Hello Sifted reader,

For the past week, our inboxes have been awash with one-line emails.

“Are you going to be at [VivaTech/London Tech Week/insert other event here]?”

Our question back to you, readers, is: which one of the 500k tech events will you be at this week? With events kicking off in Paris, London, Amsterdam and Stockholm, everyone is doing diary gymnastics to cram it all in.

The contrast between festivities in London and Paris seems particularly relevant. The speakers at the many scattered events that make up London Tech Week are a familiar cast of government folk, investors and founders. VivaTech, meanwhile, is headlined by none other than Elon Musk and Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff.

It comes as London is facing a reckoning from its own biggest cheerleaders over its spot as the undisputed leader of European tech, as our reporter Kai Nicol-Schwarz explores today. Amid a global slowdown in tech, the UK has fared worse than many other ecosystems, with funding falling more than the US, Asia and VivaTech hosts France.

But then again maybe the biggest movers and shakers coming to participate in events this week aren’t going to be rubbing shoulders with the hoi polloi in London. They’ll be at the invite-only-and-don’t-they-like-you-to-know-it Founders Forum, usefully situated in a place only taxis and Teslas and helicopters can reach (which coincidentally, makes it very hard to leave).

The parties will be fun — who doesn’t love sipping champers surrounded by birdsong at golden hour — but what does it say about European tech that the best networking is always to be had by the people who’ve already "made it" and already know each other?

From the Sifted newsroom today:

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