One of the upcoming Lift@home will happen in Vienna on March 18, an ambitious event gathering 100 participants to talk about enabling changes and innovation in society. Join us for our first Austrian event!

The lift@Austria team is happy to announce a distinguished mix of speakers to drill down the theme "Enable" from a wide range of perspectives: Florian Brody from Silicon Valley, internationally acclaimed digital media specialist, Stefan Camenzind, architect and designer of the Google Labs in Zurich, Felix Oldenburg, CEO of Ashoka Germany, the biggest social entrepreneur network worldwide and many more!

The entire 3-days are designed as one piece. The first day will be devoted to explore existing enablers, such as the HUB, StartUp Weekend and the metalab. The insights from this exploration tour will be fed into the the second day, where we start with selected speakers to frame the topic of the conference. Thereafter, you can expect a full day of intense workshops, trying to work out the different dimensions of Enabling. The results will be illustrated and displayed in a gallery.

For more information, go to the website and read the propositions or see for yourself how we want to reward excellent input/people.

Cheers!
Thomas for the organizing team!

We are holding a Lift@home event at our office next week, an occasion to do two things: explore how organizations manage innovation, and test the beta interaction system we want to implement at Lift10. Join us for a free event next Tuesday at 6pm, c/o Label, 18 Quai du Seujet.

A look at innovation

How do organizations innovate? How to follow all the changes happening, and make sure the relevant ones are implemented in a successful way?

Following the earlier workshop on Lift10, this event will also be the occasion to test the (quite innovative and unique) system we want to use to create interaction between the audience and the speakers at Lift10, so come with your questions and comments :)

Confirmed speaker

Christian Miccio, Product Manager at Google
"Innovation tips and tricks" (20 minutes, English)

We will soon announce a second speaker, and just received a cancellation from a third person who has a conflict of dates. So if you want to present please contact me on laurent@liftconference.com.

Register

Attendance is free but registration is mandatory. Please bring something to drink, and join us for dinner afterwards!

Two and a half months after launching, Lift@home has surprised us with fifteen community organized events happening around the world in Seoul, Brussels, London, San Francisco, Barcelona, New York, Geneva, Lausanne and more. You came up with amazing ideas, from gathering kids in a chalet to discover their vision of the internet to organizing an informal conference in a garden.

Two events are already planned (this week in Geneva, Lift@Austria in March 2010) and many are ready to be announced soon (Berlin, Maastricht, New York). But we want more! With the Christmas break coming, the January and February agenda is pretty clear, so take the chance to propose an event. Now is the time! Check the program homepage, read our advices, and make the jump!

The next Lift@home will happen next Monday (Nov 9) in Geneva. Organized by Nicolas Nova, the event will be about "Urban informatics".

Future "networked and digital cities" have popped up on the radar for sometime now. This is a topic we address on a regular basis at Lift from a various set of viewpoints (art, design, architecture, digital services) and with a long-term vision. This time, we would like to explore what could be the implication of urban informatics in the city of today

Speakers

• Nicolas Nova, Researcher at Lift lab / Lift conference
• Fabien Girardin, Researcher at Lift lab
• Boris Beaude, Adjoint Scientifique at Choros / EPFL
• Pascal Wattiaux, IT consultants for sport events at PW Sport Ltd.

More information (and free registration)

Between chocolate cakes and ballads in the mountains, eight children were put to contribution during the Lift Workshop in Champoussin, where we asked them to explain and draw what the internet was to them. In very general terms, here are a few consolidated answers:

• Children do not differentiate the internet from the devices they use to browse. The internet is an iPhone, a computer, a Nintendo Wii.
• In their world, there is no such thing as a non-connected device.
• 3-5 years old use the internet to find examples of drawings, and have all been involed in a video chat without really thinking it's very different from a phone conversation (it was considered an experience closer to calling than to using the internet)
• 5-7 years old play games online, multiplayer ones like Club Penguin, or single user Flash games on sites like jeux.com

^{A real iPhone, and the drawings from a 5 years old.}

^{Drawing of a PS3. Aside from the shape of the console, the key's symbols are easily recognizable.}

^{A (semi-scary ;) character from one of the online games played by a 4 years old.}

^{A PS3, Wii and computer drawn by a 5 years old.}

^{A representation of Little Big planet's avatar.}

More pictures here.

Saturday's event in Champoussin:

How do children experience the Internet?

We want to have a nice time in the Alps, mixing generations. We'll have a bbq and fun sessions discussing, sketching, sculpting with children how they see the communication today and what their dreams are. The objective in the end is not to patent huuuuuge business ideas but to discover what we call innovation with other people's eyes and spend some time together first.

Lift @ Home in Champoussin this week-end!

We are holding a workshop tomorrow to introduce the (new and improved) Lift10 format. We need your feedback and inputs at a moment we are designing next year's event, and making important changes. If you are in Geneva Thursday at 18h please join us 18 Quai du Seujet, c/o Label, 1st floor for an informal discussion.

Designing Lift10
What improvements should we make to the Lift10 format? How to improve interactivity and inspiration? How to improve talks quality, and encourage workshops and open stage propositions? How much time should we give to each activity? We need your input as we will present the draft format for Lift10.

Where
Lift conference office
c/o Label Communication
18 quai du Seujet
Geneva, 1201
Switzerland

Date
Thursday, 01. October 2009, 18:00 - 20:30
Important: Please bring some drinks!

Event is free, please register here.

Lifters meetups have been happening around the world. Zurich, Toronto, Lausanne are the few we are aware of, but we know our community likes to meet up around an idea - or a beer.

Last year Michele Perras told me the that as she and others could not attend Lift09, she organized a Fondue back at her place, watching the Lift videos from the previous day. "It was pretty cool!" she said, and this reinforced the idea that we needed to do something to encourage these gatherings as much as we could. Lift at home was born!

Every conference has to become more open, letting external contributions in, reaching to global audiences via online talks. Today's conferences are not conferences, they are communities of people who share the same interests and values.

At Lift we have considerably extended our community in the past years, adding social features to our site, launching a conference in Korea, one in France. Lifters are all around the globe, living in different locations, sharing a common envy to meet, brainstorm, share and explore. We decided to encourage such gatherings, to structure and promote them. Here comes Lift at Home!

This is beta, we don't know where it will end up. But we think that a good idea and good people always end up creating something interesting. We look forward to see you at the upcoming events, and to hear your propositions!