E-G8 Forum

The E-G8 Forum (or simply the eG8) was an invitation-only summit of leaders in government and industry focusing on the Internet in the context of global public policy. The event was put on by Publicis Groupe and was convened by French President Nicolas Sarkozy from May 24-25th 2011, prior to the 37th G8 summit, and was held at the Tuileries Garden in Paris.

The idea for the event came up on a blog post by Tariq Krim in which the founder of Netvibes complained that France doesn't have its own CTO. The blog post was reposted by Arnaud Dassier and Loïc Le Meur, and read by the Elysée's technical counsellor Nicolas Princen, who then convinced Nicolas Sarkozy to take a step towards the French digital natives after the failure of Hadopi.

The conference, which was the first of its kind, was a meeting of international government figures and those in the global technology industry. It included participants such as Eric Schmidt from Google, Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, Jimmy Wales from the , French Minister of the Economy Christine Lagarde, Rupert Murdoch from News Corp, and was opened with a speech by Sarkozy. A few invitees, such as author Cory Doctorow, refused to attend in protest before it even began, and claimed the event was, more or less, a PR stunt financed by the advertising industry and Sarkozy's connections to Publicis Group.

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