speaker

Roger Malina will be speaking during the closing session of Lift France 11, and will give us an overview of his key takeaways from the conference.

Malina is an astronomer, with a specialty in space telescopes and observational cosmology. He is currently director of the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de Marseille, and Acting Director for the Observatoire Astronomique de Marseille Provence. For 25 years he has been the Editor of the Art-Science publication Leonardo at MIT Press and an Executive Editor of the Leonardo Book Series at MIT Press. He is the President of the Association Leonardo in Paris, and a member of the board of Leonardo/International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology in San Francisco.

Malina is particularly interested in promoting the cultural appropriation on contemporary sciences and technology and new ways of creating conditions for art-science collaboration.

Check out his blog here or this short video where Roger Malina explains the Leonard Organization.

I have been fascinated by the story of Hasan M. Elahi since Wired reported on his full life disclosure policy in 2007. Mistakenly listed on the US terrorist watch list, the Bangladeshi-born American decided to publish his life online in an effort to convince the authorities of his innocence. How could you accuse him of wrongdoings when his total transparency would prove he was just a normal citizen that can be geolocalized at every moment. Hasan stories is a (rare?) example of a loss of privacy becoming a vital feature, and raises interesting questions: did it work (has he been taken off the list?), how did his friends and family react to being photographed and published on the web, what impact on his love life (how do you explain what is happening to a date - preferably without mentioning the list thing ;), how much work was this, are all these traces forming into something interesting?

A lot of questions that we hope we can ask Hasan in person next February.

Lift10 is in 3 weeks time, and we are posting profiles of the confirmed speakers. Don't forget to have a look at the program!

Antonio Casilli will be speaking at Lift10 during our session on Generations and Technologies. We invited him because of his sharp perspectives on the social implications of digital services. A long-time observer of people practices, Antonio's work and insights fit very well in the Lift agenda.

Antonio is a sociologist at the EHESS and a researcher at the Centre Edgar Morin (CNRS, Paris). Details of his work and research can be found here. His main research foci are computer-mediated communication and health behaviours, and these days he spends most of his time on studying the social networks of Eating Disorder patients (you may have heard about pro-ana websites).

His blog, BodySpaceSociety, a blog for recovering social scientists, is an online newsletter/a writing diary for "Les liaisons numériques : Vers une nouvelle sociabilité ?" (Digital Liaisons: Towards a New Sociability?), his upcoming book due in September 2010 on the topic of online sociability.

For the record, Antonio is also interested in the recurring presence of blue avatars in pop culture.

Lift10 is in 5 weeks time, and we are posting profiles of the confirmed speakers. Don't forget to have a look at the program!

Felipe Schmidt Fonseca will be speaking at Lift10 during our session entitled "Stories" - our traditional session dedicated to inspiring stories from people with extraordinary projects and lives. Based on the "Connected People" theme, Felipe will present some examples of his work, and focus on technological hardware/software appropriation in social, artistic and educational contexts.

Felipe is a Brasilian media activist and independent researcher working in the fields of technological appropriation, low tech experimentation, free and open source multimedia software, open licensing, distributed learning and online collaboration.

He has been lead articulator in projects such as MetaReciclagem.org, an emergent Brasilian movement regarding low tech labs and projects; DesCentro.org, a decentralized research organisation; and Bricolabs.net, an international network of experimental labs. Felipe has also acted as a consultant for the Brasilian Ministry of Culture in the Cultura Digital project, that brought critical ICT use to more than 600 cultural centers throughout Brasil.

We just received confirmation that the founder of pioneering citizen journalism website OhmyNews will speak at Lift10. In 2000, Oh Yeon Ho started a revolution, fueled by the belief that every citizen is a reporter. For the past ten years, he has worked to explore and recreate a sustainable model for the media industry.

Mister Oh will speak during the session on the future of Media on May 5th. Check his profile for more information, and have a look at the program and speakers.

Hyungjin Kim, Senior Game Developer and Creative Director at NCsoft will give a talk in the inspiring stories session, friday afternoon in Jeju. He will address the game design approach to Serious Fun they they put in place in his organization, one of the leader of Massive Multiplayer On-Lines Games in the world.

See you soon in Jeju!

We are glad to announce Suman Park, CEO of me2day as a speaker in the Inspiring Stories session of Lift Asia 09.

We are very happy to announce that Chul Shin has accepted our invitation to participate as a speaker at Lift Asia 09. The legendary film producer, who created with Taekon V on of the most beloved characters in anime, will share with the audience his experience in film production.

Chul Shin will speak in the Storytelling session on Thursday afternoon with TED video director Jashon Wishnow and Julian Bleeker from Nokia Design.

Learn more about Chul Shin on his speaker profile and see some Taekwon V taekwondo movies here and here and here on Youtube :)

3 great innovators have agreed to speak at Lift France, and many more will be announced in the coming days:

Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino is CEO of technology and design consultancy Tinker.it!. She designs technology-enabled and socially-aware creative solutions to problems. She ran the "Web of Things" workshop at Lift Geneva '09.


Euan Semple is one of the most respected specialists of social software. After years introducing all kinds of exotic tools inside the BBC, he became a consultant, helping businesses enable conversations inside their organizations as well as outside.

Usman Haque designs interactive architecture systems and researches how people relate to each other and their spaces. He has created responsive projection environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and choreographed performances. Recently, he launched Pachube, a web service that enables people to tag and share real time sensor data from objects, devices and spaces around the world, facilitating interaction between remote environments, both physical and virtual.

James Auger is a partner in the critical design practice Auger-Loizeau whose projects explore the role of technology as a mediator and modifier of the human experience in both contemporary and future societies. Their work has been exhibited and published globally over the past 8 years. He teaches on the Design Interactions course at the Royal College of Art in London and is currently undertaking a design practice based PhD looking into the role of robots in the home environment.

On their explorations into design for the near future they explored technology’s effect on human culture, behaviour and experience. A tooth implant that transmits sounds over the jaw-bone, a phone that blocks all other peripheral sensory distraction or several prototypes to augment animals are just some of the examples.

During the “Design thinking for the future” session on Friday, James will talk to us about the role designers can play in shaping our technological future. Find more info on James on his LIFT page or discover his projects on his website.