(French below)

A little more than a week to go. Let's look at what you are interested in.

OK, innovation comes out way ahead...
Then design, social media (aggregating social network, networks, networking and media), collaboration and ART!
Open the larger picture a take a look.

Larger picture / image plus grande

Un peu plus d'une semaine d'attente fébrile. A quoi vous intéressez-vous?

Evidemment, l'innovation est loin devant...
Ensuite le design, le social media (aggrégation de social network, networks, networking, media), la collaboration et l'ART!
Ouvrez l'image plus grande et jetez un coup d'oeil.

The official Lift France 09 tag is - drum roll - #liftfrance09 !
Twitter users unite!! Fill the tweetosphere with one #liftfrance09 after another.

There are 6 different combinations of "lift", "france" and "09".
We created a sub-committee, did extensive market research, four different online polls...
Difficult questions arose, such as "should "france" be in English or in French.
There was tight competition between the finalists, but a decision had to be made!
Some people will be disappointed, but democracy rules...
The winner is #liftfrance09.

At the Lift conference in Geneva last February, Nicolas came out way ahead in the First Name Race.
3 weeks before Lift Marseille, Pierre is creeping up and Philippe is new in the top 3!

[français plus bas]

There are some incredibly interesting people waiting to be met at Lift.
But, how can you find them?

Describe your interests by adding tags to your profile.
By clicking on a tag, you will see the list of other participants with that same interest.

You must be logged on to access your profile. If you can’t find the tags, here’s short cut. Scroll down and insert tags, one per line. The more common the wording, the better chance that other participants will have chosen the same.

Past Lift participants interest cloud
Click for larger

Le nuage des intérêts des participants des Lift précédents

Comment rencontrer toutes ces personnes passionnantes qui seront présentes à Lift?

Décrivez vos intérêts en ajoutant des tags à votre profil.
En cliquant sur un tag, vous verrez la liste des autres participants qui partagent votre intérêt.

Vous devez être loggé pour accéder à votre profil. Si vous ne trouvez pas les tags, voici un raccourci. Scrollez et insérez des tags, un par ligne.

Attention, utilisez des expressions courantes en anglais. Vous aurez bien plus de chance de trouver d'autres participants qui ont utilisé la même expression. Le nuage vous montre les tags utilisés par les participants des Lift précédents.

We were 18 Wednesday to brainstorm on how to keep the Lift community alive and vibrant between conferences.

Here are a few of the networks Lifters are part of:
Lift, facebook, LinkedIn, Xing, SutidVZ, Twitter, Barcamp, Flickr, Dopplr, Rhizkom, Amazon, YouTube, 12seconds, JPGMag, Delicious, whitehouse.gov, Mixin, Internations, Rezonance, Nettime, Kiva, Net Impact, ASW, TED, Coach surfing, Lift Entrepreneur Group, Imaginary Serial Entrepreneur Club, Aha, Geocaching, coworking, professional associations, research communities, IFIP, family, Geneva Genealogy, teacher-parent associations, university alumni associations, sport associations...

What draws people to participate in a community? Value.
Content, shared needs, shared interests, selling, pitching, projects, meeting, match making. Belonging.

So, no silver bullet, but here's the idea:

Each member can sign up for a number of tags/interests and set alert levels (daily, monthly). Anyone can post an idea, a project, a question on the Lift blog, identified by tags. All members who signed-up for one of those tags will be alerted based on their preferences. They will then go on the Lift sit knowing there is something of interest and can take part in the conversation.

In parallel, Lifters can/will organize themed Baby Lift meet ups in their home towns. Getting people to talk and share. Geneva is an easy one, but it is up to the locals to get things going. These events will be announced and tagged so that Lifters can be alerted.

In addition, we need to improve the web site. notably through a search engine. Members need to be able find each other and information in a easier way.

What do you think? Any other ideas? Contact me!
We will keep you posted on what happens.

How can we make Lac Leman into an Entrepreneurial Hub?
11 people signed up, 50 showed up!

What can we do, each of us? Local entrepreneurs unite!

Ideas
24x7 Entrepreneur café
Monthly Baby Lift Meet up
Angelsoft.net - free connection to 11'000 angel networks
500 family offices between Geneva & Lausanne : money!
Odd year Venture event in Swiss romand : come on McKinsey!
Non-tech venture fund

Our notes

A web resource will appear to gather local entrepreneur club information: come back here.

A few candid shots of our great volunteers working to get the conference ready on Tuesday.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/liftlab/sets/72157614375987141/

A little more than half of the participants know their gender or have spent the time to update their profile.
Of those, the picture looks like this [more data!]

Another crazy statistic: half of the first names of the Lift participants are unique: there is only one Zoltán!
But there are 13 Nicolas and 8 Marcs. Only 5 Johns!

Only a little over half of the participants filled in their country ;-(
But here is the break down of those who did.