Sorry none. We are not selling anything to bloggers (at least to my knowledge today ;) ). Everyone will have to pay for their drink (and I don’t think bloggers can or should be bought with beers). The vast majority of our business is done abroad with big brands… What do you really expect me to sell a 2pm in a bar in Differdange (I have no book to promote). I understand your fight against marketing excess but think you challenged the wrong fighter. We don’t promote mass advertising or shill marketing. We have been supporting or coorganizing different bloggers events (on our free and extra time)

Nous ne comptons rien vendre à cet évènement. Tout le monde aura à payer son verre. La très grande majorité de nos clients sont à l’international et sont des grandes entreprises… je ne vois pas vraiment ce que vous comptez me voir vendre à des bloggers un samedi à 14h dans un bar à Differdange (je n’ai pas de livre à promouvoir)? Je comprends bien votre combat contre les excès du marketing mais je crois que vous vous trompez d’adversaire. Nous soutenons et collaborons personnellement et avec notre blog à des rencontres comme Paris Blogue t’il à paris qui en et à sa 7ème édition (sur notre temps libre).

Personnellement, ces rencontres m’ont permis de rencontrer de nombreuses personnes, beaucoup étant devenus des amis. Professionnellement certaines personnes rencontrées sont devenus des partenaires, certains des collaborateurs. Nous travaillons régulièrement avec la blogosphère et comme dans toute communauté certaines personnes apprécient de contribuer celles-ci, par exemple en prenant le temps gratuitement de collaborer à l’organisation d’un évènement, à sa promotion et à la création de son site(qui a pris plus de 20 minutes à créer… je devrais peut-être appeler votre grand-mère a prochaine fois… ou alors pourquoi ne vous portez vous donc pas volontaire ?

Why these event? Personally this type of meeting has let me met numerous and diverse people and man of them have now become friends. Professionally, few of these people have become partners and some coworkers. We collaborate regularly with the blogosphere and as in every community accept that some people like to contribute, by taking time to coorganize, support and promote an event and the associated site. (yes it took us a bit more than 20 minutes to build, but yes I won’t forget to send a job offer to your computer skilled grandma… or maybe do you want to offer your time?)

NB : Le buzz marketing consiste à laisser le pouvoir à l’internaute au lieu de le bombarder avec de la publicité traditionnelle. A lui proposer un divertissement et non de lui imposer un message idiot publicitaire. A lui laisser tester lui-même un produit ou un service s’il en a envie et à l’inviter à en parler de la manière dont il le souhaite (ce qui inclus évidemment les critiques s’il y en a).

NB : Buzzmarketing rely on giving back power to people instead of bombing them with a flow a traditionnal advertising. I believe it is better to offer people entertainment instead of dumb advertising. I believe it is better to let him experience a product and service and let him decide and say what he think about it (and yes it does include critics)

I took time to answer to each of your questions below (despite them being very oriented to try to make a point against the organizers. If you already made your opinion since day one, I guess you will probably try to use every line to misrepresent who we are and what we have tried to be doing. If you are truly open minded, I hope you will finally realized that your assumptions where far from the true.
Regarding other coorganizers latest post, just understand that they spent time and energy and felt really hurt about the lie that where spread against them (fake bloggers,…) and did not even understand
so much anger and obsession against us (just seven posts full of accusations on your blog). Especially when we have seen the heavy positive feedback from the vast majority of bloggers. I guess languages and cultural differences didn’t help in the communication.

About the honesty of my answers (since that will be an easy way not to accept them) and won’t not answer to the provocation.
*1.* How can the entry at the website mybloglog from the 10th November
2006 be explained if blogdelux was initiated by bloggers who had nothing to do with culture-buzz?

We have been at the initiative and supported since day one the bloggers meeting called Paris Blog t’il (http://www.parisblog.fr) with Culture-Buzz. This meeting gathers now more than 200 to 300 bloggers and just has been organized for the 8th edition last week. Leaving in Luxembourg, it is a long time I had the project to organize ou coorganize the same (I talked about it on Radio Ara last year). We began to build a site in November (hence the mybloglog creation) but had no time to go further… then we met Lola and few other bloggers that wanted to do one in January and decided to join forces.
*2. *WHO are the people, who are not blogger and that could have questions about the topic that you want to answer?

If the blog subject has been heavily covered by media in France for example, it is a bit different in Luxembourg. So some of the people whoe decided to join told us that they were not blogging but had questions about it and about how to start it. Not everyone is born with a mouse. I am sure that as “first blogger in Luxembourg” you will probably have plenty of advices for them. I did not ask them for their ID but they still are welcome..

Si le sujet “blog” a largement été couvert par les media en France, ce n’est pas le cas au Grand Duché. Je vous invite à venir rencontrer ces personnes si étranges ;) qui ne sont pas nées avec une souris et qui ont souhaités se joindre à nous samedi pour en savoir plus sur ce qu’est un blog, comment en créer un, quelles technologies choisir,… Je suis certain que vous serez enchanté de partager vos conseils de « 1er blogger historique du Luxembourg ». Je ne leur ai pas demandé leur carte d’identité mais ils n’en sont pas moins les bienvenus.

Ech hun des Diskussioun ronderem blogdelux an leschter Zeit stillschweigend verfollegt mee bei sou enger Ausso vum lOlA2LuXe, do keint ech mech freckt laachen. Wei kann een sech an sou enger Diskussioun zu sou enger Connerie verleiten lossen? D'lOlA2LuXe mag zwar Commissaire aux comptes an soss eppes mee sou eppes iwertrefft dann awer schon all Vernunft.
Mee bon wisou zielen ech daat, majo well ech hoffen dass dei kritsch Stemmen geint den blogdelux sech net vun sou eppes sollen anschüchteren loossen, an ech drecken ierch Daumen!

Ich finde die Bemerkung SOOOO geil. :D Wenn man also die Fähigkeit zeigt, Dinge zu hinterfragen und zu recherchieren, bekommt man keine Arbeit? L*** mich am A*** dann bleiben wir wohl auf ewig arbeitslos hier… ;) Aber dass freidenkende Menschen schon immer ein großes Problem für herrschsüchtige Idioten darstellten ist wohl nichts Neues.

Ach ich geb's auf… Ich bin's ehrlich gesagt wirklich leid immer wieder das Gleiche zu tippen, auch wenn der permanente Wechsel zwischen x Sprachen die Sache irgendwie intressanter gemacht hat. Joël, ich hoffe du bist am Samstag auf dem Treffen und bringst der Blogosphäre ein paar schöne Interviews mit zurück. Ich würde ja auch gerne, aber mich trennen leider über 800km von Luxemburg…

Ich bin's echt satt, dass die uns für blöd verkaufen. Sollen die französischen Blogger (jetzt mal ganz ohne fremdenfeindlich zu sein, ist das eigentlich Zufall, dass nur französische Blogger hier so rumballern?) sich halt sinnlos besaufen und sich von Culture Buzz mit Firmen in Kontakt bringen lassen, damit sie ein schönes korruptes Leben führen können. Ich werde auch nicht in Lola's Blog kommentieren, ist mir jetzt echt nicht wert. Wer auch beim 20. Mal fragen die Frage noch immer nicht kapiert ist viel zu blöd für diese Welt.

"Ich habe fertig!"

Liebe Vanksen Group, Ihr habt genau zwei Möglichkeiten: Die eine ist zugeben, was ohnehin offensichtlich ist. Die andere - nun, ich denke, Eure "Kunden" können googlen. Und ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass man Leute für das Blogmarketing nimmt, die eine derartig miese Performance von der initialen Lüge bishin zum Verleumden desjenigen, der sie erwischt hat, abgeliefert haben. Das wird ein fetter Makel. Und der bleibt kleben. Da wird es Euch nicht anders gehen als diversen deutschen Agenturen, die ähnliches versucht haben.

Wie auch immer: Dieser Ratschlag ist kostenlos. Ihr müsst ihn nicht annehmen. Aber dann solltet Ihr vielleicht überlegen, Euch ein neues Geschäftsfeld zu suchen.

Concerning weytjens' comment: "Oh, capitain, my capitain!"
Besides having spelled "captain" wrong, this line is a direct quote from a poem by Walt Whitman published in 1900 - the title of the poem itself also being "O captain, my captain" - in which the captain has indeed died and the corpse is lying on the deck as the ship arrives in the harbor.
There have been too many accusations in the past from you blodgelux people and I don't want to accuse you, but I'd strongly suggest that next time you better look up the origin / meaning of an expression before using it to score in such a controversial issue.

Joel gets an invitation to go to a blogger meeting. He informs himself and makes an observation: The people who invited him earn their money through marketing. They first invited the media, then the bloggers. Almost anything connected to the meeting's organisation seems to be closely connected to a marketing company named Vanksen which claims to do marketing in the blogosphere. He makes public his contempt towards this meeting, naming a number of so far never challenged points that lead him to the hardly surprising suspicion: Vanksen might hold some business interest in inviting bloggers. He might be instrumented.

He turns to the organisers and asks for explanations. Again and again. All he gets is a confused set of reactions in four different languages (sometimes even mixed in the same commentary): invitations to come to the meeting and ask his questions about the meeting there (i.e. to first buy the product so he can see what it does). He is getting laughed at (but from my judgement, those people who tried to ridicule him have so far arrived in the air), alleged of doing business himself (a claim construed either through obvious incapability to understand written English or worse) and I'll fall very short of saying he's getting insulted (and the disrespectful cordiality which has at least once been used to address Joel is not at all what I am referring to).

I will not say the Vanksen group is in anyway responsible for any of this. I will not even say everyone who posted in favour of the blogger meeting is in any way connected to the organisers. I don't know. And I will not propose conspiracies. But there remain questions. By and large the same questions which are up for (puh..) at least a week now.

Answers to Joel's questions? Not one.

Things are so blatantly obvious, let me recommend to ban any further commentaries from the pro-meeting side that do not serve to answer the aforementioned questions which have been raised long enough to deserve an answer. All they are trying to do now is cornering Joel on irrelevant points, wasting his time (because he somehow feels obliged to answer those points) and thus leading away from the true issues.

The suspicions are out, the questions have been raised. So with the answers still pending and everything else said, why not let everyone decide for themselves whether there will be an amicable, casual blogger meeting worth being attended.