ICC 3.0

A few days before the ICC-conference started, by coincidence I found out about it on the Internet. A French conference on (among other subjects) knowledge management, in Paris, for free and I had time to go. So what more do I need to subscribe as participant? An opportunity to find out about companies that work in this area and it would be a test for me as well whether my French has improved enough to listen two days to presentations and talk to people. This time my priority was not to hear something new but to listen and talk.
To answer my question about my level of French, I can say it depends very much on the person (the speaker). Let me give a description of what most presentations look like: Take a deep breath. Try to say as much as possible in the time given to you. Then breath out. No slides. And if you have a microphone, wave it somewhere in the direction of your mouth (because you are used to gesturing a lot when you are exited), so it only picks up 10% of what you say.

Okay, I exaggerate and generalise (though my boyfriend's French instructor recognised it very well) and the second day was much better than the first in this respect.  But I was happy I when I understood in general of what the presenter wanted to say, even though I must have missed a lot of details. Slides help a lot, so I can see what is said. And when I know the subject, for example a Web2.0 presentation, I can almost predict what they will say, which makes it a lot easier as well. So, my understanding depends much on the effort of the speaker not to talk too fast, use slides and talk about things I know. Next to this I had a few nice talks with people presenting companies on the "market floor". Some even said that my French is quite good. That is very kind of them,  because I know my French is still limited.

About the conference itself. The way it was set up makes it difficult to draw conclusions. During every slot there were 3 presenters, each had about 10 minutes to talk and then there were questions from the audience. Sometimes these 3 presentations were so different, like 3 different views on one topic. New for me were the topics "intelligence économique (IE)" (how to use information for economic and strategic purposes), "dévéloppement durable" (sustainable development) and its relation to IE. An often-mentioned topic was searching, in information, pictures, video, organisations. On knowledge management and Web2.0 I haven't heared not much news. I didn't take many notes; the combination with listening very carefully was not so easy. I see now that my notes are a mix of French, Dutch and English. My mind must have been mixing all these languages. It might explain why I was dead tired at the end of the day!