After yesterday's newsletter, the last super early bird tickets are selling very quickly. As I speak there are 3 remaining (out of 50) so if you want to attend Lift for only 650chf (that's a bit less than 550$) go to amiando.com/lift09 now!

A number of Lifters asked in the past if it would be possible to attend the events reserved to the team and speakers. Aside from the numerous social moments where the whole community gets together (the fondue, party, lunches, etc...), we have some more intimate gatherings allowing us (the team) to sit down with the speakers, get to know them, brief them about the conference, gets their impressions, etc...

We decided to open these events a little bit by creating a super ticket (we don't like VIP or premium so super is the chosen word). This ticket - priced at 1'500chf - will allow twenty persons to join the speakers diner, pre-conference visit, and post-conference brunch.

Interested? It's all happening online on amiando.com/lift09.

For Lift Asia we created a very affordable ticket at 250$ for students, NGOs, and start-ups. Our idea is to keep a high level of diversity in the event, and to allow those who can't necessarily pay more to have access to all the people and ideas of Lift.

One question is coming up quite often from: what do we consider a start-up? So here is the rule for Lift Asia: a start-up is a company that has been in business for less than 3 years and employs less than 20 persons.

If you qualify for this price then grab one of the 52 remaining tickets, they won't be here for long!

^{Funny poster seen in Geneva in 2007}

I arrived in Geneva about an hour ago and proceeded to withdraw way too much money from the ATM by mistake (darn exchange rates).

Hotel Capitole initial reactions: Friendly staff. Room smells of old cigarettes (or mold; I hope it's old cigarettes), and (surprise, surprise) the WiFi doesn't work! (Will hotels figure out how to provide Internet connectivity properly in our lifetimes?)

Oh yeah, and it's a good thing I checked about the time difference (I live in the UK) because there's an hour difference. Even though my iPhone is set to automatically change timezones it didn't pick it up.

And did I mention I picked up a lovely little Asus Eee PC at the duty free in Gatwick. I can't wait to charge this baby up and play with it a bit more. Ah, and I've added yet another charger to my rapidly growing collection (it's a good thing I've gotten into the habit of carrying along a multi-socket extension cable whenever I travel; that way you only need one adapter at the end).

So I'm at the hotel and I have no idea where the conference is -- or whether Thomas Vander Wal's ticket has transferred to my name correctly (apparently it has but I don't see my name listed in the attendee list.) No big deal, I'm sure we'll get it sorted tomorrow.

Which reminds me, I gotta stop writing this and get back to finding out where I need to go and what's happening tomorrow (I decided to come down on a whim yesterday afternoon!)

Oh and I've got oodles of emails to reply to about Singularity. What is Singularity? Why, it's the world's first large-scale online web conference :) We just announced it yesterday and I've been getting some amazing feedback on it ever since.

Looking forward to meeting some of you, seeing more of Geneva, and experiencing the conference tomorrow :)