Sadly, it's hard to completely disagree with Paul Carr's critique of Le Web in The Guardian. (Which is a shame, as it's written in such a spiteful tone of voice that I really wish I could say it was all lies.)

During the tedium of the 4pm start-ups presentation, I kept seeing the article flash up on people's laptops around me, and it's being repeatedly discussed on the Twitter backchannel. Bad news travels fast and all that.

For my part... I've been disappointed in the quality of the panels here, and generally have come away with fewer insights than I would have expected. The events on the main stage haven't been fantastic, and could have done with being a bit tighter (surely Loic could employ someone to do proper preparation and production?), and even the products on show in the exhibition have been a bit lackluster.

Plus the food wasn't great (and there wasn't much of it) and the wifi didn't work and the venue, though very pretty, is in a pretty tedious bit of Paris.

Having said all that, there are interesting people here, and I've made some contacts that will be very useful in the next six months. But if you paid the full admission, 1,500 Euro is a lot of money for that alone.

Other observations:

• The quality of the startup presentations that I caught was really, really poor. Is it all just down to the language barrier? I'd rather see people pitch in their native language, with a translator, if they can't make the case properly in English.

• Never mind technology, there are really interesting things happening with content in Europe. Why wasn't there a single presentation across the two days from any European media organisation? The company I work for could contribute a dozen examples, and I'd love to have heard of similar work being done across the rest of the continent.

• On a similar note... there were two dominant themes to the discussion. 1 - Isn't the recession awful? 2 - Why aren't we as good as Silicon Valley? There's more to discuss than that, surely. If Le Web is to inspire web people all over Europe, get the best examples of European content and technology up there on stage.

• Michael Arrington is the most passive-aggressive interviewer I've ever seen. There must be a better way.

• The Twitter backchannel is really really addictive.

Must go, some photographer just took a picture of me sitting pathetically in the corner tapping away on laptop.