On Wednesday last week I was invited (along with 4 other fellows entrepreneurs) to participate to a round table with France’s Prime Minister François Fillon, and his Minister for Digital Economy, Eric Besson. This took place at La Cantine in Paris.
This was a really terrific experience! First, because you don’t get to chat with such powerful and influential people every day - at least not when you are only the CEO and co-founder of a software startup (a dynamic one for sure, but not - yet - one of the largest companies in France). And also because the topics that were covered during the debate really show the commitment of the French government to make up for the lost time, and try to foster innovation and entrepreneurship in France.

Luc Fayard, a journalist, publisher and IT radio show host, moderated the debate, and introduced Talend as one of few the successful French software companies, after Business Objects, Dassault Systems… here comes Talend!

The entrepreneurs and two ministers covered many topics, including:

• New business and innovation models, such as open source
• Cooperation between large corporations and SMBs
• What is more important: patents or market shares?
• Social networking
• The role of universities
• and many other…

You can check out the videos of the event: Part 1 Part 2 Part 3

Bertrand