"What's up, doc?"

Once again, hackers lead the way! I have been to numerous startup/entrepreneurship events in France (Start in Paris, Startup Weekend, Apéro entrepreneurs, Fail Con, plus a few at biz schools and engineering schools) and on occasions I have met foreigners, mostly from North America — including Liam Boogar (@LiamBoogar) who writes for the Rude Baguette, a blog in English (!) about the French startup scene… But the Paris Hackers meetup is the only French event I’ve been to that felt truly global (I’m not counting LeWeb which is obviously an exceptional event).

Thomas Bassetto (@tbassetto) kicked off the meetup in English, which I actually wasn’t expecting at all… Then Gabriel Synnaeve (@syhw) and I gave a quick introduction to Machine Learning, followed by two video calls to the US: one with Sylvain Zimmer (@sylvinus) who was reporting live from the CES in Las Vegas, the other with the founder of Bushi.do which is a Y Combinator startup. I was surprised by the number of american accents I heard in the audience — and these guys seemed to be surprised themselves!

The vast majority of attendees were newcomers. Hackers meet ups are global and quite recent. Someone told me that Paris was the 3rd city to have them, and this was the 3rd of the Paris meet ups if I am not mistaken. As an end note, I am happy to say, on behalf of Entrepreneurs Ensimag, that there were quite a few Ensimag alumni at this event: Gabriel, Sylvain (although not physically present), Jérémie Barbet (@jeremiebarbet), Romain Bouqueau (@rbouqueau), and myself! See you at the next one hopefully!