I’m getting ready to spend three days at the biggest web conference in Europe, LeWeb 2011, to be part of a liveblogging team for Orange.fr. I owe this opportunity to a stroke of good fortune, for which I’m truly grateful. It’s not everyday you get to mingle with the movers and shakers of SoLoMo (that’s social, local and mobile, THE hot topics of the moment), though I think you have to take the word ‘mingle’ with a grain of salt as there will be about 3000 people there.

I came to the web from content. For years, I was a copywriter, writing all sorts of things for print: articles, speeches, brochures, reports – that was my lot. Then, in the late 1990’s, companies decided they needed all this stuff on the web. So I came to the web from the world of content, and I discovered a whole new world.

As a content person, I regularly rail about the lack of consideration ‘web folks’ give to content. It drives me nuts to hear people talk about how they need an app, or a mobile site, or a new game – when they haven’t given a moment’s thought—no, that’s not fair—they haven’t given enough thought to the content they will need to make those sites and applications come alive.

But to be fair, content is nothing if it isn’t delivered, if it falls on deaf ears. And if it can be delivered in ways that cut through the noise, all the better. So I’m going to spend three days listening, learning, about all these new delivery mechanisms and channels that will take our content and take it to new places. I hope to learn as much as I can, and transmit as much as possible to people who are like me: the internet has changed our lives, we want to take advantage of it, we’re wary of a lot of things, and pretty ignorant of many others. I’ll be writing my posts with you in mind !

I’m also looking at it from the perspective of a digital immigrant mother of two teenaged digital natives: what will I learn that will make my life easier? There’s a start-up competition, where eminent judges will evaluate 10 or so ideas that may or may not become the next Foursquare.

I checked out the start-ups, and there’s one in particular I’ll follow. This is a start-up that seeks to alert Parisian drivers of new parking spaces that have just become available. I can see the potential in this, but I have a question: can this app also be use to find your car when you can’t remember where you parked it? Hey folks, I can guarantee that if your app can do this, you will become rich. Think of all of us digital immigrants, middle-aged and losing our memories. I, for one, will even invest!

Voila…I’ve gotta get to bed, the day starts early tomorrow. Look for the Orange Team’s coverage on the Live Orange blog.