Last Thursday night at around 10:00PM, as I was writing up an article, Dreamhost, our webhosting provider, decided that they didn’t want to display The Rude Baguette any more, and instead Error 500 mocked all who tried. If ever there is a way to affirm your readers’ interest in your site, having your site down for four days is definitely the worst way. The emails, tweets, texts, and facebook messages poured in with “hey… it’s still down,” and one of the first people to notice was CleverCloud CEO Quentin Adam. Not only did he point it out, but he offered to host us for free. Working on a weekend to transfer, debug, and, in fact, get running better than ever, CleverCloud has taken up the reigns of sysadmin of The Rude Baguette – now more than ever, our site is maintained and promoted by the community.

A great excuse to announce new stuffz!

So a lot has changed sinced we first launched on Halloween last year. Our writers have grown, shrunk, and then grown again, and our team now consists of some pretty amazing people, each with different expertise, and I thought they deserve an introduction.
Every Tuesday, just after lunch, for the past five months, Truffle Capital’s Mark Bivens has given us a a weekly dose of what goes on in the mind of a VC in France. From breakdowns of the Facebook IPO and how it would’ve played out in France to his thoughts on the dot-com debate, Mark’s got you covered (his RSS feed here).
At the intersection of rude, crude and brutal, Wessel Kooyman has been using the same criteria he uses to mentor startups at the Dojoboost Accelerator Program to give us a solid breakdown of the potential of different startups (his RSS feed here).
A veteran serial entrepreneur who’s putting startup after startup under his belt, the half-german half-French Nicolas Metzke has been serving up his thoughts for the past few months. Most notably, after a trip to the NEXT conference in Berlin, Nicolas wrote the most-read article we’ve had here on RB, Paris v. Berlin: the facts you can’t ignore. In future, he’ll be using his experience in the fashion sector to give us some more visibility into the Fashion sector. (his feed here).
A consulting strategist with an eye for innovation, Trista Bridges has been serving up her thoughts on the gaming sector in France, as well as the cloud computing sector, for quite some time. (her RSS feed here)
We’ve also got some great writers who will be joining us in the next couple weeks. Ensimag student Louis Dorard will be covering the booming R&D sector in France along side Regis Behmo, who has been writing with us for a few months. Head of Geeklist France Audrey Stewart will be joining us to take on Social Media, Social Networks, and the world of Incubators/Accelerators.
Want to get in contact with any of our writers? Lucky for you, I’ve posted all their email addresses on our team page without asking them. Go nuts! We’re also actively recruiting writers in cities all over France, so don’t hesitate to send me an email personally: liam@rudebaguette.com.

…. One more thing.

We’ve got a lot of great things coming up down the road, and I don’t want to spoil all the fun, but I wanted to take just a minute to thank the community that has supported us so far. We will continue to work to bring you real news, real startups, real analysis & a real opinion on what’s going on in France’s startup ecosystem.