talk have also been harassed by the same trolls who pursued me online days after my talk. that your inclusion of diversity was a desired thing at LeWeb was important to express to my readers and any wider public who may have thought otherwise, or capitalized on such a notion for their trolling. and for the record, my experience with you, Loic, has been nothing but pleasant, gracious and enthusiastic. it was not my intention to post any conversations that might have been off the record, had I been made aware of such.

that said, my experience is my own. and I think you’ll appreciate in the spirit of blogging and the principles of community conversation, I do have the right to tell my story. it is my experience, and mine alone.

you may be disappointed that I chose to tell my story in the public forum of my own blog. meanwhile, I have been surprised throughout my experience to observe an organization ostensibly definitive of ‘the web’ that appears to be allergic to transparency.

I am very glad you commented here. thank you for taking the time to reach out, and balance out the conversation.

I don’t want to get into details here but we tried as much as we can to make it work perfectly well and it is a shame that video did not start on account of communication issues, I don’t think this has anything to do with the content of your presentation. We actually had both PCs and Macs available for speakers and should have been able to make this work together, what can I say, it did happen and I am sorry. Connecting this to the content of your talk is a mistake, it is absolutely unfortunate and unrelated.

We were happy to have you and I think many of the 1200+ people from 50 countries in the room and 3 to 4,000 more on live video who watched your presentation enjoyed it despite the video that did not start.

As far as private email communication is concerned between you and us regarding our concerns when we were not sure about Queen Rania’s presence, I regret that you post this here in public and I feel certainly very bad about it, I would never post any private conversations in public before asking your approval.

Since you took it public, yes, we were concerned that the content of your site in the agenda of LeWeb could have had an impact on the Queen to confirm and we explained it to you, as well as apologized already.

As far as your bio is concerned we would have never modified it without your approval and we have not, my team answered you already on this point, I believe this is a misunderstanding.

I am sorry that you seem so upset while I have been personally very excited to have you, excited by the result despite the video glitch and disappointed it happened.

You can trust we tried everything we can to avoid that and I don’t think we deserve the comments you made here as well as your readers comments about the poor organisation, but that is life.

Am very surprised to see you use any enormous group terminology, to be honest.

One badly organised conference does not a continent of intolerance make :)

It’s certainly true that the French have this mythological notion that us Americans are “Puritanical.”
Since that myth ignores our hearty appetite for porn, or for fighting non-stop for the right to marry who we want, or for the right to have medical marijuana, it must come from the fact we shudder when in France and we see naked women on billboards being used to sell everything from yogurt to web-hosting services.

Sorry about the problems you had.

It is a very interesting, although not positive, feedback you are giving to us (I’m no organisator, just a froggy invited as an official blogger too) about LeWeb, especially the “backstage” point of view. Not to make it funny, I think your on-stage intervention needed lube in some way. Because your topic is a bit different from the traditionnal things that are discussed there, the discourse was starting from maybe far.

Please do not make amalgams, I don’t believe that “European” is a pertinent qualificative and my guess is that it is not a quastion of sexual tolerance. It is a matter of treatment (and according to your say, it was unfair and unprofessional towards you) and preparation of the audience. Some people just did not understand your role, your position (because of the bio problem, maybe,or because you’re not so famous here), and so did not underdstand the meaning of your presentation. This is the feedback I’ve had from some french journalists who covered LeWeb.

The second day was very chaotic : Rania, Gary (very good but very unpredictible), our Minister who litterally interrupted the start-up prize ceremony because she arrived late… and indeed you did not receive the support and the welcome you deserved.

I hope you’re not really angry about the audience, but you legitimately can be angry about the conditions.

Greetings from the cold northern part of Europe.