Viva Technology is coming back to Paris with its ginormous tech conference

If there’s just one word that can explain Viva Technology (or “VivaTech” for brief), it’s that it’s a ginormous meeting. Although it was just the first edition previous year, 45,000 persons designed their way to Paris to chat about all points tech. VivaTech is again once again this year on June 15th – June 17th.

Last year, Mike and I didn’t seriously know what to be expecting. But I imagine it’s good to say that it was a very good meeting. As Mike wrote previous year, “VivaTech is relatively akin to a TechCrunch Disrupt, but with a broader blend of company and government involvement.”

VivaTech is co-organized by the advertising and marketing company Publicis and key newspaper Les Échos. Last year, 5,000 startups, six,000 CEOs, 250 buyers and 5,000 learners had been there at some place during the 3 times of the meeting. There had been a ton of startup booths as very well as eight distinct phases.

And the group at the rear of VivaTech programs to do just that the moment once again. Anything will be refined as the meeting was organized rather speedily previous year. So this time, they have much more time to get ready and line up their speakers and startups.

Now at the Élysée Palace, French president François Hollande, French electronic minister Axelle Lemaire, Publicis, Les Echos and a bunch of other persons launched the function. It was a huge splashy function with close to 200 persons from the tech ecosystem.

“The first time I heard about VivaTech, I assumed ‘oh no, not nonetheless one more huge point,’” Axelle Lemaire reported. But she then reported that France wanted a key tech function to contend with other countries.

“Today, VivaTech is obviously a achievement. Which is why they want to do it once again, but this time, they’ll pay notice to specifics to turn it into a neighborhood undertaking so that it can turn into a key innovation function in France and across the planet,” she reported.

She then stated a lot of of her initiatives as electronic minister. I have lined a lot of of them on TechCrunch — La French Tech, the French Tech Ticket, the French Tech Visa, the Electronic Republic monthly bill, the gender diversity initiative and much more.

French president François Hollande expended most of his speech earning jokes — he only has a pair of months left as the French president after all. “Maurice Lévy is very good when it arrives to interaction, and I need to have talked with him much more generally,” he reported.

“France is the 2nd European nation for startup funding rounds,” Hollande reported. “And we’ve been first for the quantity of transactions considering that January.”

“Five yrs back, when I heard about [the CES meeting] in Las Vegas, there had been pretty several French startups. Now, we’re the 2nd most significant nation. And we hope that we can turn into the first just one in a several yrs — the president of the U.S. is helping us.”

It is bizarre that French politicians have been fascinated with CES like it’s the final tech function. There are a lot of tech activities out there, but in some way CES is the gold conventional for ministers, political candidates and French presidents.

Hollande also stated all the good reasons why France has turn into much more favorable for startups. Arguably, it has by no means been a lot easier to develop a startup in France, and he hopes that the following French president is going to follow the very same route.

Other speakers integrated VivaTech’s co-directors Julie Ranty-Déchelette and Maxime Baffert. They introduced the first associates of Viva Technology. Maurice Lévy introduced some of the first speakers, these as Peter Fenton from Benchmark, Eric Schmidt from Alphabet, Daniel Zhang from Alibaba, Dan Schulman from PayPal.

In brief, VivaTech 2017 is going to be like VivaTech 2016, but much more polished. There will be less phases so that the articles need to be much more focused. There will be huge businesses like AccorHotels, Air France KLM, Carrefour, LVMH, TF1 Team and much more. And eventually, there will be thousands of entrepreneurs.

Les Échos CEO Francis Morel was also on stage to chat about the function. And LVMH CEO Bernard Arnault was also at the function. At first I didn’t seriously recognize what Arnault was undertaking there, but then I remembered that Arnault is the most important trader in Les Échos.

At least it was a very good option for a family photo with Lévy, Hollande and Arnault: