Yes, there will be a new edition of LIFT! The whole team is back with more ideas and energy than ever.
LIFT07 will be held on Thursday 8 and Friday 9 of February 2007. We will have some workshops on Wednesday 7th, and will of course strongly recommend you spend your weekend on skis somewhere in the Alps. That’s if you already want to book your plane ticket ;-)
More news coming very soon.
L’Hebdo has named the LIFT team as being part of the one hundred that make Suisse Romande (the French speaking part of Switzerland).
We are very honored by this choice that rewards our work to create a meaningful event to discuss the impact of technology on our society.
(Steven Ritchey, John Staehli, myself and Nicolas Nova)
Thanks to l’Hebdo and see you all at LIFT07!
Let’s continue looking at your feedback on the conference:
Improvements (full list here)
MORE FOCUS:
“have a fil rouge… a more precise focus”, “Make it more focused. Topics were quite scattered”MORE DISCUSSION:
“workshops, master classes, more open discussions, panels, q+A”, “more opportunity for discussion and questions”, “Longer Q&A sessions, perhaps in separate rooms after the speeches or during breaks”, “much more debate time”OTHER REMARKS:
• “Have some sessions in French or German? [...] provide live translation?”
• “four days of conference”, five will do?
• “change hotel venue for speakers”, ok ok.
• “Ban laptops”, we did that but in the front rows only.
• “better introductions from the organisers”, I can assure you that with more experience (and less stress) we will do a much better job next year.Special mentions to ;-)
• “move LIFT to Barcelona”, you’re sure they have Chamonix there?
• “Uff” ??
• “Have other beverage than red bull and Kambouchka :)”, I think they are working on a vanilla-green tea drink for next year.
• “Less buddies of the organizers”, but we’re all buddies with Web 2.0, that’s unfair ;-)
Suggested topics (full list here)
SOCIAL SOMETHING:
“social software in business”, “innovation in social areas such as health”, “social changes promoted by technology”, “new social paradigms”, “social/anthropological and business perspective on emerging technologies”, “social issues”, “social networks”, “physical and social computing”, “human/social sciences”, “social bookmarking, Social Informatics, Digital Divide, Digital represssion, and pros and cons of free social software”DESIGN/ART:
“art”, “images”, “more design/art(arch, product, interaction, graphic)”, “architecture and pervasivity of media”ASIA:
“japanese culture”, “asian culture”, “speakers from Asia and Middle East”, “the point on new media with – for example – what happen in japan.”MEDIA:
“Vlogging, Social Media”, “Media Psychology”Special mentions to ;-)
• “I dont know what is interesting in a year from now – that is why I work in this field”. Good point.
“What ever is new…!”
General Comments (full list here)
GOOD JOB (&THX):
“good luck for the next one!”, “I had a great time, thanks!”, “thanks a bunch, and keep up the good work guys :)”, “Keep it up dudes, youll make it fly!”, “Great job guys!”,”When is Lift07 taking place?”,”LIFT06 was an excellent initiative and a big success, lets all keep it up in the future”, etc… Thanks, this part of the survey feels really good :-)Special mentions to ;-)
• “Please hold on, 2nd and 3rd editions are always difficult, but we can help”, I hope it won’t get harder than that…
• “For my link please put www.continentpremier.info instead of Le Soleil.”, send me an email next time ;-)
That’s it, I wanted to go through all your comments to get a feel for what should be improved, and what you liked. We’re working on next year’s edition and you helped us big time with this survey. Thanks for all the kind and encouraging words, as you know your positive reactions are our reward, a really great reward :-)
I just finished reading BenchPoint’s amazing report on the LIFT06 feedback (PDF here). So much information is available in these pages. I finally found a few hours – in the train, one of the last offline environments – to analyze the results with care. Here are my thoughts, and what I will keep from all these opinions expressed by all the guests:
Overall impression
Overall the conference seems to have gone well, with the key indicators being very positive. 93% of people wanting to come back is a huge victory for us, as 97% of respondents who say they would recommend LIFT to their friends. That doesn’t mean we have no room for improvement…
The main benefits of LIFT (full list here)
INSPIRATION:
“more creativity”, “hearing new ideas discussed”, “fresh ideas”, “opening to a new world”, “new horizons”, “eyes wide open”NETWORKING:
“meeting the swiss and non-swiss forward thinking people”WAKE UP CALL: “realization of how things are changing these days”
Special mentions to ;-)
• “meeting Robert Scoble”, got a link?
• “I felt like I was back in the Silicon Valley”, thanks, and without the bad food!
Greatest use of LIFT06 for daily work (full list here)
MOTIVATION:
“Permitting myself to think-out of the box again”, “Prompted me to move ahead with a major new project”PEOPLE:
“Being able to test and solicit good ideas from experts, on a reciprocal basis”, “putting faces to names, sharing the experience, opening dialogues”PERSPECTIVES:
“I am preparing to concentrate my professional activity on the web to a much greater extent than I do already”, “rethinking my way of working, exploring new venues”Special mentions to ;-)
• The ten persons who started a blog after the conference.
• “my personal attitude vis a vis the young generation”, next year we’re getting some mySpacers and Skybloggers!
• “i will try to blog more and try to be geekier”, tell me if I can contribute with a Linux T-shirt or something.
Key quality factors (full list here)
POSITIVES:
“Excellent internet site and video recording of the conferences”, “great food!”, “you guys are awesome”, “the meeting was a revolutionary one”, “I loved the fondue w/ the possibility to connect to others in an open and easy atmosphere”, “I think this is a great survey as it is very easy to use”
Wow, thanks!BAD AUDIO:
“The audio was bad, but you already know that!”IMPROVE NETWORKING:
“id have liked more time for informal networking”OTHER IMPROVEMENTS:
“Bad food”, “The names on badges really should be rethought”, “less formal meeting place”, “more details in the program”, “When will we received our invoices?”Special mentions to ;-)
• “These people have no culture! Just looking their computers and reading computers books. You need intellectuals, philosophers, ethnologists, anthropologists, sociologists now!” The intellectuals, philosophers, ethnologists, anthropologists, sociologists were not looking at their computers as they were presenting!
• “it would be great to see conference publish how much it cost to produce the event, payment of speakers, etc.”, the figures were public (in the Swiss media), so LIFT06 cost around 70’000CHF, and speakers were not paid, just came to gather with the community and share ideas.
Glenn O’Neil and our friends at Benchpoint just finished putting the survey results online on the site.
LIFT06 was assessed as a success by most attendees – 93% plan to attend the next edition.According to the attendees, LIFT06 was successful in providing information and influencing their attitudes about emerging technology.
One third of attendees saw the main benefit of attending LIFT06 as networking and are looking towards more facilitated networking at LIFT07.
The quality of the presentations varied for many attendees and a different selection process may be appropriate for LIFT07.
In terms of the conference format, attendees suggested more interactive sessions and workshops around the conference.
LIFT06 was successful in connecting people and provoking ongoing discussions amongst attendees and beyond the conference.
Check it out here!. As you guess we are really proud of these results and would like to thank you all for your kind answers. We now have even more great ideas for the next edition (dates to be announced soon) and a clearer understanding of what went good or could to be improved. It will be hard to beat these 93% but we will give it all our energy :-)
I still have all LIFT06 presentations in audio on those tapes, if somebody has a solution to create mp3 files out of this that would be great.
It seems most of those who used a credit card to pay for their LIFT06 entrance fee are getting their monthly expenses report these days. If you see an amount corresponding to the price you had to pay but with a senseless label it is probably LIFT. It seems klikandpay messed up, and instead of Congress_and_Seminar you are getting something like N!LIGHT SUISSE LUX.
To make sure the debited amount is coming from us compare your statement with the confirmation email you got after your payment (I have copies so contact me if you lost it). If the date and amount are corresponding it’s probably LIFT.
Sorry about that!
Advertisement: need online payment (and want to have to send embarrassing messages to your clients)? Try klikandpay.com
We are in the process of publishing speakers’ slides. Some of the presentations are already available in powerpoint or PDF, and more are one the way. Available today:
• David Galipeau
• Marc Laperrouza
• Régine Debatty
• Matteo Penzo
• Pierre Carde
• Matt Jones
• Pierre Dillenbourg
• Michel Jaccard
If you spoke at LIFT and haven’t yet sent your slides please do so as we get a lot of requests.
Aram Armstrong scanned his LIFT06 notes, a fascinating mix of draws, quotes, and notes. Amazing stuff, we are already thinking of proposing him to draw live for LIFT07.
I just created a page to gather (and centralize) suggestions and ideas for LIFT07. Feel free to put your feedback in there.