Lots of people in the digital industry are gathering next week in New York for the Web 2.0 Expo. Sandbox Network founder and Lifter Fabian Pfortmuller organizes a dinner on Tuesday night to connect Web2.0 guests, Sandboxers and others Lifters over some nice food.

Guests will include Dominik Grolimund (founder of Wuala, see his presentation at Lift08 venture night), Jun Loyaza and the Head of Innovation at Deutsche Telekom USA.

More info and rsvp.

From the Jurassic Era of the Internet to its Futures

IP protocol inventor Vinton Cerf, who is now Vice President and Internet Evangelist at Google gave the concluding talk at Lift 09. After a quick recap of the history of the Internet, he basically gives an enthusiastic tour of its current limits (bitrot, IP address shortage) as well projects about its evolution, such as interplanetary internet though satellites.

I was looking for a trend on Google search earlier today, and quickly checked the impact of the Geneva conference on searches in Switzerland. Unsurprisingly there is a growing spike in searches, corresponding to the boost of traffic we have on our servers during the conference.

2009 (Lift09, Feb. 25-27)

2008 (Lift08, Feb. 6-8)

2007 (Lift07, Feb. 7-9)

How the Web awas Born: Stories from a scribe

Web veteran and CERN PR James Gillies tells us his perspective on the history of the Web. He shows the backstage vision from an insider's perspective of what used to be a "vague but exciting" idea that became the World Wide Web around the early 90s.

"NKM" is France's minister in charge of Forward Planning and the Development of the Digital Economy.

Olivier Glassey examines to what extent the notion of a "Government 2.0" is valid or only a buzzword. He uncovers thepotential transformations hiding behind it and question whether "2.0" really applies to government.

Here they come, the traditional banners you can reuse all around your webs.

With a new poster come new banners, and here are some of this year's linking material:

Find more on the practical information page.

I will be representing Lift in Paris at Le Web, watching as the whole web industry gathers in Europe thanks to the efforts of Loic Lemeur and his wife Geraldine. The speakers panel is beyond impressive (Marissa Mayer of Google, CEO of Myspace, founder of Meetic, Scoble, Arrington, etc etc) and features some non-web speakers like Paulo Coelho or my good friend (and amazing presenter) Itay Talgam.

The organizers have asked to pass the Lift community the only 30% discount code they have created (thanks Géraldine :)! Feel free to use it if you plan to attend the conference next month. Use LIFTLEWEB08 on amiando.com/leweb08!

Genevieve Bell grew up in Australia, moving between the working class suburbs of Melbourne and Canberra and the Aboriginal communities of Central and Northern Australia. She has a PhD in anthropology and works as Director of User Experience within Intel’s Digital Home Group. There she manages an inter-disciplinary team of social scientists, interaction designers and human factors engineers.