Here’s my second and final show report from Le Web. We had been led to believe that Le Web was going to be about real-time Web. After the first day, we were wondering when that discussion would begin. But by day two we finally got some discussion on that topic.

Watch the video for a summary of day two, mostly about the real-time Web and also some of my critiques about how the show was handled. But for a full analysis of the event, make sure you read my report, The cool and not-so-cool from LeWeb.

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Here’s my end of day show report for Le Web, the Web 2.0 conference in Paris. I’ve been in Paris for the week reporting with the Traveling Geeks (watch video of us on a train). Watch the video for a quick summary of the companies I saw, plus a quick story at the end about an outbreak Robert Scoble had at the expense of the French entrepreneurs.

Companies and links mentioned in the video.

• Square
• How Dell handles customer service and sales through social media: Interview with Richard Binhammer (@RichardATDell)
• AllMyApps
• blueKiwi
• TicTacDo
• Wikeo
• eBuzzing
• DEZineforce
• Video: Dating tech service Wuiper offers a fun way for people to meet
• DEZineforce
• TrueKnowledge
• Yatedo

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At the Le Web conference in Paris, I spoke with Richard Binhammer, better known as @RichardATDell on Twitter. Three years ago Richard, who was and still is working in public affairs, was told by his boss to start getting engaged in blogger relations. It appears that Binhammer’s move into social media was one of the many responses to the 2005 Dell Hell outburst initiated by social media consultant Jeff Jarvis, who wrote an open letter to Dell complaining about Dell’s customer service. At the time, Dell’s response was, “We don’t respond to bloggers.”

It took this dramatic situation to shake Dell up, but they finally did respond a year later with a full social media presence that’s been valuable for customer service and promoting sales. Binhammer said that Dell’s use of Twitter is responsible for $6.5 million in sales worldwide.

In the video I gave Binhammer a little bit of a hard time regarding his minimal opinion on the HP situation I had that I published here before (“Why I love public transportation and hate HP” and HP’s response). Granted, I caught him off guard and didn’t tell him the full story, but I was looking for a more concrete answer to the procedure on how he’d go around handling a single complaint like mine from someone who is established online. Off camera we talked more about how every incident is different. And I agree, there isn’t one pat answer, but there are procedures to handle things and I’m still eager to know more about Dell’s procedure.

Does your company have procedures on handling negative conversation in the social media space? If so, let us know. What procedures work? What don’t work? Eager for a discussion.

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The Traveling Geeks can’t stop recording their every movement, especially on the Paris Metro

I am still highly amused by the volume of photography and video that’s going on at the Traveling Geeks event in Paris (explanation, silly video). There is an endless number of photos that have been taken so far (full screen), and we haven’t yet arrived at our key event, Le Web, which starts tomorrow.

Here’s a video of us jammed into a Metro car going to see a bunch of startups at an incubator. On the train and in the video are Eliane Fiolet, Tom Foremski, Robin Wauters, Kim-Mai Cutler, Frederic Lardinois, Matt Buckland, Sky Schuyler, Ewan Spence, Olivier Ezratty, Renee Blodgett, Amanda Coolong, Beth Blecherman, and Robert Scoble.

For more coverage, check out my first day video report and a video interview with the artistic director of a really impressive project scanning the entire city of Paris.

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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.

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