I just came back from a meeting in San Francisco with France's minister Eric Besson (pictured), concluding his 3-days visit in Silicon Valley. One of the French minister's mission is to transform France into a "digital power". Minister Besson met with a number of entrepreneurs and VCs in the Valley (mostly French expatriates) like 3Com Chairman Eric Benhamou, Allegis Capital general partner Jean-Louis Gassee, Office 2.0 conference organiser Ismael Ghalimi, GrandCentral (now Google) co-founder Vincent Paquet or Sequoia Capital VC Pierre Lamond.

Although minister Besson did not talk about his "digital plan" finished late July and that he will present next month, he did stress France's strengths in network infrastructure (either high-speed landline Internet or wireless 3G) and "elite" engineering schools and discarded France's rigid labour laws and high taxes as myths and legends!



From SIlicon Valley, the French minister was impressed by the generations of entrepreneurs present and still very much active in the region, the energy of people here, the concentration of VC money (he mentioned $60 billion), the cross-pollination of universities and industries, as well as the weather that will be hard to replicate in France.

"If the Bordeaux-Biarritz region [in the sunny South-West of France... Thanks Regis for correcting it!] decided to invest in technology, that could be the next Silicon Valley!", said Eric Besson who will be back in 3 weeks for the exclusive Google Zeitgeist conference in Mountain View, CA.