If you’re in tech, Silicon Valley may be the place you pay attention to for 363 or so days of the year, but for the other two, Paris is the place to be right now.

Today Le Web 3 ’07 Fourth Edition kicks off, the brainchild event from Loic Le Meur, where nearly 1,800 people from around the world will meet and greet and generally have a terrific time immersed in some of the most innovative and compelling thinking and ideas about Web 2.0 technologies.

I wish I could have been there but, sadly, not this time. I will follow much of the conversations via Twitter, the leweb3 Technorati tag and the general hubbub of commentary and opinion that will no doubt be taking place among bloggers present and elsewhere.

Nostalgic thoughts bubble up when I think of how this event has developed from its small beginnings, starting in April 2005 that I went to when it was known as Les Blogs, and then to Les Blogs 2.0 in December 2005.

Small and intimate beginnings evolved from then into last year’s controversial Le Web 3 and now into this year’s mega-event, surely the most influential of its type in Europe if not anywhere outside the US.

Looking forward to hearing and learning about all the thinking that will happen in Paris this week!