In partnership with our friends of the TSR, we organize an informal debate about the digital traceability and the risks of a "transparent society". Registration is free but you need to register by emailing julie.bauer@tsr.ch. May 19th, 6:30-8pm @ Télévision Suisse Romande, 20, quai Ernest-Ansermet, Geneva, full event in French

De nos achats quotidiens à notre comportement sur le Web, les traces que nous laissons sont de plus en plus nombreuses. Et les caméras qui nous observent sont presque omniprésentes, qu'il s'agisse de vidéosurveillance ou de particuliers équipés de téléphones portables.
Ces informations sont exploitées par d'autres: employeurs potentiels, équipes marketing ou même forces de police. Sommes-nous en train d'aller vers une société totalement transparente? La vie privée va-t-elle disparaître? Comment gérer cette situation nouvelle où nos moindres mouvements sont surveillés?

Le débat est animé par Bernard Rappaz, rédacteur en chef de TSR Multimédia.

Intervenants:

Sami Coll (Département de sociologie de l'Université de Genève). Il aborde dans son étude les risques de surveillance induits par les cartes de fidélité de type Cumulus. Le chercheur s'intéresse à de thématiques telles que la protection de la sphère privée et la protection des données.

Stéphane Koch (intelligentzia.net). Consultant dans le domaines de l'intelligence économique, la veille stratégique et la confidentialité de l'information. Il intervient dans des cas liés à la gestion de la réputation, la protection du "patrimoine informationnel" de l'entreprise et de sa marque sur Internet, ainsi que sur d'autres problématiques liées à la cybercriminalité.

A very warm welcome to the four new members of the LIFT conference advisory board:

Bruce Sterling
SF writer, journalist, essayist and commentator, Bruce is is an American science fiction author, best known for his novels and his seminal work, which helped define the cyberpunk genre. A tech journalist, Sterling also launched another movement: the Viridian Greens, which focuses on how industrial design could be used to respond to global climate change.

Adam Greenfield
Soon to be Nokia's Head of Design Direction, Adam is an internationally-recognized writer, user experience consultant and critical futurist, having worked for clients ranging from global concerns like Toyota, Capgemini, and Sony to local nonprofits. He is also the notorious author of "Everyware", the the first book on ubiquitous computing suitable for general audiences.

Jasmina Tesanovic
Jasmina is a feminist, political activist (Women in Black, Code Pink), translator, publisher and filmmaker. She is the author of Diary of a Political Idiot, a war diary written during the 1999 Kosovo War and widely distributed on the Internet.

François Grey
François is in charge of outreach and public relations for CERN's IT Department. A regular contributor to the Economist, François was in charge of organizing the CERN Computing Colloquium, a series of conference that welcomed the likes of Mark Shuttleworth or Richard Stallman to the CERN, the birthplace of the web.

Every year in April we know if we did a good job or not, if you guys liked the event or not. We anxiously await Glenn O'Neil's post-conference survey he has been doing for LIFT for the past three years (see LIFT06 and LIFT07 surveys).

As usual the community massively answered our call for feedback (thanks to the 272 attendees who took the time to answer), and as usual you were kind enough to give us a good grade, with 89% of attendees having a good or excellent overall appreciation (and nobody called LIFT08 very poor which I'm quite proud of). FULL REPORT HERE (pdf).

The report indicates we achieved some of our main goals (networking, learning and exchanging) with room for improvement on a few things like the venue. Some formats will be improved, like discussions (we really need a more quiet place, you will have that in Asia and next year) and Open Stage (I hope more LIFTers will get involved when voting time comes).

Read the full report here (and be sure to check page 5 to see the evolution over the three editions), and I will soon post my thoughts and the things that will change as a consequence of all the feedback. Thanks to all, and congrats to the team who deserves a big praise after such a plebiscite :)

The LIFT08 Asia program is coming along and we're happy announce the main topics we will talk about on September 4-5-6:

Beyond the Web we know what's exciting on the web from the near future, what comes after web2.0?

Online for better society: how web technologies will help shaping a more inclusive society and take advantage of the world's diversity.

Towards a Networked City: the new digital layers provided by ICTs on contemporary cities are now a reality, what does that mean for its inhabitants? What changes can we expect? How will ubiquitous computing influence the way we live?

From robots to networked objects: current robots are going beyond the traditional anthropomorphism and start to communicate. What will we see? What's hot in that domain that we will soon see all around us?

The near future of social worlds: social platforms on the Web and Massive Multi-Player games are now merging in a new category of digital entertainment platforms with new business models and screens such as mobile phones. What does that mean for users? What does the usage of such platform tell us about new forms of sociality?

Techno-nomadic life: the wireless and mobile technologies have freed us from the tyranny of "place", but what are the new constraints? What are the new behavior? Is the mobile web going through the same process as the Web of the 90s?

Does money go virtual? Recent changes in the digitalisation of money are less perceptible than more glamorous technologies, but they are of considerable importance. New banking solutions and money circulation practices are around.

Sustainable development/green technologies (in partnership with WattWatt).

After a lot of travel which resulted in slow blogging I have some important news regarding LIFT Asia. We have a location, a theme, a format, and partners!

^{Picture from a recent trip to Jeju University}

• JEJU
it will be Jeju. We decided to hold the conference on the island because it is really the most beautiful place there is (you will like the view on the pacific from the rest area, breath taking). It is one hour from Seoul - so we will ask you to travel a bit more - but it is worth it.

• BEYOND BORING BROWSERS
We want to have a main theme for the event, and we want to ask a simple question: what happens beyond the browser? Where will the next revolutions come from? Robots? Mobile? Ubiquitous computing? Virtual worlds? We will explore many of these fields with diverse points of views from all over the world, with a focus on Asian speakers of course. Robert Scoble, Jan Chipchase and Dan Dubno have already saved the dates and will be with us.

• FORMAT
We pushed the date one day (4-6 instead of 3-5 of Sept.) because we want to use less week-days and facilitate the life of those who will have to take some time off to attend. We will have seven sessions, an open afternoon (dedicated to workshops, discussions, demos, etc...), two evenings and time for cultural activities as there are tons of things to see on the island.

• PARTNERS
We already have five partners! The Jeju University, Jeju Knowledge Industry Promotion Agency, Daum of course, and the geneva based WattWatt and Alptic who will travel to the other side of the world with us to make the conference happen.

A new event just got on our radar and it seems worth the trip to Barcelona. Welcome iFest (formerly Renacer), run by our friends of Infonomia, and that will feature speakers like Hiroshi Tasaka or Alex Steffen.

For some reason I missed Guy Vardi's talk when putting all 30+ videos online. Sorry Guy, here is your talk now available in streaming, download, 3gp and podcast.

In partnership with our friends of the TSR, we organize an informal debate about the evolution of the video game industry. Registration is free but you need to register by emailing julie.bauer@tsr.ch. April 14th, 2008, 6-8pm @ Télévision Suisse Romande, 20, quai Ernest-Ansermet, Geneva, full event in French

Bien que le jeu vidéo en tant qu'industrie de loisir de masse ait une histoire relativement récente, il apparait aujourd'hui que ce média atteigne une nouvelle maturité tant par de nouvells formes ludiques que des nouvelles pratiques de création. De nouvelles formes ludiques telles que le "serious games" sont là pour en attester. Les "serious games" désignant l'emploi de mécaniques ludiques issues du jeu vidéo pour favoriser l'apprentissage de divers contenus. D'autre part, la création des jeux en elle même implique la maitrise de ce moyen pour porter du sens, des émotions, des messages afin de toucher tous les publics.

Intervenants:
Le débat sera animé par Bernard Rappaz, rédacteur en chef de TSR Multimédia. Ses invités:

Jean-Noël Portugal: Consultant Associé du cabinet Intuneo spécialisé dans les industries de la création numérique : jeu vidéo, animation, cinéma numérique, Internet, télévision, téléphonie et médias interactifs. Il est également président d’HD3D SAS, filiale de studios d’effets spéciaux et laboratoires cinématographiques d’Ile de France

Emmanuel Guardiola: Game Designer depuis 10 ans, Emmanuel Guardiola est directeur de la conception pour la gamme Game4Everyone à Ubisoft. Auteur de Ecrire pour le jeu (Dixit, 2000), il enseigne le Game Design à l’Ecole Nationale des Jeux et Media Interactifs Numériques (l’ENJMIN).

The TSR got 100'000 views in 3 weeks on the LIFT08 content, but as our videos are hosted on numerous platforms (Nouvo, Google, Vpod, YouTube) it is not the only place where our speakers get a lot of online exposure. We are about to pass 100'000 views on Google Video:

For each person visiting the conference we get 150+ views on the online videos, which confirms there is strong interest in the ideas expressed at LIFT all over the world!

Every year we go through hundreds of adventures when organizing a large scale event like LIFT. Here are a few stories you've never heard about LIFT08:

• Everybody thinks that all LIFTers come with laptops, and the prospect of hosting the conference generates a few sleepless nights for the IT manager of our conference center. Some pictures might easily let one think that there is a one to one relationship between attendees and laptops. But I got the real number, and we only has 240 laptops at the event this year! That's right, a mere 35%... that generated 28'000 connections. It seems some folks tried to finish their downloads, and the mandatory wifi blackout happened. Next year we should have all p2p traffic blocked and I hope that for the first time ever we will have reliable wifi service :)

• The caterer had an extremely hard time serving everybody - and came up with unfortunately deserved mixed reviews - because we had a last minute problem. The person in charge of the kitchens at the conference center resigned four days before LIFT. He had promised we could use the kitchens to cook, but his successor had other plans and didn't allow us in. Our caterer had to cook the meat at a remote location, driving it just in time for lunch. Add that to the fact the bakery didn't find the delivery entrance on Thursday and you have a recipe for disaster.

• We delivered 6 visa letters to participants coming from eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. Half of these were accepted, with unfortunately three attendees were unable to attend for administrative reasons.

• For the second year in a row we received a proposition of someone who wanted to pay to speak. For the second year that was an easy decision for us - a loud no! - but we had a sign that being on stage at LIFT creates more and more value for the speakers. At some point we will be forced to think about channeling all this, just like the creation of the venture night allowed us to give all entrepreneurs a tribune to express themselves, which resulted in less pitches and less "aggressive" networking during the conference.

• Last year we had 100 tshirts remaining, among them 80 S-sized women tees. This year all that remains is 150 M-sized women tshirts. Not sure what conclusion we can draw on the population from this, but if are coaching a women soccer team just let us know we are happy to sponsor your jerseys ;)

• We had a small problem with a (fake?) journalist who had forgotten his press card and said he was working for a magazine called "nectars and flavours". More than the absence of a press card, we had a hard time finding any relation between LIFT and hid magazine ;)

• As we had around 80 people showing up unregistered on Thursday (most of them from our partners, some journalists, a few late registrants) we suddenly had 700 people attending the conference, which means we had a potential overbooking at the fondue as the venue could accommodate 600 persons. I quickly called Fabien - who was in charge of the evening's logistics - and he found a way to create 50 more seats. Fortunately - or unfortunately ? - "only" 550 persons showed up, and we had some spare tables which gave the impression the fondue was less crowded than it was.