Ignite LeWeb will be back at Leweb this year, at 5:25pm on Thursday, December 8th on the plenary stage.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, speakers have 5 minutes to express an idea in 20 slides, and each slide is automatically advanced after 15 seconds.

According to Jared Goralnick, who will be hosting Ignite LeWeb Ignite for the 2nd time this year, Ignite LeWeb "is part-education, part-entertainment, and ALL performance."

Why should attendees watch?

Jared: With each talk a mere 5 minutes, there's no better way to learn so much about such a wide array of compelling topics in one hour...while also being entertained. And it just so happens that these speakers and talks are some of the best of of the best, from Europe and the world over.

From understanding business in China to the history of music piracy, from the nuances of app stores to the future of distributed workforces... there's something for everyone. From professors to models to musicians, there won't be room for boredom.

Without further ado, then, this year's Ignite LeWeb speakers, in alphabetical order:

Anina Trepte (USA/FR/China): Chinese Tech & Doing Business in China

Description: There is a new surge of technology companies in China founded by western brands and by Chinese nationals.  The West says that China tech is just a copy without innovation, and the East scoff at those startups run by westerners. What is the tech scene like in China? Who are the players? What are the startup programs to enter? Is there any innovation in China? How to live and do business in a country where there are so many hidden rules? What is Guanxi? I would like to tell my version of the Chinese tech scene and help guide some other entrepreneurs through the mystery. I will show screenshots of technology that I think is innovative; photos of important people, and explain some fundamental rules of the game according to my experience. I will tell where I think it’s all going.

Bio: Anina is an international model with a passion for technology, a Nokia Champion, and founder of the 360Fashion Network based in Beijing, China. Anina has spoken at the world's top technology conferences such as Le Web, Lift, DLD, along with addressing fashion industry about innovation in mobile, social media in China. 360Fashion's mobile phone application is preinstalled on all Nokia N9 handsets in China, connecting fashion brands to Chinese social media conversation around them. Her game, Anina Dress Up, has over 20k registered active users and is on iPhone, with a Chinese social media version set to launch in 2012. Anina would like to use her name and visibility to encourage women worldwide to participate in technology to build new services to serve a woman's multitasking lifestyle.

{Anina's Company, LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Dave Troy (USA): Knowing Why (Connaître Porquoi)

Description: The ideas that change the world have a deep underlying "why" attached to them. The success of everything from cities, to cars, to Facebook and Badoo can be seen through the lens of "why," and can tell us something fundamental about our humanity in the process. Many startup entrepreneurs begin with thinking about what might make money, or market demand, or how a new technology might disrupt a market; but if they're not able to address the "why," and get at people's innate curiosity and basic drives, they're much less likely to succeed. We'll celebrate some famous "whys" in history, and offer a few ideas about how we can ground ourselves in the "why" in our own pursuits. And we'll also talk about storytelling, and how it's the best way to "hack the universe" in combination with a great "why."

Bio: Dave is spending 2011 living on the Namibian coast looking for artifacts of ancient alien civilizations. In his spare time, he's the CEO of 410Labs, based in Baltimore, Maryland, where he develops Shortmail.com (a new breed of email service that's an "unholy marriage" of Twitter and Email) as well as Replyz.com. He's also deeply involved in the startup community in Baltimore, investing in startups and advising other entrepreneurs. He also produces the annual TEDxMidAtlantic conference; the 2011 event featured TCP/IP inventor Vint Cerf and the cast of HBO's The Wire. 

{Dave's Company, LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Emmanuel Carraud (UK): How to Solve the App Store Discovery Problem

Description: There are too many mobile apps ! With over 500,000 apps on the App Store: -It is harder for users to find quality apps with relevant and local content in a global market with global offers. -It is harder for local developers and non for profit apps to be discovered in a market controled by big players who can reach Top 25 ranking with marketing investments and get million downloads. We will travel virtually and explore App Stores accross the World (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, China, ...) to find what are the innovative solutions developed locally and globally by developers and publishers to increase their visibility and get discovered. Dozens of mobile apps from independent developers across the globe will be used as examples of innovative approach to get discovered on the App Stores and reach visibility locally and globally.

Bio: Emmanuel Carraud is CEO of MagicSolver-the apps discovery specialists for mobile applications. App Stores expert, he helps 6 million users discovering apps every day in 90 countries and help developers and publisher getting visibility for their apps on the App Store. He has over 15 years of experience in marketing for Danone, Nielsen and Auchan and start-ups across Europe and Silicon Valley. Fluent in French, Spanish and English, globe trotter, he has a Masters degree from Sciences Po Paris, and an MBA from Judge Business School, Cambridge University. Emmanuel like to share is passion for entrepreneurship and mobile phone apps.

{Emmanuel's Company, LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Greg Pouy (France): Is the Web Turning Us Into Monsters?

Description: Recent studies show that teenagers are more likely to insult each other online than adults, and a majority of them have seen insults among peers online. Google-bombing is a common practice. Have you ever noticed that most of your friends are online, but you can’t rememeber the last time you talked with those rare few that don’t use Facebook are every day? Social media has created a sort of inequality among “connected” and “disconnected” groups. We have a natural tendency to want to be a part of something, and therefore exclude others to value the group and reinforce our belonging. So, is the web making us out to be monsters?

Bio: Gregory first began his marketing experience working with both B2C and B2B companies. In 2005 he opened a marketing blog to express his point of view and passion for the web. The following year, he was made General Manager of Buzzparadise (Vanksen Group) and soon after, the head of strategy and communication for the Vanksen Group. For two years Gregory has been the head of social media efforts at Nurun, a digital agency leading communication. He is a speaker for several years for Strategies Magazine and Benchmark Group, he also writes for the Journal du Net, a famous French magazine on the web.

{Greg's LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Martin Böhringer: Copycat Music: What Does it Mean to be an Original?

Description: There is quite some discussion about copycats, original ideas and innovation especially here in Europe’s tech scene ([1], [2], [3]). The discussion is about whether we can only do clones in Europe or if, someday, we will learn to innovate. I’d like to change the perspective on that topic and discuss originals and copies in a fun way; I will talk about pop songs and how they copied from each other. This leads to some unexpected surprises. And I will not only *talk* about it as I’m going to bring my Keytar (mix of guitar and keyboard, see my picture) to demonstrate my “findings” :) Should be a great fun and a fresh perspective to one of the most discussed topics of the community these days.

Bio: I am the CEO of Hojoki, a yet-to-launch tech startup backed by one of Germany’s most awesome web entrepreneurs. Before founding Hojoki in 2011, I did three years research for my PhD in information systems. I did research in enterprise 2.0 systems and gave 20+ talks on conferences and barcamps in places like New York, London, Helsinki and Hawaii. I received a number of awards, including Germany’s Young Researcher Award for Knowledge Management and formerly worked for companies such as IBM and Siemens. Next to the piano, I have a passion for delivering strong but simple insights in simple presentations. This is why I’ve always had my students hold Pecha Kucha presentations when I worked in the university. This is pretty much the same style you use for LeWeb (automatically switching slides). So I am prepared!!

{Martin on Twitter}

Raul Krauthausen: A Social Course

Description: Wheelmap.org - an online map for wheelchair accessible places - gives an example for a social course and how open data and crowd sourced solutions help people with disabilites to improve their social life. The internet is a place where a lot of impaired people don't feel handicapped. By developing assistive technologies and bringing them onto mobile devices, we enable people to participate more. The presentation will give an insight of used technologies and how a small and almost unknown project has become the worlds biggest open database regarding this topic during one year. As even Google told the story of wheelmap.org in a German TV spot (Google chrome ad), we want to share the project's philosophy. At Le Web we might find partners who attend us on this social course, to improve wheelmap.org or even to develop suitable solutions for other kinds of disabilities.

Bio: Growing up in Berlin, I was early on dedicated in my life to create change. I enrolled at the Berlin University of Arts, studied design thinking, created a campaign for the Right Livelihood Award, trained as a radio host with a call-in show for people in emotional distress, confronting myself with poverty, abuse and loneliness in the dark niches of the welfare state. Reacting to these social issues with a spirit of inclusiveness, participation and entrepreneurship, I co-founded the SOZIALHELDEN platform, a multi-award-winning group of extraordinary changemakers, of which I am one of the creative masterminds. We have a track record of creating successful, sustainable and well marketed social innovations. While continuing to contribute to the SOZIALHELDEN, I am now fully concentrating on growing the wheelmap.org community.

{Raul's Organization, LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Sara Rosso: The Future Way of Working: the Distributed Company

Description: Talent knows no time zone nor geographic location. The future workforce is mobile, distributed, and exactly where they are happiest whether that's at home, traveling around the world, or working from a poolside cabana. A distributed company offers the ultimate work-life balance and allows companies to hire talent wherever they are. Having a distributed company is more appealing than ever for both employers and workers. I'll cover some best practices for distributed companies and workers when it comes to communication, transparency, and staying productive, and how those interested can ready themselves to work for a distributed company. Automattic is a distributed company, with 100 employees in 22 countries and 70 cities. I've presented several Ignites in Italy, as well as spoken at several conferences like BlogHer and WordCamp San Francisco.

Bio: Sara Rosso is an American business & digital strategist, writer, and photographer living in Milan, Italy. She's worked in technology since 1996 and currently works in VIP Services for Automattic (WordPress.com & more). Her sites and photos have been mentioned in numerous magazines and newspapers and she currently writes about technology, health, food & travel on her various sites.

{Sara's Company, LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Simon Lindgren: From Flâneur to SmartMob: Collectively Experiencing Paris

Description: Today, social-mobile-local smartmobs of interconnected "flâneurs" map out and collectively experience cities in ways that are both very similar and very different to what was going already 200 years ago. In the 1800s, philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote a cultural sociology of modernity by walking and experiencing the 19th century Arcades of Paris. His main point was that the forms of mediated reproduction that were emerging in the era of modern industrialism had an impact on the ways in which people organise their perception of the world around them. The typical social character was that of the flâneur. My ignite talk will be of a philosophical character and juxtapose collected empirical data from Foursquare and Gowalla checkins at the same places where Benjamin walked, and cross-read them with the 200 year old work.

Bio: Simon Lindgren is a professor of sociology at Umeå University, Sweden. He researches patterns of social organization, participation and conflict through discourse studies of digital culture. As the use of digital media becomes more and more interactive, user-driven and co-operative, relations of power that were previously well-established are increasingly undermined. Prior ideas about who is supposed and expected to produce things, services, worldviews and ideologies - and who is to consume them - are questioned. Simon analyzes issues concerning power, resistance, production and collaboration, through these digital media. More information and a full publication list can be found at www.simonlindgren.com.

{Simon's Company, LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Trevor Dougherty: We're Not All as Smart as You Think We Are

Description: As a teenager who has been successful with new media and online broadcasting, I have a unique perspective to offer on the relationship that young people have with today’s “SOLOMO” technologies. I finished high-school in Swaziland, where we barely had access to the Internet, and now I’m a student at the University of North Carolina where everyone is connected and required to have a laptop. Despite what people in Silicon Valley might think, young people are barely any better than their older counterparts at navigating modern communications technologies. In my talk I will encourage tech entrepreneurs to keep their products simple to engage young people.

Bio: Trevor has been an online activist since 2007. He is one of CNN’s top citizen journalists, as about 100 of his “iReports” have been broadcasted as part of the network’s global news coverage. He is also a YouTube Partner, and the youngest person ever to have moderated the YouTube homepage as a “guest editor.” A particularly empowered member of the Millennial Generation, Trevor has discovered the power of the Internet in creating social change through “viral” outreach. His videos have been viewed over 3 million times by people in at least 100 countries. In 2008 he organized the world’s largest human peace sign in Upstate New York, bringing 6,000 people together largely through targeted Facebook advertising and a low-budget online video clip. He finished high school in Swaziland, at the United World College of Southern Africa, in late 2010. He then joined the Global Changemakers network and represented young people worldwide as the youngest American ever invited to participate in the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, Switzerland. It was there that prominent French entrepreneur Loic Le Meur hired him to work at Seesmic in San Francisco. Trevor is now attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill as a Morehead-Cain Scholar.

{Trevor's YouTube, LinkedIn, & Twitter}

Yuval Ariav: Playing (with) the Market - Fun Facts about the Android Market

Description: Applying statistical tools and text processing techniques to Android Market reviews leads to many conclusions. Some useful, some funny, all of them interesting and entertaining. • What makes a really great app, according to Android Market reviews? • What’s the top reason for apps to be uninstalled from devices? • Why do such similar games like Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio have totally different review patterns and why is that a lesson for developers? • Why are there review bots on the Android Market and how can you detect them? • Can we go troll hunting on the Market? • Can we visualize users’ emotions across the market? (time permitting)

Bio: A technoholic by day and an infomaniac by night, I'm a hardcore tech-zealot, a social-dynamics enthusiast, and somewhat of a language freak. Also, I'm the chief architect at Onavo, one of the awesomest startups around. One of my passions is data: the acquisition and processing of big data, visualization of knowledge, and other means by which data evolves into information.

{Yuval's LinkedIn, & Twitter}

This year's Ignite LeWeb

This year we received over 50 applications for Ignite talks at LeWeb, compared to 35 received last year. As it got close to the end of the application process, Jared Goralnick, said that "we had way more qualified speakers than we could accept." Jared has run 8 Ignite DCs (each with 16 attendees and about 400 speakers), and incorporated the Ignite format into other events he has organized, like Inbox Love or Bootstrap Maryland.

Jared's advice for all speakers : REHEARSE!

The pace may seem fast, but it's really just about planning and practice. If you can embrace its constraint, then people will better connect with your topic and better understand your points. And as for the slides, keep them very simple: at most 5 or 6 words...but words are not even necessary.

Be visual! The format is designed to engage the audience and prevent a lecture...which isn't so easy for some people.

Ignite LeWeb is right before the Official Party with Deezer, so get inspired and then go party!