Sven Dens

Yesterday evening I got home after 2 days in Paris for the WFF 07.

In retrospect, I must say that it hasn’t been what I’d expected it to be. Although there were some really nice sessions (like that by Erik Natzke and Carlos Ulloa), the overall level was below-average in my opinion and I don’t think I’ll be attending next year.

From an event taking place in the artistic Centre Pompidou in the heart of Paris, I expect at least to find a nice ambiance, a vibrant atmosphere, enthousiastic creative people gathering to see what everyone else is doing and sharing ideas with each other. Instead I found a badly organized event (it took me 10 minutes to find the location inside the Centre Pompidou where the event was taking place, not even an arrow in the entrance showing where you needed to be), with people just walking in and out the rooms where the sessions were being held, no bar or lounge to socialize or do some networking, no video screens, no music, no nothing to make it more of an event than of a”place were lectures were being held”.

That’s a real shame, and a missed opportunity.
Another thing that bothered me beyond reason is the fact that in every non-French spoken session, there was an interpreter sitting next to the presenter of the session translating every sentence the guy had to say. While the French are generally not the best English-speaking people in the world, it amazed and annoyed me to see that even web professionals (who I expect to be at such an event) are incapable of understanding what’s being said during a 1-hour session. This means that the presenter actually could only talk during a half hour, because the other half hour was being spent on translations. And although most of it was translated correctly, the translator also got it completely wrong some times, pointing out a whole different story to the public as was being told by the presenter (as was the case with Erik’s session a couple of times).

Some other sessions just sucked - pardon my French - and one even went completely down the drain due to a non-functioning demo that lasted over 30 minutes without the presenter realizing her demo didn’t work, until it started throwing one error after another and finally just crashed (the demo showing alleged interaction between a Wiimote and Flash).

That’s the reason why on Sunday, I decided to enjoy a day of Paris instead of going to the second day at the event, thereby missing out on the session on Processing by Douglas Eric Stanley which I would have liked to attend, and the closing event with amazing work from Erik Natzke. Too bad I didn’t see those 2, but it didn’t make much sense to me to go to the Centre Pompidou at 2PM to see the first session for 45 minutes, then have nothing interesting on for 5 hours and finally enjoying an hour of Natzke at 8PM.

Nope, the Web Flash Festival was a 1-time-thing for me. But nevertheless I’m glad I went over there to know what it was like, and I’ve been to Paris once more, which is never a bad thing