I've been known to admonish people who criticize conferences they didn't attend and to practice what I preach I will not jump on the band wagon to tell Loic what he did wrong or if he did anything wrong at Le Web 3.0. Robert and I attended Les Blogs 2.0 last year and found Loic and Geraldine an engaging, passionate and charming couple, generous to a fault and witty, sharp and smart. We also enjoyed the conference, learning new concepts and meeting new people. Loic totally won us over with his charming personality and that special je nais se quois about him. It is a testament to his energy, hard work and passion that instead of 300 people like last year he had 1000 people attend this year's conference.

His passion for politics might have gotten the better of him in this instance and he might have projected his interest to his audience. It happens to the best of us. We all make mistates and when we are tired, under attack and on the defense angry words are exchanged. It's part of being human.

So if I were Loic, and I have been in his place before as a conference organizer with some years of experience, I would reach out to my critics and apologize. Sincerely apologize to the audience. After that I would offer everyone who had asked for a refund or walked out of the conference (maybe there were 50? out of 1000?) a free pass to the next year conference and heck I would buy them a round of drinks too. A bottle of nice French Bordeaux could rebuild many friendships :) If the critic is someone like Sam Sethi or Tom Raftery or Nicole Simon, I would take that a step further. I would ask them to present at the next year conference.