I’ve never been in the same room with so many Internet stars and CEOs.  Even a Queen and French Minister were there!

Yep, I’ve been entranced by LeWeb09 for the past two days.  This is Europe’s #1 Internet conference hosted by the Le Meur couple.

There are MANY pearls to share, but it’s late so I’ll start with my favorite: pearltrees.

If Twitter is the Web’s nervous system, pearltrees is its memory.

Remember that.  (haha)

This little video will explain more, but then I’d like to share some thoughts about pearltrees and see what you think.

Thought #1:  Enfin!  FINALLY a way to stock and share those excellent tweets before they get purged off the Twitter servers!  (Just activate the nifty Twitter connection for this bit of the magic.)

Thought #2:  Ok, this is for PEOPLE to organize their own WWW, but the possibilities for COMPANIES using social media and wanting to track certain topics and projects are great!

Thought #3:  I’ll bet CAD and 3D folks would enjoy and get value out of organizing 3D models and scenes as pearltrees.

Three thoughts are largely sufficient after two days at a conference.

Wait, one more!

Thought #4:  The visuals remind me of some of the visual search engines that Oleg has blogged about, and also those diagrams I used to draw for teen students when I needed to explain tricky subjects.

So, about Thought #4, I asked one of the pearltrees guys where they got the idea for the pearltrees visual organization.  I wanted to know if it’s on purpose that it looks like visual search engine ‘artwork’ or if the function dictated the design, or maybe there was some deep-layered poetic answer.

The answer I got was part function, part poetry.  (pearltrees, please step in here if I’m off; I didn’t take notes.)

But first, here’s a photo of some of us from Dassault Systèmes and pearltrees.

By organizing the WWW around who you are and your interests, you’re in a way writing your own story.  And all stories, even if they take some crazy turns, have a beginning, middle and an end.  Linear.  Lines.  Connecting the first part to the second part, etc.  You can organize your pearls into, let’s say, chapters of a book.

The organization is also like a map.  A map where many different routes are possible.  And the way you set out your pearls shows all the different “travel adventures” you undertake.

Which reminded me of Chris Pirillo’s brilliant keynote.  Chris said that:

Community isn’t in your fingers or a device, it’s in your heart and soul.

And in the end, pearltrees maps your soul’s travels, and helps you to meet kindred souls.

Now how’s that for heavy.

‘Would love to know what you think!

Kate

P.S. Seems pearltrees has a blog. 😉