Loic Le Meur: Internet Of Things Is Making Huge Impact On Silicon Valley

After dabbling in blogs, social networks and mobile, Loïc Le Meur has now turned his attention to the ‘Internet of Things’ and has chosen it as the official theme of Le Web Paris 2012, Europe’s biggest Internet conference, which takes place next week.

But what exactly is the Internet of Things and why did Le Meur settle on the theme?

Why the emphasis on the Internet of things this year?
The Internet of Things is a groundswell. It has been the subject of most of the entrepreneurial activity in Silicon Valley this year. More than half of the cases are related to connected objects, enriched by their Internet connection and their interactions with other users.

But the Internet of Things is also making a huge impact on the ecosystem of the valley, with new forms of financing such as crowdsourcing on Kickstarter and new skills such as prototyping, the identification of suppliers and the mastery of any supply chain that goes beyond the Web.

I am very excited and this is clearly one of the most challenging issues I have had to deal with since LeWeb began.

Could you give a definition of the ‘Internet of Things’?
The Internet of Things is a combination of hardware and software, enhanced by our social interactions on the web or on mobile.

Everyday objects such as a sensor, a light bulb or a lock become “connected”. This will revolutionise fields such as health and sport but also our homes which will become increasingly intelligent. According to Cisco, more than 50 billion objects could be connected by 2020.

LeWeb participants will be able to attend numerous demonstrations of connected objects, including sport bracelets, scales, thermostats, locks, lights, humidity sensors and drones as well as platforms for programming interactions with these objects.

Is the name of the conference, Le Web, too restrictive?
When we started this adventure, we gathered 200 people to talk about blogging buy after a few years, we just changed the name of the conference from Les Blogs to LeWeb because we thought the first name was too restrictive.

LeWeb now brings together more than 3,000 people each year in Paris, and about 1,500 in London. It is a well established brand that certainly covers new trends like the Internet of Things but also gives recognition and rewards to the best start-ups and opportunities to share the best practices in web marketing.

Go to Paris on 4 December to meet the entire ecosystem of web and the internet!

Euro Story: each week, we publish a selected story from across NetMediaEurope’s network of European sites. This week’s story by Jérôme Bouteiller is from ITespresso France. It was translated and localised by Steve McCaskill.

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