“I’ll only see it once in my life,” confides the stars in her eyes Nancya, a volunteer at Vivatech. This Friday is a day to mark with a white stone for the show specializing in new technologies. A guest of honor slipped into the program: entrepreneur and billionaire Elon Musk, boss of Tesla, Space X, Neuralink and co-founder of Open AI, creator of the chatbot ChatGPT.
In the aisles of the salon, his name resounds like a master. It’s a real star for technology fans. At the start of the afternoon, spectators crowded in front of the Dôme de Paris, located at the Porte de Versailles. An hour before his intervention, the queue is already several tens of meters. Everyone knows that not everyone will be able to attend the conference. What accentuate the tensions in the ranks. Around 3:15 p.m. it’s the kick-off: the gates open to welcome the first lucky ones. The organization is slipping and people are getting impatient, under a blazing sun.
Not enough to discourage admirers of the boss of Twitter so far. “He’s the most influential man in the world,” says a man who hurries to find a seat. You have to go quickly, because the places are expensive. “First come, first served,” warned VivaTech. Among the spectators, hundreds of young people were invited by some sixty schools. “Elon Musk is one of the people who succeeded and we want to draw inspiration from his experience,” explains Ismat, a 19-year-old engineering student from Compiègne.
In the room, it is overwhelmingly hot. Tired faces regain color when Maurice Lévy, chairman of the supervisory board of Publicis, announces the entry on stage of Elon Musk, about twenty minutes late. He is welcomed as a real star, to the applause and cheers of the spectators. Laptop in hand, everyone is eager to capture this moment through the camera of their smartphone.
From the outset, the boss plays jokes, sketches a dance step, releases a few words in French, to the applause of the spectators. The questions follow one another on space, the planet Mars, artificial intelligence or even Twitter, punctuated by a few cries of heart launched by certain people: “Elon!”, “Yes!”. After 45 minutes of exchanges, without particular announcements, it is the turn of the spectators to question the fifty-something. The chaos is immediate: dozens of people stand up and scream to try to get the attention of Maurice Lévy, who distributes the questions. Only a lucky few have the opportunity to interview Elon Musk face-to-face. A young woman even takes the opportunity to highlight her artificial intelligence start-up and approaches the stage to give her business card to the entrepreneur, who gets up to collect it. “She has so much guts,” admires a woman who hastens to applaud her.
When Maurice Lévy announces the end of the conference, those who have not yet asked a question rush to the stage in the hope of getting a look, a smile or a photo from their idol. But Elon Musk slips away quickly, after greeting the room. Outside, the spectators draw the first conclusions from this event, which disappointed more than one. “We expected announcements, such as the launch of a research center,” regrets Jérémie, who works at BpiFrance. Others are more optimistic. For his colleague Kenji, it was normal to attend the lecture of Elon Musk, whose vision of life he admires: “He is civilization-oriented and adapts good rules for the safety of Humanity.”
“I find it incredible to have met him, not everyone is so lucky,” exclaims Soraya, a 21-year-old student. “He had a fairly powerful speech, it’s very beautiful for young people,” she adds. For Kimberly, 21, “it allowed us to project ourselves”. Accompanied by her two friends, the young woman feels both “very privileged” and “very small” in the face of the aura of Elon Musk. Cécile, 24, regrets for her part “the passive-aggressive questions of the interlocutors”: “We know that there is debate on many subjects, it is not worth accentuating the controversies”, judges -t- She. For these student entrepreneurs, Elon Musk’s ambition will allow them “to have some themselves”. “It’s really crazy, I want to go home, work until three in the morning and wake up at six,” said Kimberly. A real guru therefore, whose escapades we would almost forget.
