Category: News

I was up again this year at the Salon des Micro-entreprises, held at the beginning of the month at the Palais des Congrès in Paris. This time I went for the Journée Nationale des Femmes Entrepreneures, which proved to be very interesting. It seems that, although as many women as men in France want to create their own business, only 28% of new businesses are started by women. Why is this? Do women still face discrimination and are they more hesitant than men to take this step? According to a recent study conducted by France Active and the IFOP, this is due to a lack of information on various forms of aid available for entrepreneurs and also due to the sense of isolation and lack of support from co-workers that can overwhelm them. Hence this day aimed specifically at female entrepreneurs.

I managed to catch the talk ’10 Tips to Increase your Visibility on Social Networks’, given by Catherine Headley, a Digital Strategy Consultant, which was concise and informative. I also went to some speed business meetings and ended the day at the presentation of the Bouygues Telecom Female Digital Entrepreneur Award.

Désolé, cet article est seulement disponible en English.

Last week I managed to get up to Paris to the Salon des Entrepreneurs. They had quite a good conference and workshop programme and I went to some of the presentations on social networking, facebook and prospecting. The social networking talk focused mainly on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, mentioning also Viadeo and Foursquare, but Pinterest didn’t have more than a passing mention. Viadeo seems to be very popular in France, perhaps not surprising as it was founded in Paris. The prospecting talk by Booster Academy was very informative. It seems that the French are quite reticent when it comes to selling and marketing. I found it quite interesting to hear the French view of prospecting and I was amused to hear quite a lot of English words creeping in, such as ‘closing’, ‘nurturing’ and a ‘to do’ list.