From Wikipedia

Lift is a series of events to inspire and connect the community of doers and thinkers exploring the social impact of new technologies. Each Lift conference is a three-day experience made of talks, workshops, interactive art and discussions to understand and anticipate the most important social changes, and meet the people behind them.

Lift has been called by BBC News "one of the highlights of the technophile calendar", "an opportunity to meet up with some of the most interesting people around and engage in debate about the future with those who are actually building it instead of waiting for it happen".^[1]

There have been eight events held, four in Geneva (Switzerland), one in Seoul (South Korea), two in Jeju Island (South Korea), and one in Marseille (France).

Lift was founded by Laurent Haug and three co-founders (Nicolas Nova, Steven Ritchey, John Staehli), and is organized by an international team with the support of organizations like Mozilla, the IEC, Microsoft and the European Commission.

Lift France 2010

Lift France 2010 is scheduled to happen in Marseille on July 5-7, 2010.

Lift 10

Lift 10 will happen in Geneva for on May 5-7, 2010. The conference is themed "Connected people" and will feature an improved format focused on audience and speakers interaction.

Lift10 will explore the most overlooked aspect of innovation: people. Known in techno-parlance as users, consumers, clients, participants, prosumers, citizens or activists, people ultimately define the success of all technological and entrepreneurial projects. They adopt or refute, promote or demote; embrace, reject, or re-purpose. Their approaches are unique, influenced by cultural and generational diversity. A decade after the rebirth of user-centered design and innovation, it is time to explore the myths and uncover the reality behind the "connected people".

Sessions will cover Generations and technologies, the Redefinition of Privacy, Online Communities, Politics and Media. Speakers include Alex Steffen, Alice Taylor, Aubrey de Grey, Jamais Cascio and Amelia Andersdotter.

Lift Asia 09

Lift Asia 09 (Korea, 1–3 September 2009) is set to happen on Jeju Island for the second time.^{[dated info]} The theme is "Serious Fun".

"The Internet started as platform for academics, then it became a huge business platform. Now it is an entertainment playground for users. People spend time having fun on the Social Web, access virtual worlds on their cell phones or interact with robots and networked objects. But we believe these services and platforms go far beyond mere leisure: their usage may reveal new social practices that will spread in other contexts (business, education), and the services first targeted at entertainment can lead to original innovations. This year's Lift Asia will focus on the lessons we can draw for fields such as general innovation, sociology, management, business, design and education."^{[attribution needed]}

Lift France 09

Lift France 09 was in Marseilles, 18-19 June 2009. The theme was "hands-on future", a future of do-it-yourself where citizens will be able to customize, hack and transform the objects around them.

Speakers included France Digital Economy and prospective minister Nathalie Kosciusko-Morizet, entrepreneur and writer Gunter Pauli, and Dorkbot's founder Douglas Repetto.

Lift 09

Lift 09 (Geneva, 25-27 February 2009) looked back to look ahead, exploring topics like change, solidarity, love, or design, during three days of intense networking and inspiration themed around a simple question: "Where did the future go?" We^[who?] were told the future would be about mechanization, computerization, 1984-like nightmares or robots. What did and did not happen? What can we learn from the predictions that never materialized to better look at the future? The conference was attended by 800 participants.

Speakers included: Vint Cerf, Roh Soh Yeong (Art Center Nabi, Korea), Ramesh Srinivasan (UCLA), Patrick J. Gyger (Maison d'Ailleurs), Oriol Pascual (ENVIU), Nicolas Nova (Lift), Melanie Rieback, Matt Webb, Juliana Rotich (GlobalVoices/Ushahidi, Kenya), Jörg Jelden (Trendbüro, Germany), Natalie Jeremijenko (UCSD, USA), James Gillies (CERN, Switzerland), James Auger (Auger-Loizeau/Royal College of Art, UK), Frank Beau, Fabio Sergio (frog design, Italy), David Rose (Vitality, USA), Clive Van Heerden (Philips Design, Netherlands), Dan Hill (Arup, Australia), Carlo Ratti (MIT, USA), Baba Wamé (Yaoundé 2 University, Cameroon), Florence Devouard (Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Foundation, France), Anne Galloway (Concordia University, Design & Computation Arts, Canada), Anab Jain (Nokia Design / Superflux, UK).

All the talks are available online in English and French on tsr.ch/lift.

List Asia 08

Lift Asia 08, Lift's second Asian event, is set to happen in Jeju Island, Korea, on September 4–6, 2008.^{[dated info]} The program features a mix of international and Asian speakers like Joonmo Kwon (CEO of 300-million-user game company Nexon), Takeshi Natsuno (inventor of the imode for NTT Docomo), Bruno Bonnel (Founder of Infogrammes), Dan Dubno and Eric Rodenbeck (Stamen Design).

Lift 08

Lift 08 was held on February 6–8, 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland. The topic of the conference was "Challenges and opportunities of technology in society". The conference was a sell out, hitting its target of attracting 700 participants. There were 45 speakers, including Kevin Warwick and Pierre Bellanger.

Lift Asia 07

The first LIFT evening was held on September 12, 2007 at the Yurim Art Hall in Seoul, South Korea. The event was about spaces, how technological developments in both the physical worlds and virtual environments are reshaping buildings, games, and soon web browsers. Four speakers participated in the event, Adam Greenfield, Bruce Sterling, XL games CEO Jake Song and Korean architect Yoo Suk Yeon.

The event was attended by 180 persons.

Lift 07

Lift 07 was held on February 7–9, 2007 in Geneva, Switzerland, both at the University of Geneva and the International Conference Centre Geneva. LIFT 07 incorporated extra elements normally found in unconferences—peer to peer workshops and conference participant presentations.

LIFT07 Open Stage was a test to see how unconference models can be incorporated into traditional conferences.

The event was attended by 550 persons, among them speakers like Florence Devouard, Brian Cox, Sugata Mitra, Jan Chipchase, Stowe Boyd, Paul Barnett, or Régine Debatty and featured more than 50 presentations and workshops.

Lift 06

Lift 06 was held on Feb 2–3, 2006 in Geneva, Switzerland, at the CICG.

The conference welcomed 350 persons, among them speakers like Cory Doctorow, Robert Scoble, Bruce Sterling, Euan Semple or Hugh MacLeod.

References

External links

• Lift. Official website.
  • Videos, all the presentations available for free in a variety of formats.
• Laurent Haug, founder & director
• Nicolas Nova, editorial manager
• Bread and butter, art direction and design

Media coverage

• Tech conference explores future innovations
• Where did the future go? We’re living it, say science fiction expert, researcher
• Lift tech conference aims to connect and inspire
• The rise of technology addiction. [The BBC]
• 19 Minutes 45 Seconds Worth Sitting Still For BusinessWeek
• LIFT 08 -- where you learn something new every day Wired Blogs
• LIFT press center