News > Announcements

A good way to keep in touch is twitter: follow the conference's main account (@liftconference), but also CEO Sylvie Reinhard (@sylviereinhard) and curator Laurent Haug (@laurenthaug).

In case you are completely lost, call Magaly (French, English) on +41764036717.

Also keep in mind Swiss emergency numbers:
Police: 117
Ambulance: 144
Fire: 118

Remember we are also waiting for your questions for the speakers! All 20m presentations are followed by 5 minutes of Q&A, just use tag #lift12 on twitter and we will relay your interrogations to the stage.

The company: Excentive International

Excentive International (www.excentive.com) is a rapidly growing software company providing a Total
Compensation solution covering Sales Performance Management (SPM) and Employee Performance
Management (EPM). Our customers typically range from large to very large leading companies, across
all industry sectors. The head office is in Switzerland, with offices throughout the US, Europe and Asia to
globally serve our customers.

Job description: Application Experts

Excentive International is looking to hire 3 Application Experts, preferably located by its head office in
French speaking Switzerland.

The Application Experts’ role is covering 3 functions:

• Presales: supporting Sales with application expertise
• Implementation consulting: translating customers functional requirements into our application;
integrating customer systems into the Excentive platform; designing and building reports
• Maintenance support: providing 1st line technical and functional assistance to customers

The required technical skills are:

• A degree in computer science or business information technology
• A general knowledge of web applications
• A general knowledge of Relational and Multidimensional Database models
• A detailed knowledge of MS SQL platform (SQL DB, OLAP, Reporting Services, SSIS)
• A detailed knowledge of query writing in relational database environment

The required personal skills are:

• Fluent in English (reading, speaking and writing)
• A self+starter and proactive mindset
• The willingness and ability to travel worldwide
• The ability to interact with customers at any level

Additional language(s), knowledge of .NET or C#, a few years of experience or a business degree are all a
big plus as long as all the required skills are met.

Full description & contacts here.

The idea of Elephant Path germinated years ago with the emergence of new ways of reading and discovering a territory through its digital activities (see my PhD thesis). It collided with our long interest in the principles of social navigation (see rss4you developed by Nicolas Nova and Roberto Ortelli in the early days of content syndication) that leverage traces of activities with the goal to facilitate locating and evaluating information. In the physical world, a classic example of social navigation is a trail (called elephant path, desire line, social trail or desire path) developed by erosion caused by people making their own shortcuts (a phenomenon we like to observe).

Taking that concept into the informational layers of our cities and regions, we sketched in Impure the possibility to reveal unofficial routes and beaten tracks through the thousand of pieces of information inhabitants and visitors share publicly on the web. Technically, we deployed our own algorithms to extract travel sequences using collections of user-generated content from Wikipedia, Flickr and Geonames. For each region, Elephant Path lists Wikipedia entries and selects some of the monuments, parks, and other popular sites with a story. It consolidates the the Wikipedia entries with geographical coordinates via the Geonames API. Then, it uses the Flickr API to collect the information photographers share at these locations. Finally is applies our own network data analysis algorithms to filter the data, produce travel sequences and measure photogenic levels.

We have done it for both Paris and Barcelona. For each city, Elephant Path provides measures on the main trails, on the photogenic attractions and the months of activity. For instance the information reveals that:

Paris seems to be a “summer” destination according to their monthly photographic activity. If you are in Paris during that period, the parks (Bois de Boulogne, Parc Monceau and Jardin du Luxembourg) might not be you visiting priorities. Indeed, these sites seem to be more photogenic in Spring and Fall. But if you are at Jardin du Luxembourg, there is some chances that you were in the St-Germain des Prés neighborhood (e.g. Café de Flore) previously and that your stroll there might very well bring you to Centre Pompidou that links the nearby Panthéon with the trendy Marais neighborhood. Barcelona seems to be more of “fall” destination according to the monthly photographic activity. Discover it yourself. [More screenshots]

An interface designed for you to copy and adapt it

But Elephant Path doesn’t end with data visualization, maps and graphs that can be embedded into web pages. It is meant to be open and be appropriated in unexpected ways. The Impure platform offers numerous data access, information processing and visualization capabilities. You can copy the code and data of Elephant Path and improve it in your workspace. Content of the work content is under the terms of a Creative Commons License. Do not hesitate in ripping and adapting it!

We're sorry to announce that due to unforeseen circumstances Lee Bryant will not be able to speak at Lift11. We are therefore looking for one more speaker to talk inside the Re-organization: new workplaces, new business models, social organizations session. Please contact us if you are attending the conference and could speak on the topic of the social organizations, how new tools are reshaping hierarchies and processes inside organizations. If you know an expert in that field that can go beyond the obvious and already heard ideas, please email us (info@liftconference) and cc the person so we can reach him/her quickly.

Here is an updated version of the program and the current list of talks.

count down has begun!
it will be GREAT to meet you all again!

Lift happens thanks to partnerships with local and international organizations who support the conference. Check the full partners list, and contact us if you want to partner with the conference in Europe or Asia.

	Reflex Magazine Reflex is a scientific magazine which addresses all those who want to understand how science, technology and innovation transform their everyday life. It is published three times a year in English and in French. Reflex is co-edited by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the press agency LargeNetwork. Reflex’s french print runs are of 15,500 copies. English print runs are of 4,000 copies. Reflex is sent to all the former students of the EPFL, as well as to the teachers and to a selection of the institution’s partners (approx. 11’000 addresses). It is also sold in most of the kiosks of Romandie. » Learn more
	Rezonance Gathering more than 34’000 members, Rezonance is the leading social network for people and enterprises that wish to develop their exchanges in French-speaking Switzerland. Rezonance proposes online networking services and 25 free conferences a year on innovation, new technologies, entrepreneurship, biotech and networking called “First”. Seeking to emulate a whole region through networking and mutual enrichment, Rezonance develops professionals’ ideas and knowledge, anticipates changes and reveals trends. » Learn more
	ICT Journal ICT Journal is a new platform for business news in the IT world. The monthly magazine and website informs Swiss readers about the current events in information technology, communication, the internet, and business software. » Learn more
	L'Atelier BNP Paribas L'Atelier detects "disruptive innovation" across America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Its experts detect the ideas that bring about concrete changes for companies and their employees affecting their organization, their communications, the way they do business. L'Atelier BNP Paribas helps position companies to allow them to catch on to these ideas at an early stage, and accompanies them through these transformations with its business consulting and training unit. L'Atelier also communicates these key trends through its communication channels (web, video, radio) and its events (Thema, Gallery and Springboard). » Learn more
	Techcrunch TechCrunch, founded on June 11, 2005, is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies. In addition to covering new companies, we profile existing companies that are making an impact (commercial and/or cultural) on the new web space. » Learn more

You can see the full article here.

We have received a large number of submissions for workshops, and this part of the program is now full. BUT if you still want to propose a workshop you can do it, we will leave the submissions open. In case a slot becomes available (which is very likely at this point) your submission will be considered.

We are also exploring different ways to expand the number of slots available, another good reason to still send your propositions.

It has been a recurrent request for the past years: creating the possibility to attend only part of Lift. We now offer this possibility and you can target specific days you would like to attend. Check the program, choose the days you want to attend, and !

La Conférence TechnoArk revient le 28 janvier 2011 à Sierre pour une sixième édition consacrée à l’équation: Internet+Mobiles = Nouveaux Consommateurs?

Origine des produits, informations nutritionnelles, comparaison de prix, achat par mobile, partage d’avis ou d’expérience au sein de ses différentes communautés, consommation de médias, chacun de ces nouveaux services innovants fait naitre chez les consommateurs de nouvelles questions, de nouvelles exigences, voir de nouveaux arbitrages et donc autant de nouveaux défis pour les fabricants et distributeurs de produits de grande consommation, comme de contenus médias.

INTERVENANTS

Venez résoudre cette équation avec les acteurs les plus avancés de l'Internet Mobile:

Stéphane Hugon, sociologue, professeur à l’Université Descartes Paris V (Sorbonne)
Diane Taillard, solution director - GS1 Global (Bruxelles)
Georges Edouard Dias, digital corporate - groupe L’Oréal (Paris)
Philippe Azan, innovation manager - The Nielsen Company (Cincinnati)
Laurent Sciboz, responsable des instituts de recherche IT du TechnoArk
René Le Caignec, CEO MoWo Technology (Sierre)
Jean Christophe Hermann (TBC), directeur marketing digital – Groupe CARREFOUR (Paris)
Scott Poynton, directeur de l’ONG TFT- Genève
Xavier Comtesse, directeur romand d'Avenir Suisse
Laurent Haug, fondateur des conférences Lift, assurera la modération de l'événement

More information and registration.