We are happy to announce that two new women joined our team:

Solveig Sautier, a freelance Event- and Project manager, will support us as Partner Relations manager. Before joining the Lift Team Solveig worked as coordinator for events such as the Pacte Multimedia produced by the Télévision Suisse Romande or the Festival Nord-Sud.

Eléonore de Lusignan, a recent graduate from the Rhode Island School of Design, will support our Team as Event management Intern, helping us to make Lift a great experience for you!

Welcome to the Team Solveig and Eléonore :)

We are proud to announce that Bruno Bonnell is joining our advisory board. Bruno is a legendary French entrepreneur who created Infogrammes and became CEO of Atari before starting a new venture around the world of robots called Robopolis. He is also one of the funniest person on this planet (ask him to tell you the story of his visit to Neverland ;) and is joining Lift to provide us with ideas and contacts to further develop the conference.
Take also the chance to see Bruno's great speech From Robota to Homo Robotus he held at Lift Asia 08

^{Photo by Robert Scoble}

LIFT is recruiting! As the events grow we need more and more talented individuals to join our
team. For Lift 09 we are looking for a motivated and reliable intern who wants to gain insights and valuable work experience in all aspects of the event management of one of the most innovative international conferences.

For more details please download the job description. Contact us if you are interested, and please forward this opening to your friends!

We are adding some job offers as we need to extend the LIFT team to mirror the growth of the event. Currently two part time openings are available and we have a few more coming your way. We are looking for a partners care-taker (the right title didn't exist in the recruiting vocabulary so we made that up and hope you like it ;) and for an editor/information architect.

We are looking for help to translate some documents we have to English and German. If you:
• are a French/English translator
or/and
• are a French or English to German translator
• have a few hours (2-3) available a week
• can translate some press releases and a few emails
• would welcome a free ticket for LIFT08

Then email us at info@liftconference.com.

Our prestigious advisory board is welcoming four more members for the 2008 editions of the conference. The new faces are:

Pierre Chappaz
Founder and CEO of Kelkoo (1999-2004), the leading european shopping engine, Pierre is the former president of Yahoo Europe (2004). Currently Chairman of Wikio (Personalized info page) and investor in Netvibes (Ajax start page), he is also Chairman of the board of Photoways, inc. a pioneer and leader in the European online photograph printing market.

Daniel Kaplan
Daniel Kaplan is the founder and CEO of the Next-Generation Internet Foundation (FING), a collective and open nexus of ideas and projects on tomorrow's Internet's uses, applications and services. He is also chairman of the European Institute for e-Learning (EifEL). As a member of the European Commission's e-Europe's Experts Chamber, as well as of the French Prime Minister's Strategic Advisory Board on Information Technologies (CSTI), Daniel Kaplan is deeply involved in the Internet's development and evolution. Mr. Kaplan has written or directed 15 books and public reports on the internet, mobility, e-commerce, e-education and electronic media.

Jaewoong Lee
Jaewoong is the founder and CEO of Daum Communication, one of Asia's largest Internet platform with over 40 million users. He is one of the most renowned Asian entrepreneurs, having created one of South Korea’s largest Internet companies. Jaewoong owns Lycos Inc in the US, and is our partner in the LIFT Asia venture.

Guido Van Nispen
Guido is a dutch entrepreneur, investor, investment manager and consultant. He is a board member of Cross Media Week, Europe’s largest creative conference in Amsterdam.

These guys are joining William Cockayne, Bernard Rappaz, Julian Bleecker, Xavier Comtesse, Beth Krasna, Bruno Giussani and Jeffrey Huang to help us build a great event. Welcome :)

If you read the previous post carefully, you probably noticed that our friend John Staehli is not in this year's casting as he decided to focus on personal projects and take some time off the stress, fun and discoveries of LIFT. We wish him all the best and John should of course be hanging around the LIFT corridors in 2008, or around the fondue at the bains des paquis.

John has had more time to blog lately, and you should check his writings on his website: blog.alceste.ch (I will let him explain the "why Alceste" part ;).

John, merci d'avoir été l'un des trois premiers à croire en LIFT, et merci pour tous ces précieux coups de main et conseils tout au long de l'aventure. The door is always open :)

The LIFT team is growing this year, with 6 new faces joining the project. Here is a roundup of your hosts for LIFT08 on February 6, 7 and 8, 2008.

Project lead:
Laurent Haug
Here to serve all team members and guests, making everybody has an as smooth ride as possible.

Experience:
Bread and butter
Cristiana & Laurent Bolli - aka the B&Bs - are back for another year, and will ensure you have an unforgettable experience at LIFT and LIFT+ once again in 2008.

Coordination & finance:
Sylvie Reinhard
Sylvie joined the team last year, managing the authors' room and the Open Stage with Noel. She will now take over the project coordination, ensuring that communication flows inside our geographically challenged team.

Media:
Ellen Wallace (and GenevaLunch)
Raluca Dan

These ladies will make sure journalists get better information from us before, during and after the event. Ellen is the founder and editor in chief of Geneva Lunch, and Raluca works as a program manager at HP.

Community:
Marc-Olivier Peyer
Victoria Visser

Marco and Victoria will focus on helping the LIFT community live and grow during and after events through blogging and animation of the different tools we will soon release.

Program:
Nicolas Nova
Steven Ritchey
Bruno Giussani (advisor)
Laurent Haug & the team and board

Helped by the rest of the team and by your suggestions, we will focus on finding the relevant topics and speakers for the conference.

Website:
Roberto Ortelli
Nicholas Wolff
Nicolas Dengler
Steven Ritchey
Bread and butter

Roberto - now working full time within LIFT lab - will continue developing the website. He will be joined by Nicholas Wolff (backend, programming), Nicolas Dengler (specification), Steven Ritchey (information architecture) and Bread and butter (design).

Sponsoring:
Jean-Daniel Sciboz

JD (call him jay-dee ;) will take the lead on the sponsoring side, working on finding partners and sponsors for the conference.

That's it. What an impressive list :) Our board is also growing this year and I will detail that in a separate post. Welcome to all the newcomers, and see you all at LIFT08!