I was in the room and as a frenchman (i should rather say a european, since I also have german blood) I'd say that I was really positively impressed by seeing half the room leave the conference right after Sarkozy's speech (should I say boring monologue - reading his paper, stressing rather security issues more than freedom of speech and united-people-of-the-internet power, and finally with no interactioni with the room). A pitty really to see this happen... 

Si tu as honte d'être français, de parler ta langue, t'es pas obligé rester, l'émigration reste permise ;) c'est l'immigration qui est plus difficile actuellement, avec ce Sarko.
Etre étonné qu'un politique français parle français à un public composé d'un grand nombre de Français, c'est le monde à l'envers !! Ce qui me choque profondément, moi, c'est que la conférence ait été organisée en anglais, alors qu'elle était en France, organisée par des Français. Pour info, la France a "foreign country" ! It is your country, where the official language sofar is French. Did U know that ? It is the problem of the organisators if they prefered that all the non-American people talk in broken English, if the communication is shit because of that ! Yet translation devices were available, it seems ... Pauvre France, armes Frankreich, es tut mir sehr leid für dich. 

Sure. Let's insist on as arbitrary things as political frontiers and the Language which is your mother tongue. That will help big time to make the world work better. Duh. 

Olso, your remark is too dumb to even bother answering it. Please sit down and think for a minute why "Blut und Boden" considerations are not a good idea when you want to organize an international conference in the local language. Or would you go to a conference in, say, Latvia if the sessions weren't in English? Wake up, French isn't the lingua franca anymore.

But this made me think of a good starting point for Leweb4: we could have two parallel tracks, one entirely in French, with such interesting debates as: Why France is the leading Internet country in Europe, New evidence of the superiority of the French language, and of course with loads of fascinating speeches by France's utterly interesting politicians. The other track could then be in English and discuss boring issues about new ideas, web paradigms and so on.

Qu'en pensez-vous ? 

Désolé si je n'étais pas assez clair, je comprends que tu aies pu mécomprendre ce que je voulais dire. Sorry if I was not clear enough, I understand that you could have misunderstood what I meant (btw I hope you are NOT french, coz THAT would be very dumb, to speak english to a Frenchman !!).
J'ai participé à des dizaines de congrès internationaux dans des pays différents, et c'était jamais en anglais, ni en français d'ailleurs. Il y a une langue internationale neutre qui permet à tous de communiquer d'égal à égal, sans besoin de traducteurs ... Voilà tout. I took part to dozens of international congresses in different countries, and it was never in english, nor in french. There is a neutral international language, that enables an equal communication, with no translators needed. That's all ! (d'ailleurs, en 2005, y en avait un en Lituanie ! :) )