Bearing in mind the current financial tumoil (I have more money than Iceland - though that doesn't say very much) may be a LIFT09 session on suriving the downturn would be interesting. There's going to be a shake-out in conferences too, with the "biggies" in danger of imploding rather like Comdex did a while ago. I'd be happy if CES went away. LIFT, on the other hand, continually proves that Laurent and the team understand what the "market" wants - not too big so it loses intimacy, not to small so as to be able to make a difference.

I'd be happy to share some experiences of running an African Media lab project in Benin - as community FM tries to migrate to community media. Its the new form of public media. It has some funding challenges in some countries, but the thinking behind it is good. There's a lot we can learn from African entrepreneurs.

Datestamp on the preview says I wrote this on Jan 1st 1970. What a bright lad I was. Although I confess it is October 10 2008 when I bash this out.

I embedded some of the talks from the TSR site, but the links have broken twice now. The Google video embeds seem to start automatically on my blog as soon as the page loads. Trying to figure out what I am doing wrong.

I have really enjoyed the TSR videos of LIFT-08. Superbly recorded (great sound as well as pix) and this all allows the great ideas from LIFT to live on long after the cheeze in the Fondue has gone cold. But I can't find the first open stage videos of Stephanie Booth: Going Solo: being a freelancer in a connected world and also Ewan McIntosh who did a great presentation on: How social media creates open education. Any chance of recovering these from the hard-disk?

Lift this year was simply superb, a great mix of people and a true festival of great ideas. The challenge now is to keep the spirit alive for the rest of the year. I plan to do my part. Well done to the team - and also congrats to that fantastic dancer who did some superb performances on Thursday. She added an extra sparkle to our conversations.

over on www.criticaldistance.blogspot.com