Sylvie Reinhard's blog

Frog is excited to join the technorati at this year's Lift conference, an annual event that explores the cultural implications of digital technology.

As a contribution to the event, we've created frogHub. What is it? You'll have to wait and see, but the idea is to bridge the physical and digital world to create an interactive experience for all conference participants. In creating frogHub, we were inspired by the science fiction futures of author Cory Doctorow (as we have done in past events and projects) specifically those found in his book Down And Out In the Magic Kingdom, in which Doctorow imagined a future of social networking that would visually display a conceptual social metric based on what others think of you. For this, the author coined the term “whuffie," which refers to the measurement of respect or karma a person gains or loses in their lives. In Doctorow’s future, humans have implants in their brains that visually project their whuffie, which has replaced money as currency.

Would you like to be part of our passionate team in making Lift09 a unique experience? We are looking for outgoing, friendly, 100% reliable, hard working, English-speaking people supporting us as volunteers.
Read more about the volunteer positions available and how to apply here . We are looking forward to hear from you :)

Welcome to the new LIFT website! To fully enjoy the new website empty your cache or ctrl-refresh.
We took your feedback seriously and created a new website that is easier to navigate and supports multi events (LIFT Asia in September, LIFT09 in February). We also structured the blog in announcements and stories to make it easier for you to keep track of the latest announcements concerning upcoming events.

More content, new features as well as a fresh design will follow in the next weeks, so stay tuned :)

From April 2-4 more than 800 bloggers, netizens, and media creators will gather in Berlin for the 2nd edition of the Re:publica conference. The 2008-theme will be "the critical mass". In over 100 talks, panels and workshops the conference will address the social and cultural impact of blogs, wikis, and social networks and discuss social media that rely on the interaction between people. The conference will be held mostly in German. If you are in Berlin these you can register here.

Please print your e-tickets and bring them along. We will scan them at the registration desk, this will allow us to proceed registration as fast as possible. Thank you!

Why we invited Francesco to LIFT
Francesco is in charge of the development of design strategy at Nokia. He has a really exciting job. His work combines analysis: of evolutions in the way people communicate, enjoy and work, of innovations in design, technology and business models; and intuition to draw inspiring, new directions for design. This viewpoint is very valuable and relevant to LIFT08.

What will Francesco talk about
Francesco has written about the adoption and use of digital technologies, communication, automation and user-centered design. In this context he will present important future trends to us.

See Francesco's LIFT Profile to learn more about her enlightening work.

Why we invited Heewon to LIFT
She is Korean, doing anthropological research on how Asians use certain technologies (social software, virtual worlds). Her knowledge of these local markets is invaluable to us. It helps us understand what is happening there. Asia is to many of us a mysterious place where we do not really know how to apprehend things because of language/cultural barriers.

What is Heewon going to talk about?
As a speaker in the glimpse of Asia track, Heewon Kim will address trends and in particular with respect to how teenagers use social software in Korea.

Official biography
Heewon Kim is a researcher at the Center for Youth and Cultural Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, specializing in social software and online environments. Before working at Yonsei, she worked as a researcher for several companies such as Daum Communications and NCSOFT.
See Heewon's LIFT Profile to learn more about her enlightening work.

Why we invited Rafi to LIFT
Rafi's career is very bright and original (coming form the Minitel entrepreneurship world), we were interested in his perspective about current development in technologies, especially about ubiquitous computing. He has indeed an original stance in the way he proposed to develop his company; somewhat like "we don't know what ubiquitous computing is so let's try something and see how people do out of it", leaving some space in his Nabaztag product to customization or hacking.

What will Rafi speak about
Rafi will talk about his latest start up venture, his approach towards entrepreneurship and what led to the creation of the Nabaztag. This cute little communicating animal is permanently connected to the Internet. It sends and receives a myriad of messages, indicates your mood to the outside world with its ears or lights in its belly, tells jokes, has performed in operas in France and the US (NY) and that is not all it can do. For more information check out Rafi's interview with Benjamin Gauthey on YouTube about Nabaztag or Rafi's LIFT Profile.

Would you like to be part of our passionate team in making LIFT a unique experience? We are looking for outgoing, friendly, 100% reliable, english-speaking people supporting us as volunteers.
We offer a free ticket to LIFT08, an enlightning work experience and inspiring contacts for 2.5 days of work. Plus you get the possiblity to see 2 hours of presentations per day of your choice. If you are interested and would be available throughout February 6th to 8th, please contact sylvie at liftconference.com. Look forward to hear from you:)

Why we invited Genevieve to LIFT
Genevieve Bell is Ethnographer, Senior Engineer and Director of User Experiences at Intel. We are interested in the fact that Genevieve's profile and her work are very original for a technological company such as Intel.

What will Genevieve talk about
Genevieve will present us with her understanding of user experience of technology and product shaping insights into consumers world-wide. She will tell us from her experience in bringing a research driven, end-user focus to Intel.

Official biography
Genevieve Bell grew up in Australia, moving between the working class suburbs of Melbourne and Canberra and the Aboriginal communities of Central and Northern Australia. She has a PhD in anthropology and works as Director of User Experience within Intel’s Digital Home Group. There she manages an inter-disciplinary team of social scientists, interaction designers and human factors engineers.
Learn more about Genevieve's groundbreaking work on her LIFT profile .