Challenges and opportunities of
technology in society
Next event: LIFT Asia, 4-5 September 2008
Program for Thursday & Friday
Thursday 7
The conference happens at the CICG (map)
Laurent Haug & Cristiana Bolli-Freitas
Tech journalist and science-fiction writer Bruce Sterling will open the conference with a "state of the [technological] world address", a 30' overview of what happened in the previous year that struck him as pertinent, interesting and curious.
Pierre Bellanger, CEO and founder of french media group Skyrock will give us his perspectives on the evolution of new media and social software.
Jonathan Cabiria will talk about relationships in virtual environments and social justice. He will explore how platforms such as Second Life can be recommended as activity for marginalized people, especially if they suffer from issues such as loneliness, depression, isolation, pessimism and/or low self-esteem.
Open Stage, you voted to see them speak!
Stephanie Booth: Going Solo: being a freelancer in a connected world
Ewan McIntosh: How social media creates open education
Discussion: Academia + social media is not a zero sum game with Peter Kawalek, Martin Cahill, Paul Carruthers and Ewan McIntosh
We will have two anthropologists, one working for Nokia in Tokyo (Younghee Jung) and another for Intel in Seattle (Genevieve Bell). Both will show us why observing users of technologies is important and how this brings insights for designing future products.
Paul Dourish, a researcher from University of California Irvine will then criticize how such results from anthropological studies are often translated into "implications for design", missing relevant insights from anthropologist's works.
This track is aimed at hearing the stories of entrepreneurs and communicators, their successes and failures as well as their motivations.
Rafi Haladjian, founder of Minitel start-ups and internet/wi-fi providers in France will tell us about his latest venture: Violet, a french tech company, has designed the Wi-Fi and RFID enabled rabbit called Nabaztag.
Eric Favre who is the co-inventor of Nespresso will tell us more about "intrapreneur" innovation and the story behind coffee capsules.
Feminist, political activist, translator, publisher and filmmaker Jasmina Tesanovic will give a presentation about blogging, genders and politics exemplified by Balkan examples.
Open Stage, you voted to see them speak!
Noel Hidalgo: On the luck of seven
Markus Peschl: Enabling Emergent Innovation
Discussion: For-Profit Social Entrepreneurship - change the world and still get rich: good or bad? with Alexander Osterwalder and Jean-Daniel Sciboz.
With LIFT going to Asia, we want to share the ideas we have been most impressed with, with you. To do so, we have a special track dedicated to technologies in Asia.
Marc Laperrouza is a researcher at EPFL specializing on new technologies in China. Marc will be talking about the current state and latest trends in chinese telecommunication.
Heewon Kim, a researcher from Yonsei University in Seoul will present us the highlights of her academic research topic "how teenagers use social software in South Korea".
Gen Kanai will give the last talk of the session. Business developer for Mozilla Asia and director of marketing and partner relations for Mozilla Japan, Gen's speech will be an overview of the open source situation in Asia.
Please note that at this time, the conference doors will be open to all as the ensuing event is public.
A special event to talk about sustainable development introduced by Bill Thompson.
Tom Taylor from Headshift, a company that builds and consults on social software applications, will talk about how to use peer pressure and social networking to get ordinary people to change their behavior in favor of more sustainable activities.
Guy Pignolet from Sunsat Energy Council will describe how capturing solar energy in orbit and beaming it down to earth in a 24 hours a day controlled process, in combination with hydrogen technology, apppears as one of the global, clean and sustainable solutions to replace fossil fuels.
Andy Reisinger, a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that recently won the Nobel peace price alongside Al Gore, will present on the social challenges presented by climate changes.
A chill out moment to end the day in style.
FondueLIFT's legendary cheese-enhanced diner. This year a bus service will be organized from 19:20 to 19:30 to take participants to the fondue (but you can still walk and take the tram if you wish)
Location: Salle Communale de Plainpalais
Friday 8
This track is aimed at showing what are the new boundaries (ethical, cultural, physical) being questioned by new technological developments.
Kevin Warwick, the British "cyborg" researcher who implanted a microchip in his body will tell us about his pioneering experiments. He had a neuro-surgical device implanted into the median nerves of his left arm in order to link his nervous system directly to a computer. The aim of these experiment series is to assess the use of latest technologies for disabled people.
Then Henri Markram from EPFL will present the "blue brain" project that he is conducting in cooperation with IBM: it's objective is to the deploy massive computational resources to simulate the functioning of brain cells.
Holm Friebe from the socialistic-capitalist joint-venture Zentrale Intelligenz Agentur in Berlin will show new forms of cooperation and collaborative work in todays' society.
Mieke Gerritzen will talk about the different views on visual and natural culture that new networks brought to us.
Open Stage, you voted to see them speak!
Henriette Weber Andersen: Enjoy the chaos
Kushtrim Xhakli: How innovative projects can transform education
Robin Hunicke is both an academic and practitioner and works for Electonic Arts. She is designing games for the Nintendo Wii (such as My Sims). Robin will describe new trends in gaming practices: user-generated content and the importance of social software. Then Guy Vardi, from Oberon Media, will talk about casual gaming and the evolutions in that field.
Paul Barnett, the Creative Director for Electronic Arts Mythic, oversees the design of the upcoming MMORPG Warhammer Online. A pioneer in MUDs and MMO game design, Paul will describe evolution of the massive multiplayer environments.
Bruno Bonnell, founder and former CEO of Infogrames, will discuss the implications and opportunities of robotics in the leisure industry.
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 trafic, and David Marcus (Zong) will talk about the new business models opened by mobile channels.
Kevin Marks from Google will continue by telling us more Open Social, a common framework for building social applications across many websites.
Finally, François Grey from the CERN will give us a presentation about volunteer computing and what this technology means more widely for society: for the Web, for science, and leisure.
Open Stage, you voted to see them speak!
Kristina Serafim: The importance of social networking and "conversations" are having for companies and bloggers
This track will be all about the future and present how organizations can identify and explore latest trends.
Scott Smith (Changeist) and William Cockayne (Stanford, Change research) will both describe concrete foresight methodologies and illustrate them with case studies. And Francesco Cara (Design Strategist at Nokia) will provide us insights about the trends in mobile and online behaviors he finds most relevant.
William Cockayne from our advisory board will take the stage again and give us his impressions and key take aways to wrap up the event.
Closing party!