logistics

Robolift's second day is starting after a great day of talks yesterday on the shape of robots, ethics, our emotionnal connection to machine, military usage of robots, and much more. Today's schedule has been slightly adapted to fit an official inauguration that will take place on the main stage at 11:30. Here is the program:

10:00 instead of 10:30 Human-robot interactions (Session starts earlier)
Robots seem to live either in the long-distant future or in the realm of research labs. This vision is wrong and these speakers will show us how nowadays people interact with them in Europe and in Japan. The session will also address how robots can be useful in developing or understanding our emotions.

11:30 Official inauguration

12:00 Lunch

14:00 Conference: Robot Market Focus

16:00 Artificial intelligence: acquired versus programmed intelligence? (Both two-speakers sessions merged into one four-speakers session)
Artificial Intelligence used a recurring objective of engineering. This session will give an overview of the recent progress in this field and the consequences for robotic technologies: How much pre-programming can you put into robotic intelligence? Can robots learn on their own?

The Future of robotics
This session will feature two talks about how robots might be in the future. From assistive care products to new forms of interactions, we will see tomorrow's technologies, their usages and applications.

18:00 End of the day

See the update program here.

If you did not book your flight or accommodation so far, we invite you to contact our travel agency partner Yellow Balloon Tour. Please contact Namguk Kim, tomy9200@naver.com.

They will be glad to assist you with your booking. See you soon in Jeju :)

Two days to go until the start of the first Lift France activities. Here is a quick update:

• Some workshops are almost full (The Internet of Subjects Manifesto, Business Schools 2.0: What Future?, Inovafrica), the earlier you register the more chance you have to see the presentation that interests you.

• We issued 70 (yes, seventy!) tickets in the last 24h, and we expect this rush to continue with last minutes participants registering. We of course love the situation - another sold out conference - and are now working to adapt the logistics. The caterer will hate us, but we'll say it's the Internet's fault or something ;D

• We also receive many journalists and bloggers requests. We still have a couple of passes, so if you qualify for one and want to attend like Franck Perrier or Richard MacManus, send us a request.

• How will you recognize team members and volunteers? They will wear nice t-shirts, blue for the guys, pink for the girls. Check the pictures made with amateur models who were hanging out close to our Marseille office.

Have a nice and safe trip to Marseille if you are coming to Lift France!

If you come to Lift since 2006 you know that the conference evolves a lot every year. We read the feedback we get through the post-conference surveys, mix that with our pretty fertile imagination, and then take another step forward in our endless quest for a great event. That is how we went from 2 to 3 days, how the open program came to life, how we merged the separate fondues into one giant event, etc etc. So what is new in 2009? To follow up on the survey this post uses the "less of"/"more of" format of the OwlRe report.

At Lift09 we will have more of:

• Presentations from mixed fields, at the intersection of technology and society. We are clearly going away from purely technological topics and focusing more on the social side of things.

• We also created more workshops (24 now) to address the requests for more case studies/best practices of new technology.

• You also asked us for "a common thread linking topics" and with "where has the future gone?" we have that. Also "cutting edge and futuristic" as requested.

• We removed questions at Lift08, thinking that 5 minutes of Q&A is not very useful when you have 700 people (and therefore likely 700 questions...) in a room. You want questions back and here they come again! We saved 30 minutes for each speaker which should give us margin for a good talk and discussion afterward. How will we handle the questions? You'll see, we should have something cool in place.

• More opportunities to network. Well, what we can do is create more time for networking and this year's program, with long breaks and time for lunches, should allow that. Don't forget that as organizers there is only that much we can do. Try to go to a conference without your laptop and mobile phone and you will see that you will meet more people ;)

• More interaction between participants? We are now working with John Elbing of Youreup Solutions to animate the community before the event. We think that we can do much more than what we have been doing so far to allow attendees to prepare for the event. The experience will also be expanded and should create more opportunities for interactions than before.

• More women presenters. This one is complicated because it is a social issue that Lift alone can't solve. Women are less present in the technological world, get less publicized -- and often are hesitant at putting themselves forward. But for 2009 we will have again a honorable number of women speakers (about one-third at this stage, which is more than most conferences). BTW: we have achieved balance in the team, where women will even outnumber men as soon as our new PR manager starts working in January ;)

We have a Facebook group, we have a Flick, a Google account for our videos, and now our collection will grow with the beautiful Dopplr (created by Lift's friend and past speaker Matt Jones) where we now have a group thanks to another former speaker, Greensboro-based futurist Scott Smith!

Join us on Dopplr!