A flashback to Lift France 09, and Douglas Repetto's talk about creative innovation and tinkering.

Douglas Repetto "Changing Innovation" (Lift09 France EN)

Yves Cretegny is joining Lift as CEO starting on February 1st. This is major news as Yves brings the experience and qualifications required to take us to the next level.

Since late 2007 and our first Asian conference, it became clear that Lift was turning into more than the side project it was in the beginning. From a conference with 350 participants in 2006, Lift has developed into three large annual events in Europe and Asia, a decentralized events program called Lift@home, an international and very active community of 5500+ members, etc etc.

^{The timeline of Lift conferences and projects, from 2006 to 2009.}

In the process, Lift became a little group as our legal structure adapted to our different projects. Lift developed into Lift Association, Lift Conférence, Lift Asia and the newly launched Lift lab. We hired several people in Korea, built a team with the Fing in France, took some office space, hired a couple of interns, a part time webmaster and even bought a plant for our office ;)

As the team and structure grew, so did the accompanying challenges in terms of organization, professionalization, finance, cash flow planning, human resources, and legal structure. Each early team member was suddenly confronted with growing responsibilities outside of their original focus, and something had to be done to stabilize and anchor Lift for the future.

^{Yves at Lift09 during the Ozwe QB1 casting. Photo by dgbp.ch}

A couple of months ago, we started discussing with Yves Cretegny - then CFO of Geneva's largest convention center - about our CEO position. It quickly became clear that Yves could bring a very important and complementary perspective to our mission. He has a rare mix of competence and experience: a former manager at Andersen Business Consulting (where I was also working as a consultant), Yves has helped all kinds of organizations grow, organize, focus, and adapt to new challenges and economic conditions. In 2000, he became the CFO and head of innovation at Palexpo, where he worked on the organization of several conventions, among them the 750'000 visitors strong Geneva Motor Show. Since 2008, Yves has been attending Lift. He knows where we are heading, and recognizes the potential our project has. Yves is also the friend of several friends, an important element in a human-centric structure like Lift. We met, discussed, tried to put ourselves in situation to see if things would work out. And on February 1st, Yves will become our new CEO :)

His mission will be to take Lift to the next level, growing our community while retaining our values and original purpose of inspiring and connecting pioneers to turn innovation into opportunities. He will oversee the transition from a team organizing a conference in Geneva to a team supporting several local organizers, working with a community of thinkers and doers from around the world. Yves will work to make Lift a stable and sustainable project, with regular funding streams and a strong community of partners. He will develop value-adding partnerships that respect our original belief that it is essential to separate the editorial from the marketing messages. Last but not least, Yves will also work with us at Lift lab - the company that originally launched Lift conference as a a spin off - and invest his consulting experience to further develop the offers and client base.

With Yves stepping up into his new role, Sylvie Reinhard will continue her work as COO to oversee our operations in Europe and Asia with the help of Sarah Suter. Nicolas Nova will focus on the editorial management of the conference, working on identifying the people and trends that really matter. On my side, I will now focus on the areas that interest me most: the format and strategy of the events, the development and animation of our community, public and partner relations. With less operational responsibilities, I hope to have more time to implement a larger part of my ideas and visions for Lift.

This is a very big step for us. We are very excited by the prospect of welcoming someone like Yves, to transition to a more professional and sustainable structure. The fact that someone with his experience and background left his job to join us is a very positive sign: the proof we are doing something positive, challenging and with a lot of potential. Another step in our short history, another occasion to thank all those of you who have helped make this project come true with your support, presence, advice, questions, comments, suggestions, and more! Thank you:)

Former Lift speakers Matt Jones and Fabien Girardin will be back in Switzerland in 10 days to speak at the Conférence TechnoArk 2010 Nicolas Nova and I prepared for the TheArk Foundation.

The topic for the day will be "The New Digital Spaces", and we will welcome 13 speakers from Switzerland, UK and France for a day of presentations and workshops. The keynotes will be in French (except Matt's talk in English), given by:

Matt Jones
Design director à BERG London
Matt Jones travaille dans le domaine de la conception de produits et services numérique depuis 1995. Il a été le directeur créatif du site BBC News puis a rejoint Nokia entre 2003 et 2007 d’abord au département prospective puis comme directeur de l’expérience utilisateur des téléphones de la série N. En 2007, il a fondé la start-up de partage d’informations de voyage et de géolocalisation Dopplr, qui a été racheté par Nokia à l’automne 2009. Il a rejoint ensuite le studio de design BERG à Londres qui conçoit des interfaces originales et des objets communicants. De part sa formation originelle en architecture, il s’intéresse depuis longtemps aux problématiques des nouveaux espaces numériques, où comment la ville est transformée par les services mobiles et géolocalisés.

Bruno Marzloff
Sociologue et directeur du cabinet Chronos
Bruno Marzloff est sociologue et anime depuis dix ans le Groupe Chronos, laboratoire des mobilités innovantes, qui rassemble une quinzaine de grands comptes autour des enjeux des mobilités urbaines et des organisations du temps de la ville. Il est également copilote du programme Ville 2.0 avec la Fing et membre du comité scientifique de l’OTEN (Observatoire des Territoires Numériques). Il est l’auteur de plusieurs ouvrages. Le dernier porte sur “Le 5e écran” (FYP Editions).

Fabien Girardin
Ingénieur, chercheur et co-fondateur de Lift lab
Fabien Girardin mène des études sur la co-évolution des technologies mobiles avec les pratiques humaines dans le contexte urbain. Il a obtenu un doctorat en informatique et communications numérique à l’Université Pompeu Fabra à Barcelone, Espagne. Dans son parcours académique, il fut affilié au Senseable City Lab du Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) pour mener le développement de méthodes d’analyses de données spatio-temporelles générées par la présence d’infrastructures logicielles.

Ulrich Fischer
Responsable du projet Walking The Edit
Dès les années 90, alors étudiant en sociologie et ethnographie à Bâle, Ulrich Fischer démarre sa relation avec le monde des images à travers la photographie argentique. Il collabore pendant plus de 10 ans au sein du collectif du Cinéma Spoutnik. En 2000, il obtient le 1er prix de l’Ecole Supérieure d’Art Visuel de Genève. Entre 2000 et 2002, il participe au jury de la sélection de la compétition internationale du festival Viper, à Bâle, dont il devient le coordinateur en 2002. Depuis le début des années 2000, il donne des stages et workshops liés à la technique, suit les travaux de diplôme de l’ECAL en tant qu’intervenant extérieur et intervient ponctuellement dans des jurys. Actuellement il est en charge de la recherche menée au sein des Masters de Cinéma - le projet WALKING THE EDIT démarre en janvier 2008; des premiers résultats ont été présentés milieu 2008. Les résultats de la recherche ont été présentés publiquement en été 2009.

Zbigniew Smoreda
Sociologue au laboratoire des sciences sociales à Orange Labs.
Il travaille sur les technologies d’information et de communication saisies par le prisme de la sociologie de communication, des réseaux sociaux et de la mobilité.

Information and registration for the event (Jan 29th, Sierre) are on www.technoark.ch/conference2010, see you there!

Here is a post about a personnal project I have. I write it in this space because I might be relevant to the Lift community, who is in large part responsible for this project :)

It has been four years Lift started, first as a solo, secondary, unpaid project. 1'500 days later, we welcome 2000 people a year at three conferences (Geneva, Marseille, Jeju) on two continents. Our community holds intimate and less intimate ;) events all around the world.

^{Lift posters for the past 5 editions}

We have hundreds of videos online, welcomed the father of the internet, the guy who inspired slumdog millionaire with his research, the Sister who ran the Pope's website, a researcher who rocked the audience with a talk on dating websites in Africa, and many many more.

Lift, itself inspired by Reboot, has contributed to other conferences in many ways, events like SHift, ICCM, Going Solo, even our friends of Next Conference :)

It has been quite a ride, and the way we build Lift - in a transparent and collaborative way, leveraging the intelligence and network of thousands of individuals - has caught the attention of the meeting industry. I am getting an increasing number of requests to explain how we work, the opportunities and challenges our processes create, to share experience with large events who see their audience decline, not understanding why the younger generation is not in attendance.

So to avoid repeating myself, and to explore a field I am definitely passionate about (the art of gathering people), I decided to write a book on "Conference 2.0" (I promise a better title ;). To share that experience and help turn a surprisingly conservative industry around. 15 contributors have already answered my call, and I am looking for more! Join us to share your experience as an organizer, attendee, speaker, partner, volunteer, etc. The project will start early next year, and you can contribute in any way you like!

Lift founder Laurent Haug is in Barcelona representing us at EIBTM, one of the two major conference of conference organizers ;) Speaking during the Technology Hour on Generation Y and the meeting industry, Laurent is also one of the judges on the WorldWide Technology Watch where start-ups of the world compete with their latest innovations to win the chance to present at the exhibition.

The work of Lift is, to say the least, quite intriguing for an industry that is facing major challenges with the current economic crisis, flu and other pandemics, and strong challenges from new technologies changing the way audiences participate, register, travel, collaborate, stay in touch, etc etc.

To learn more, see the article in EIBTM Daily that was published today, and come and see us in Barcelona!

^{Laurent takes the near future pose made popular by Nicolas Nova and Julian Bleecker, the later a repeated offender (1|2|3)}

Several of our friends and partners are also attending: our Geneva conference center, Amiando, Swiss start-up Klewel and Sebastien Tondeur of MCI are among the people you will meet in the corridors of the Gran Fira.

The following organizations are supporting Lift. We offer several possibilities for organizations who seek new ideas, contacts, and visibility inside a young community of influencers. Learn more »

The new version of our iPhone application has been approved by Apple, and you can now install it free on the app store. Some users reported "Video not found" issues that have been fixed. Please also note that apple forces providers of network intense applications (like video) to force users to use wifi. We had to implement this restriction and hope you will still enjoy watching our talks on the go.

Nicolas and myself spent the evening at the Radio Suisse Romande for "Devine qui vient dîner, a one hour discussion around Nicolas' latest book on Geolocalised medias ("Les médias géolocalisés") where we ended up explaining much about our work at Lift.

You can listen to the show (in French) on rsr.ch, in streaming and mp3.