lift09

Last week, I spoke at Playful, a one-day event all about games and play. I spotted there another speaker, 9-year-old Beatrice Davy-Sutherland, wearing a Lift t-shirt on stage! Our tees have gone viral :)

Bea joins a long line of Lift fans wearing their T-shirts all over the world. On stage with lucky joy, at SXSW with Robert Scoble, on the Lift stage with Korean entrepreneur Jaewoong Lee, and at a party at Washington D.C, worn by Mike Radparvar, co-founder of Holstee.

You wonder who the designers are? Bread and Butter of course, since 2006 :)

Our friend (and member of our advisory board) Guido Van Nispen has sent us a book with the pictures he took at Lift09. Guido is an AMAZING photographer as his Flick stream will show you... Thanks for the gift, there is really something nice in tangible objects and artifacts. I think this real world thing is here to last ;D

Update: Guido sent us a PDF version of the book you can download here (50MB).

^{View all pictures on Flick.}

From the Jurassic Era of the Internet to its Futures.

IP protocol inventor Vinton Cerf, who is now Vice President and Internet Evangelist at Google gave the concluding talk at Lift 09. After a quick recap of the history of the Internet, he basically gives an enthusiastic tour of its current limits (bitrot, IP address shortage) as well projects about its evolution, such as interplanetary internet though satellites.

Upcoming's interesting and popular events of 2009

2009 was quite a year. Join the Upcoming team in looking back at the events that made it a fun, educational, and inspirational year. Whether you rubbed shoulders with tech innovators or indulged your taste buds at a hip food festival, we hope you had an excellent 2009. Here is a selection of interesting events from 2009. Enjoy. [...]

6. LIFT09
Wednesday February 25, 2009 - Friday February 27, 2009
Lift is a series of events built around a community of doers and thinkers who get together in Europe and Asia to explore the social consequences of new technologies. Each conference is a chance to turn changes into opportunities by anticipating the major shifts ahead, and meeting the people who drive them.

This really makes me want to go to SXSW (#1) and Frontiers of Interaction (#5)!

Thanks for the honor Upcoming team :)

Update: here is Lift10 on Upcoming in case you missed it!

Who has no knife may not eat pineapples, an off-topic tour d'horizon on the literacy of cutting

Felix Koch and Fabian Kalker share their insights about "cutting cultures" and how observing the usage of knives reveal interesting social trend of our society. They tackle for instance the aversion to risk or the loss of a certain food culture.

What would a diverse, complex world brain look like? Considering how digital culture and enable a multiplicity of knowledges. Ramesh Srinivasan, an Assistant Professor at the University of California Los Angeles, speaks about the importance of cultural differences in knowledge production and technology design. Through various stories, he shows the differences in cultural appropriation and the inherent creativity of people in adpating technologies to the uses that benefit them best.

Lee Bryant describes to what extent we reach a new culture ecosystem echoes with old traditions of trade, business and socialisation while the Twentieth century was all about mass market and mass production.

Laurent Haug, fondateur des conférences Lift présente le programme de ce premier jour de l'édition 2009 de Lift à Genève.

“Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything.”, Gregg Easterbrook

Somebody suggested we add a "lift by the numbers" section on the site's about page, and I decided to act on this recommendation as it gives an perspective what has happened in the past three and a half years.

4'000 attendees from 60 countries.

8 events held on 3 continents in 3.5 years

2 million visits and 13.5M page views on liftconference.com per year (full stats)

450+ articles and interviews in national (TSR, Bilan, RSR, Swissinfo) and international (BBC, CBC, BusinessWeek, FastCompany, Wired, AFP, Europe1) media

200+ talks available free in video

5000+ members in the Lift community

180+ speakers from more than 40 countries

Lift @ home events happening in Toronto, Tokyo, Barcelona, London, San Francisco, Brussels, Barcelona, Zurich, New York, etc.

Link