After a cool 3H 15 trip from Paris Gare du Nord to new St Pancras station, a quick cab took me in less than 10 minutes to the hotel (less than the waiting for a cab at the station)
Arriving at the Cumberland reception I got worried when they told me I was staying in a "nice room in the business executive building" off one block...
Did not sound too engaging, or even convenient

Turns out the rooms ARE nice in fact (vast, modern design, spacious...)

On my way to a quick snack (after some email checking of course) I got lucky and met Waco Hoover, the organizer of the summit: perfect timing.

We are a partner of the Festival Summit and I needed to hand the leaflets that will go in the participants bags tomorrow.

Let me show you the leaflet:

MEDIA SPONSOR OF THE FESTIVAL SUMMIT

Bruno Chatelin is a member of The Advisory Board

10 GOOD REASONS TO CREATE YOUR FESTIVAL BLOG ON FEST21.COM

Best things in life are free... so is our blog platform for the fest community of the 21 st century.

The blog is absolutely free like any myspace, youtube video blog...!
But your visitors will not have to be logged in to enjoy the visit.

The strongest videoblog platform for search engine visibility (google...)

Try for yourself: Search in google typing cinequest 18 wraps or cinequest 18 for instance : you will see that our platform is the best of all, giving fest21 content N°1 positioning ahead of variety, indiewire, any myspace youtube... (and cinequest website) there are several reasons for this but this is a long story (Google friendly technology). You should take more advantage of that promotion.

Free promotion on our websites When publishing on fest21.com you give us the opportunity to offer you more publicity on filmfestivals.com:  we paste some of the members' contributions from the blog on our portal, and also mention them in the weekly newsletter (60 000 recipients).

You can post videos, audio, text, pix... with no limit whatsoever.
Myspace and youtube... impose a 100M sizelimit on video files, we set no limits and accept any video format.

Latest technology:  your blog is compatible with mobile delivery.
You can also use the embed codes to paste on your website.
We can include the RSS from another blog of yours for a minor technical cost.

Appear on the Homepage of fest21.com. The blogs that are regularly updated, and that get most audience votes are featured on the homepage of fest21.com

Fest Pro Only: your blog is hosted in a festivals-and-films-only environment, why settle for less with other platforms that are not dedicated to the festival circuit.

We provide the relevant environment for the search engine who will recognize the quality of the pages (rich in key  words, like film, festival...)

The festival blog link will be included on the festival directory, an improved visibility for your festival when filmmakers search our database on filmfestivals.com, looking for the right festival for their film.

You can use our platform to host the trailers or the festival film trailers if you need (you can also copy embed code on your site: you do not need to have video servers)

We are open to any innovative ideas, like online competitions with public votes on our platform, best of fest presentation... Just ask

We look forward to welcoming you to our community

Bruno Chatelin
bruno@m21editions.com

PS: SEE YOU IN CANNES:

- We are an official partner of Cannes Festival - Short Film Corner
- Our offices are located in the Palais des Festivals, Media Zone 5.10

- YOU ARE WELCOME TO OUR PANEL ON THE FUTURE OF CINEMA May 21 (10-12 am) Palais des Festivals - Jean Louis Bory Auditorium    

I also checked out the convention floor, ready for us, waiting for its delegates . 

Shot with my cell phone Nokia N95