Nicolas Nova explains how we create the conference program on his blog:

There’s a topic I rarely discuss here: how we work on the program of the LIFT conferences. With 3 editions in Geneva, a small event in Seoul and the LIFT Asia in CheJu next september, a long list of speakers has been booked. Since I am in charge of that part, it’s always interesting to shed some light about we handle that part of the conference.

So how does that work? Well, it’s not so much of a formal process as it’s a combination of the LIFT coreteam daily observation of the Tech world and a discussion with members from our board as well as local advisers. The daily dose of newsfeeds, magazine reads, meetings with researchers, designers, entrepreneurs, public institutions lead us to add names of relevant people in a database we called “LIFT parking”. This is mostly coordinated by myself and approved by the coreteam with recommendations coming from the LIFT team, the LIFT board, some partners/friends who reads specific resources (and get a free subscription and LIFT entrance) and of course local contacts who keep us posted about who is intriguing, pertinent and interesting in other part of the world such as South Korea, China, Japan. In the future we’d like to open this to new contacts from other countries in Latin America and of course Africa. Finally, the suggestion part of the website allows people from the community to suggest names and topics.

7-8 month before the event, we start cobbling our notes, potential speaker names and list of topics so that we can discuss the main theme and subtopics for the conference. This allows us to narrow down the list of potential speakers. Board members also suggest speakers at this time.

Link

Every program you see is the result of hours of readings, research, emailing, meeting, and contains the input of hundreds of people. And with close to 500 persons on our radar we will need to organize more events every year to hear them all, so if you have contacts in South America and Africa - two continents we would like to visit in the coming years - feel free to ping us ;)

The LIFT08 Asia program is coming along and we're happy announce the main topics we will talk about on September 4-5-6:

Beyond the Web we know what's exciting on the web from the near future, what comes after web2.0?

Online for better society: how web technologies will help shaping a more inclusive society and take advantage of the world's diversity.

Towards a Networked City: the new digital layers provided by ICTs on contemporary cities are now a reality, what does that mean for its inhabitants? What changes can we expect? How will ubiquitous computing influence the way we live?

From robots to networked objects: current robots are going beyond the traditional anthropomorphism and start to communicate. What will we see? What's hot in that domain that we will soon see all around us?

The near future of social worlds: social platforms on the Web and Massive Multi-Player games are now merging in a new category of digital entertainment platforms with new business models and screens such as mobile phones. What does that mean for users? What does the usage of such platform tell us about new forms of sociality?

Techno-nomadic life: the wireless and mobile technologies have freed us from the tyranny of "place", but what are the new constraints? What are the new behavior? Is the mobile web going through the same process as the Web of the 90s?

Does money go virtual? Recent changes in the digitalisation of money are less perceptible than more glamorous technologies, but they are of considerable importance. New banking solutions and money circulation practices are around.

Sustainable development/green technologies (in partnership with WattWatt).

The LIFT08 Asia program is coming along and we're happy announce the main topics we will talk about on September 4-5-6:

Beyond the Web we know what's exciting on the web from the near future, what comes after web2.0?

Online for better society: how web technologies will help shaping a more inclusive society and take advantage of the world's diversity.

Towards a Networked City: the new digital layers provided by ICTs on contemporary cities are now a reality, what does that mean for its inhabitants? What changes can we expect? How will ubiquitous computing influence the way we live?

From robots to networked objects: current robots are going beyond the traditional anthropomorphism and start to communicate. What will we see? What's hot in that domain that we will soon see all around us?

The near future of social worlds: social platforms on the Web and Massive Multi-Player games are now merging in a new category of digital entertainment platforms with new business models and screens such as mobile phones. What does that mean for users? What does the usage of such platform tell us about new forms of sociality?

Techno-nomadic life: the wireless and mobile technologies have freed us from the tyranny of "place", but what are the new constraints? What are the new behavior? Is the mobile web going through the same process as the Web of the 90s?

Does money go virtual? Recent changes in the digitalisation of money are less perceptible than more glamorous technologies, but they are of considerable importance. New banking solutions and money circulation practices are around.

Sustainable development/green technologies (in partnership with WattWatt).

The LIFT program is a very collaborative thing. We have our ideas - based on year-round trend watching efforts visible here - and receive many propositions from you by email and verbally.

When it is time to make our decisions, we have a hard time gathering all the propositions in a convenient format, and sometimes overlook a very interesting speakers. So here is the solution: we created an online repository for all suggestions where you will be able propose a speaker, a theme or an interesting organization.

Use the Suggestion form (accessible like all the other active functions via the Contribute link in the left toolbar), enter as much information as possible, and your proposition will be considered with all others everytime we prepare the program for the events (usually august for LIFT Europe, March for LIFT Asia).

We need you to create a good program so please don't hesitate!

Tonight we announced the 2008 program at an event with the local members of the LIFT community, and here is a short rundown of what will happen for those who couldn't be here.

The program of LIFT08 is made of 8 "tracks" of 3-4 speakers (for a total of 28 speakers). So far, we have booked 17 speakers.

Track "On-line environments"

Jyri Engestrom who founded Jaiku, a microblogging and mobile platform ans sold it last week to Google. Jyri will talk about the future of social software applications and new ways to filter information based on social sharing.

Jonathan Cabiria will talk about the relationships of virtual environments and social justice, especially about how platforms such as Second Life as a recommended activity for marginalized people, especially if issues of loneliness, depression, isolation, pessimism and/or low self-esteem are evident in their real lives.

2 others to be announced soon

Track "User experience"

We will have two anthropologists, one working for Nokia in Tokyo (Younghee Jung) and another for Intel in Seattle (Genevieve Bell). Both will describe us how observing users of technologies is important and brings insights to design of future products.

Paul Dourish, a researcher from University of California Irvine will then show how these insights are employed by developers and designers to create new products and services.

Track "Stories"

This track is aimed at hearing entrepreneurs' stories, their successes and failures as well as their motivations.

Rafi Haladjian, founder of Minitel start-ups, internet/wi-fi providers in France will tell us more about his new venture: Violet, a company who is designing the Nabaztag: a Wi-Fi and RFID enabled rabbit.

3 other speakers will be announced soon.

Track "A glimpse of Asia"

Given the fact that LIFT is now partly in Europe and partly in Asia, we want to bring some ideas of what we have been impressed of in Seoul to Geneva. To do so, we have a special track dedicated to technologies in Asia.

Marc Laperrouza, a researcher at EPFL specialist of new technologies in China. Marc will be talking about the current state and trends in chinese telecommunication.

Heewon Kim, a researcher from Yonsei University in Seoul will talk about how teenagers use social software in South Korea, her academic research topic.

A third speaker will be announced soon.

Track "New Frontiers"

This track is aimed at showing what are the new boundaries (ethical, cultural, physical) to be crossed by new technological developments.

Kevin Warwick, the british researcher who implanted a microchip in his body will tell us how he carried out a series of pioneering experiments involving the neuro-surgical implantation of a device into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer to assess the latest technology for use with the disabled.

Then Henri Markram from EPFL will describe the "blue brain" project he is conducting with IBM: the deployment of massive computational resources to simulate brain cells functioning.

Holm Friebe will go on by presenting new forms of cooperation and collaborative work in todays' society.

A fourth speaker will be announced soon.

Track "Gaming"

Robin Hunicke who is both an academic and work for Electonic Arts on designing games for the Nintendo Wii (such as My Sims) will describe new trends in gaming practices: user-generated content and the important of social software.

Guy Vardi (from Oberon Media) will then focus on the evolution of casual gaming.

Two other speakers will be announced soon.

Track "Web and entreprises"

The purpose of this track is to show how the web is reshuffling work practices. David Sadigh (IC Agency) will show us how organizations can focus on user retention rather than acquisition to boost traffic, and David Marcus (Zong) will talk about the new business models opened by mobile channels.

And two further speakers will be announced soon.

Track "Foresight"

The conference will end on with this track about the "future" and to get to know the upcoming trends.

Scott Smith (Changeist) and William Cockayne (Stanford, Change research) will both describe concrete foresight methodologies with case studies. And Francesco Cara (Head of Design at Nokia in Helsinki) will give more details about new trends he finds relevant concerning mobile and on-line behaviors.