chilling in cannes

i'm a nerd. i've been in my hotel writing for most of the afternoon/ evening instead of attending an interactive TV awards gala in cannes. but i had a headache, a load of emails to return, and i wanted to write my businessweek column while london was still fresh in my head. speaking of- thanks to mike at techcrunch UK for the shout out! anyone i missed in the foggy city, don't worry i'll be back!! anyone coming to *my* foggy city in late-april, i'll likely see you at an event or two.

speaking of the country i'm now in: i was looking through some european funding stats for my businessweek column and it seems france had a banner 2007-- with more than $1 billion in investments from U.S. VCs. that definitely conflicts a lot of the stuff i heard this week about the relative lack of startup excitement in paris and berlin-- even compared to eastern europe (which i believe mike has written about as well).

my guess is a couple big one-off deals. either that, or french deals are being done mostly by outside investors, while European deals are increasingly being done by local firms (accel and others count as local, i believe, since they are separate funds from US counterparts) leaving U.S. firms less to cherry pick. anyone in Europe have more thoughts on what's up here?